Seeking part-time heroes

The historical philosophy of David Bowie

If David Bowie had been in charge of historical monuments and statuary this last decade, we wouldn’t be stuck with so many empty pedestals. And we might have more people willing to give heroism a try.

The great majority of statues and monuments are erected to people who did something noteworthy and positive for the community. The statues become problematic when, typically at a much later date, the less-positive things the subjects did are judged to outweigh the good stuff. Thomas Jefferson has a memorial in Washington not because he was a slaveholder but because he was the author of the Declaration of Independence. Woodrow Wilson had a school of public affairs at Princeton named for him not because he was a segregationist but because he charted a path toward the resolution of international disputes without war. Theodore Roosevelt graced the front of the Museum of Natural History in New York not because he was an imperialist and shared some of the racial views of his time but because he was an early champion of conservation.

Jefferson's memorial in Washington survives, although statues of him have been removed elsewhere and his name erased from high schools. Wilson's memory has been expunged from Princeton. Roosevelt was forced to ride off into the Dakota sunset.

These aren't minor losses. The Declaration of Independence was a big deal, not simply for the United States but for the many other countries that took its promise of equality as a guide to their own political development. The United Nations, progeny of the League of Nations of Wilson's design, hasn't ended war entirely, but it has provided a framework for mitigating that historic scourge. Conservation and the larger environmental movement have become powerful causes in world affairs, not least in addressing climate change. Causes and movements like these don't come out of nowhere; they are created by individuals. When we lose sight of the individuals most responsible, as we do when they disappear from public spaces, we lose a sense of possibility that we might do something similar.

The essence of the modern problem with statuary is that the critics insist that the figures on the pedestals be full-time heroes. They don’t get time off for bad behavior. And they have to be full-time heroes for all time, withstanding the scrutiny of generations far into the future.

It’s no surprise that not many statues are being erected these days. Who wants to go to the effort and expense, knowing that changing views will magnify what today seems a venial sin into cause for excommunication and banishment? Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, but he didn’t do so fast enough for some people, and he said he wouldn’t want to marry a black woman. He commuted the death sentences of nearly three hundred Dakota Indians convicted of rebellion in the 1862 Dakota War, but he allowed the execution of 38 convicted of aggravated murder. For these faults the San Francisco school board voted to take his name off a city school—although under pressure of voter outrage, the board let Lincoln remain. Had the board’s verdict been carried out, the losers would have been schoolkids in San Francisco, who would have lost an opportunity to reflect on how slavery ended and why the country held together in the 1860s.

If it be argued that the missing statues are mostly white men, of whom we have plenty still left in the history books, the answer is: Yes, so far. Martin Luther King was a great person but not a saint. Ditto for Cesar Chavez and Barbara Jordan, who with King are among the very few historical figures still standing on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, where I teach. If present trends continue, revisionist reckoning will come for them too. My students and the campus community at large will be intellectually poorer for their loss.

David Bowie was appealing forward rather than back when he wrote the song “Heroes.” But the philosophy of the song is apt for the present moment. “I, I will be king / And you, you will be queen,” Bowie says. “We can be heroes / Just for one day.”

I'm not sure how much David Bowie knows about Texas history. But he might have taken the model for his one-day hero from someone who shared his surname, if with a slightly different pronunciation. James Bowie was a certifiable scoundrel when he arrived at the Alamo in advance of the battle there. He’d been involved in land fraud and illegal slave trading. He was wanted by authorities in both the United States and Mexico. But for one brief moment at the end of this life, on the morning of March 6, 1836, he took part in the heroically doomed defense of the Alamo. Ever since, Texans have forgiven his past and focused on that one moment of exemplary behavior. 

It's not surprising that people have often been intimidated by heroes of the past. On their pedestals they are physically above us; a reasonable conclusion is that they are morally above us as well. This has two pernicious consequences. First, when we discover they actually had human flaws, many of us feel obliged to pull them off their pedestals. Second, an exaggerated idea of heroism and heroes relieves us of responsibility for trying to emulate them. We’re ordinary folks. We could never do what they did.

Adopting the David Bowie model of part-time heroism would go far toward fixing these problems. We wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the statued men and women weren't heroic in everything they did. We'd be able to appreciate and celebrate the good they accomplished without having to ignore or explain away their imperfections.

And we’d begin to ask more of ourselves. Heroism is less daunting as gig work than as a career.