Ezra over at Pandagon directed me to Bradford Plumer’s blog, where I read an interesting post on the ten commandments which appears to have been initially set off by an article in Slate. Mr. Plumer points out that whatever the Ten Commandments are supposed to symbolize (in terms of the history of tradition of Law and so on), the actual Ten Commandments are not a substantial influence on our actual legal system.
Which is a good thing to point out, but then I think both Mr. Plumer and Mr. Smolla (at Slate) miss the important part, which is that the displays currently in contention are works of art. Well, Mr. Smolla attempts to talk about that, but doesn’t do it very effectively. And, you know, I can’t blame him; the vocabulary for talking about public art is just not at the tip of the tongue. And it isn’t just talking about art and the law, it’s talking about art and religion. Visual representations of theological ideas are tremendously important in our culture, but we don’t, in general, talk about them much.
I would submit that we are having a difficult time, culturally, in all of our various overlapping cultures in the US, dealing with visual representations of religious ideas. If you want an entertaining, violent, and profane exploration of that, watch Dogma, which is, I think, best described as Jack Chick’s worst fucking nightmare come shockingly true. AhahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahooooooooooooohahahahaha. But seriously, I think Dogma is a good look at the difficulties of addressing religious imagery to a post-Urinetown world. Well, you know.
Anyway, the Ten Commandments “monuments” are a way of looking at religion and the law, and quite aside from the whole church-state issue, I don’t think it’s a good way. I think they emphasize the rigidity of the Mosaic law, and the reductive way in which it is often interpreted. I think the monuments are supposed to lend historical authority to a particular interpretation, and aside from my quibbles with that interpretation, I would prefer a more pluralistic recognition of a variety of interpretations, “right” and “wrong”, throughout their history.
There’s a story Elie Wiesel tells of meeting a childhood friend in Brooklyn. The friend is dressed and groomed like their fathers and their fathers’ fathers: the coat and hat, the payess, the beard, the fringes. Mr. Wiesel (who still, by the way, calls himself a Hasid) is beardless, in a modern suit. He asks his friend, has nothing changed, then? His friend replies “How can the Torah change?” A granite monument of the Ten Commandments seems to me to come down on the side of Mr. Wiesel’s friend; I side with Mr. Wiesel. There is more to it, of course, which is much the point. Any particular religious image carries with it a load of textual, historical, theological and political interpretations. They aren’t just connotational purses, they’re sacks of holding.
Which is another reason the state should stay far, far away from them.
,
-Vardibidian.
watch Dogma, which is, I think, best described as Jack Chick’s worst fucking nightmare come shockingly true
*guffaw!*
I’m often intrigued by images of the Christ which do not display him as white guy with vaguely middle-eastern beard. I’ve seen some interesting feminine and african Christs; unfortunately, those were in newspapers where I couldn’t bookmark the images for later sharing… Reardless, they’re startling, they bend my head slightly, and yet, one wonders: what else do we lazily, habitually, assume? (Although, being mostly areligious, I dont’ find them at all sacrireligious.)