Ahead of MLK Day, Boston unveiled a statue dedicated to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., and the internet had a field day.
Sculptures that actually look like the subjects they’re meant to depict are so passe. Instead of representing the civil rights leader, The Embrace depicts just his arms — and those of his wife, Coretta Scott King. The art piece is modeled after a photo of the couple embracing following King’s Nobel Peace Prize win.
NEW ‘RANDOM’ MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. SCULPTURE IN BOSTON DRAWS MIXED REVIEWS
Words really do fail. The sculpture is either a big nothing or, as some pointed out, something not appropriate for all audiences.
Please read my other tweets about the sculpture—but here is another angle and the photo of the two “The Embrace” is based on. It’s when MLK Jr. found out he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. pic.twitter.com/Q7Vyk7OPKK
— Amaka Ubaka (@AmakaUbakaTV) January 14, 2023
Guest hosting The Daily Show, comedian Leslie Jones took the chance to rip into the statue, making several unprintable jokes. She then pivoted to speak directly to white people.
“Even though I’m about to go straight hard on this statue, I got to talk to the white people for a second,” she said. “White people, you don’t need to be saying s*** about this statue. You understand? Black hands only! You need to sit your a** in the back of the bus for this one.”
Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) is our first guest host and she’s got some thoughts on that new MLK Jr. statue… pic.twitter.com/lGrObspgQr
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 18, 2023
Though she partially used this as a set-up for another colorful joke that shouldn’t be repeated here, she repeated a familiar trope now
seriously used
in art criticism: If the subject of discussion is outside your “lived experience,” you can’t talk about it.
You could tell that listeners were taking Jones seriously: Many audience members could be heard clapping during Jones’s speech to white people, and
“clapter” comedy
isn’t made to entertain; it’s made to make listeners feel woke.
On top of erupting endless debates about its ugliness, The Embrace also prompted some critics to use it for whatever political point they wanted to make, logic be damned. One Washington Post columnist took to Twitter to say that the sculpture “perfectly represents how White America loves to butcher MLK.” No matter that it was designed by a black artist.
It was designed by a black artist, Hank Willis Thomas, but okay https://t.co/IUsHCnE8qk
— Cathy Young ?? (@CathyYoung63) January 17, 2023
Criticizing The Embrace doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t, turn into a superficial racial commentary or a part of the culture war. Sometimes art is just bad. And it’s bad no matter what percentage of its critics are white, black, or otherwise.
Coretta Scott King’s cousin
called
the work “a masturbatory ‘homage’ to my family.” English professor and critic Micah Mattix
wrote
that the real problem with the sculpture is that it turns MLK into a fundraising tool: “The statue looks like a heart from one angle, which is also the logo for Embrace Boston [which commissioned the piece], and the non-profit subsidiary clearly hopes to capitalize on it.”
MLK’s legacy deserves better than this sculpture. And it deserves better than our current discourse in which the color of your skin determines the value of your criticism.
