BAN #453: Statue of Limitations

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Blog Jam

What I’ve recently written on the blog, ICYMI

Monday 8 August, 2022:  Why doesn’t Jupiter have even more spectacular rings than Saturn?

Tuesday 9 August, 2022: Multiple stars like being born in chaos

Wednesday 10 August, 2022: Radioactivity powers volcanoes of salty ice on Ceres

Thursday 11 August, 2022: Some orphan gamma-ray bursts actually live in tiny faint galaxies

Friday 12 August, 2022: Astronomers find dark matter from 12 billion years ago

Something fun

Remember fun?

It’s not often you get a chance to come face to face with a viral internet meme, but when it does happen you take it.

Last week my family and I flew to New York State for the wedding of an old friend. The ceremony itself was held in Celeron, a small village on Lake Chautauqua a couple of hours south of Buffalo. As we drove in the rental car down from the airport, my wife was on her phone looking at things to do in the area during the downtime we’d have before the wedding.

She was listing things around the lake, and then said something that perked my ears up: “Jamestown [a city right next to Celeron] is the birthplace of Lucille Ball.”

Oh hey, my brain immediately thought. I bet that’s where the Lucy statue is.

Tentatively, I asked her, “Say, could you see if there’s a statue of Lucy there?” A moment later she replied, “Yeah, it’s in Celeron.”

I got very excited for a moment, then suddenly deflated. I remembered the statue had been taken down. Well, nuts. But read on…

If you’re not familiar with all this, in 2009 a statue commemorating Lucy was installed in Celeron, where she grew up. The statue is… not great, to say the least.

In 2015 it went viral because of its bizarre depiction of the beloved comedy icon. This led to a foofooraw in the town, with locals demanding the statue be taken down and replaced. The artist, Dave Poulin, was willing to replace the head, which looked nothing like Lucy, but initially wanted $8,000 - $10,000 to do the work. The Mayor refused, and instead another artist was commissioned to create a new statue.

I had heard the old statue was taken down, and that was that.

Except it wasn’t. We were laughing about this at breakfast the morning of the wedding, and then my wife said something startling. Two things. The first was, “Hey, the old statue wasn’t taken down. It was just moved when the new one went up.” My brain froze when I heard that. WHAT?!

And then before I could properly react, she continued, “Oh, and it’s right next to the hotel, just around the corner. We can walk there in two minutes.”

WHAT WHAT?! Yeah. We paid our bill and hurriedly headed out. Sure enough, right around the corner from where we were staying was The Statue. I couldn’t believe it. My heart soared. My soul sang. I was in heaven.

OMG.

Now I want to be clear. I am not generally one to poopoo art of any kind; it’s an expression from the artist, something creative they put into the world to reflect some feeling or idea they have. This goes from the scrawls of a three-year-old to the most accomplished artisans on the planet.

But this statue is just next-level weird. It doesn’t look anything like Lucy. She’s grimacing like she’s in pain. It’s supposed to be from the famous “Vitameatavegamin” scene, and to be fair it’s supposed to taste awful and she makes faces all through it (it’s deservedly a comedy classic).

But still, as far as the statue goes, no. I think it would be fair to say that if I were in a town and someone presented that to commemorate our most famous and loved citizen, I’d be a tad upset as well. The artist may be talented and well intentioned, but the interpretation is up to the beholder, after all.

I looked over the artist’s other works, and some of it is fine, and some in my opinion are less so. But the Lucy statue is in a class of its own.

I’ll note that while I wouldn’t call my own writing art, it’s certainly a creative endeavor, and comes from a place of wanting to tell stories, wanting to share the beauty and science of the cosmos, or just telling a personal story about something I find fun or funny or maybe important. I’ve made my share of mistakes, things I’ve written that are bad or ill-intentioned or just plain old wrong. I try to own up to those, too, but in the end I know what it’s like to make something that came out not at all as I intended. Sometimes — usually later, sometimes much later — you can even embrace it as a learning opportunity, and smile ruefully about it.

For what it’s worth Poulin eventually owned up to the statue’s nature and apologized, saying it was not his best work. I’ll note he died a couple of years ago, and the obituary does seem to show that he was a decent fellow. This passage was particularly nice:

That didn’t happen, though; instead the new one was installed, the old one moved, and it’s still there for everyone to see.

It’s certainly too bad this is what he’ll likely be remembered for, but we can’t pick our legacy. But in fact I wonder. Yes, the internet mocked the statue when it went viral years ago, and I myself did my share of poking fun at it.

But sometimes, after a time, something bad can transcend its own mockery. Art is supposed to engender a feeling, a reaction. Sometimes it’s a positive reaction and sometimes negative. I’ve been mulling it over and I think, in this case, “Scary Lucy” somehow broke free of all this and became something else. My own reaction doesn’t feel to me like the sort of schadenfreude or dogpiling or bullying you see so often on the ‘net; I was so happy to be able to see it for myself. Joyous.

It was a shared virtual experience that I was able to see in real life, something that became manifest for me. The statue is bad, but for me it broke free of its own badness and became something wonderful.

I’ll note the new statue is terrific, and captures the popular perception of Lucy’s personality and terrifically quirky nature. I’m glad it was made, and I’m glad the old one was kept. When something wonderful can be made from something not wonderful then that’s something, over time, we should all support.

Et alia

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