Monuments

This was a great discussion! The topic was suggested by Che, who was listening to an audiobook recently and got to thinking about what governments, cultures, and countries choose to memorialize. Sometimes it's people, sometimes it's events...

You do see monuments in speculative fiction, but perhaps not enough. They are incredibly useful worldbuilding tools! They serve as cultural memory, or as propaganda, or even just as landmarks. You can find anything from plaques to statues to towers.

Paul said his research suggests that as early as 12,000 years ago, people started building decorative or ceremonial structures of very large size. We know about the pyramids of Egypt, but in fact, similar constructions began as early as the neolithic. One of the striking things about this is that there must have been some kind of agreement to pool the labor required to pull together the resources required for such a construction project. Some things must have taken generations to build (like the cathedrals of Europe, which we mentioned again later in the discussion).

What motivates us to create monuments? Is it that we strive for a sense of immortality? Is it that our communities value focus points? Perhaps it's that people value the feeling of coming together for a large-scale project, or that we appreciate something that symbolizes our community.

It may be in part that people need things to do, especially if their labor is tied to their income and ability to eat. In Egypt, because of the seasonal flooding of the Nile, there were times when people couldn't farm. Why not build amazing things instead of sitting around?

We spoke about the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. This monument was built for Napoleon, and completed in 1836. Not only was it intended to honor Napoleon for his victories, it was also meant to evoke the monuments of Rome. Monuments can mimic other monuments! People have built obelisks in mimicry of other obelisks that they stole from other cultures. And then there was the pyramid of Sestus - built in Rome by a man who wanted his death to be memorialized like the deaths of the Pharaohs.

Monuments of this nature are expensive to build. Not only is there the expense of the materials required - there's also the cost of the labor involved, and the opportunity cost of having so many people diverted from labor that might otherwise contribute to a food supply or local economy.

How do people decide to make this kind of investment? It's easy to think of times when a person (or people) in power commanded the investment from people who would either benefit from the employment, or couldn't choose to say no (or both). Was this always the case?

When you see the Argonath in the Lord of the Rings, what do they make us think? We are invited to think about who built them, and when, and why. We're also invited to consider how that kind of power and expense can be expended... and then the original purpose of the effort can be completely lost. (In notes we exchanged after the hangout, Cliff mentioned the poem "Ozymandias," which also examines what happens when the underlying motivation for a monument has disappeared. If you haven't read this poem, click through the link here, because it's awesome.)

What motivates monument-building? What would motivate it in your world?

Is it useful to focus an economy on something decorative? What is the value of such a symbol? Such a project?

Morgan pointed out that in the area of video games, people's desire to create better art has driven the technological advancement of the computers on which the games are run. Monument-building can drive the creation of new technologies of other kinds as well - maybe a new style of arch, or new techniques for creating a building. Someone has to have come up with the idea of flying buttresses!

Paul talked about the development of the Egyptian pyramids. Originally, the Egyptian peoples of the era built tombs called mastabas, which were just thick flat layers of stone over the burial site. Then they started stacking mastabas of decreasing size on top of each other, resulting in step-pyramids. Then they tried to integrate the mastabas with each other. At first this didn't go perfectly, resulting in structures the Bent Pyramid. Finally they ended up with the pyramids as we see them at Giza.

When your society is building something that takes generations, there will be developments in technology over time. You can see this in the architecture of Rouen cathedral in France, where the two towers were built in two different styles because they were built four hundred years apart (when I checked this, it became clear that the later tower and just the topmost story of the older tower were built in flamboyant Gothic style, while the lower parts of the older tower are in a simpler style. Photo is here, and you can get information about the Saint Romain Tower as well as the Butter Tower.)

When people build monuments that deliberately imitate or echo past monuments, they may be trying to evoke a sense of the majesty and grandeur that people associate with the past glories of powerful societies.

As you're worldbuilding, think about what you are evoking about our own history, because resemblances between your monument and ones in our real world will influence how readers react to that monument. Think also about whether your world is evoking its own past.

I spoke about a sort of monument from my Varin world, the main building of the Pelismar University, which is the basis for the insignia of the Kartunnen caste. This building was designed to imitate the canonical "university," which in the world of Varin means the first university ever established, before Varin even existed as a nation. The Kartunnen are not aware of this resemblance because the story of the first university has been lost - they can only track it back as far as the construction of the Pelismar University itself.

Morgan mentioned that MIT has an iconic building at 77 Mass. Ave. that has become associated with the university's identity.

This brought us to the idea that certain places become symbolized by their monuments. It's incredibly unusual to see Paris used as a setting without any use of the Eiffel Tower as a visual cue to the location. In the larger context of narratives about places, it is extremely common for one or two specific monuments to become emblematic of that place. It would even be hard for people to recognize the location if those iconic images did not appear.

We wondered what the symbol of New York was. Is it the Empire State Building? (It was at one time.) It certainly was the Twin Towers before they fell. Is it the skyline itself, even though the skyline changes? Is it the bridges? How about the Statue of Liberty?

What symbolizes the cities in your world?

People build monuments to memorialize battles. They build statues of people like founders, or heroes (even though most cities don't have a single founder!).

Geneva has a clock of flowers that symbolizes the city (as well as the Jet d'Eau). Frankfurt, Kentucky also has a flower clock.

Some people take the Glorious Leader approach and fill their towns with images of the person they want standing over the people. When you put up the statue of a leader, you can end up having the issue of people pulling the statue down when the leader falls. Such an image becomes symbolic of the power associated with it and can become the target of revolution and political change (and vandalism!).

Back in Rome, the statues of Emperors were re-purposed - the faces would be re-sculpted to match the face of the current Emperor. Buildings can also be re-purposed, and they may not lose all the features of their previous purpose. This is a really great way to give a sense of history in a created world.

You can google ugly or weird monuments.

There are monuments to pets in different countries, such as the Hachiko statue in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, or the relaxed cat statue on a bench in Turkey.

Any monument can be considered ugly. The Eiffel tower was very controversial at its inception, as was the glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre, though they have become iconic since. The statue of quetzalcoatl in San Jose is not universally loved either (I love it, though!).

Then there are the instances where monuments destroy what preceded them, as in the case of the Seven Grandfathers formation, which was destroyed to create the sculptures of Mount Rushmore. Sometimes people who have done immense harm are memorialized in statues. The Glorious Leader statues can be an example of this, but so can things like the statue of J. Marion Sims, which was quite recently removed from a New York Park. He was memorialized for his contributions to gynecological science, but in fact his advances were made as a result of experimentation on enslaved women. There was a wave of monuments to the Confederacy built well after the civil war whose purpose was to remind a segment of the population that the power in the region belonged to people who wished them harm.

If you have two populations coming together to live together, how does this affect their monuments? Is it an invasion or colonization, where old monuments might be removed? Would new monuments be put up to interact with or accompany the old? How do monuments form a part of the symbolic narrative surrounding the convergence of these civilizations?

Are your monuments intended to be destroyed and rebuilt in a cyclical fashion?

Which monuments get neglected? When did people stop caring about them or knowing the stories behind them? How much forethought is given to the future care of a monument while it is being built? The eternal flame at the tomb of the unknown soldier is an example of very explicit maintenance of observance at a monument.

Don't forget that fountains can be monuments! Water features can be monuments and sometimes simultaneously be used as drinking water.

Thank you to everyone who attended the discussion. We will meet again next week on April 9th at 4pm Pacific, topic TBA.

#SFWApro