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A review by shanaqui
Fallen Idols: History Is Not Erased When Statues Are Pulled Down. It Is Made by Alex von Tunzelmann
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
For something that I found enjoyable and interesting, Fallen Idols felt surprisingly slow for me. It's a book that aims to look at statues that have been pulled down and contextualise them: why were they put up, why were they pulled down, and why does it matter? It also discusses four arguments against the destruction of statues, namely historical significance, "he was a man of his time", the fact that a legal/democratic process should be used instead, and the fear that pulling down statue will mean pulling down all of them.
It quickly becomes clear that von Tunzelmann is pro-destruction, and each example chosen is of someone who caused suffering, owned slaves, facilitated the sale of humans, etc -- I'd have been interested to know if there were other examples, statues pulled down by Republicans/Conservatives/etc, and what the author thinks of that. Not that I disagree, and not that I think statues are particularly sacred or important, but because this was a decidedly partisan book and I'd actually have appreciated seeing the other side as well.
I think people put undue importance on statues, and if we really believe that it's fine to topple Colston into the harbour because that isn't erasing history and it's what the people want and statues don't really matter that much, then it must also be okay to topple other statues because they're only statues. I think the author stopped short of saying that, and shouldn't have. We need to get over statues.
(Of course, I do deplore people damaging works of art, and I'm sure there are cases where a statue of a Great Man is also art rather than just mass-produced copies or something. What do we do then? The author didn't engage with this either.)
There were some corners of history and geography that I don't know much about covered here, which I did appreciate. Likewise the fact that the author was careful to give the historical context of each, since not all of them were immediately obvious.
Overall, enjoyable, but in writing this review I think I've convinced myself to knock it down from the four stars I was going to give originally to three.
It quickly becomes clear that von Tunzelmann is pro-destruction, and each example chosen is of someone who caused suffering, owned slaves, facilitated the sale of humans, etc -- I'd have been interested to know if there were other examples, statues pulled down by Republicans/Conservatives/etc, and what the author thinks of that. Not that I disagree, and not that I think statues are particularly sacred or important, but because this was a decidedly partisan book and I'd actually have appreciated seeing the other side as well.
I think people put undue importance on statues, and if we really believe that it's fine to topple Colston into the harbour because that isn't erasing history and it's what the people want and statues don't really matter that much, then it must also be okay to topple other statues because they're only statues. I think the author stopped short of saying that, and shouldn't have. We need to get over statues.
(Of course, I do deplore people damaging works of art, and I'm sure there are cases where a statue of a Great Man is also art rather than just mass-produced copies or something. What do we do then? The author didn't engage with this either.)
There were some corners of history and geography that I don't know much about covered here, which I did appreciate. Likewise the fact that the author was careful to give the historical context of each, since not all of them were immediately obvious.
Overall, enjoyable, but in writing this review I think I've convinced myself to knock it down from the four stars I was going to give originally to three.