Memorial day reminded me of this. It happened in the 1980s, so my younger or foreign readers may not know the story. War memorials are usually grand buildings or big statues of triumphant soldiers. But Vietnam was a different war - different because it was very unpopular, and because the US lost. There were bitter debates about what the wars memorial should be. Eventually it was decided to hold a competition. Any company would be free to submit a design, and a panel of expert architects and others would decide the winner. It was to be a completely blind competition - the judges would not know anything about the submitters. 1,421 proposals were submitted. The winning design was created not by any famous architectural firm, but by a 21 year old Yale undergraduate. The design was a simple wedge shape of two jet black walls, partly below ground level, with the names of all the soldiers that died printed on it, in chronological order. The walls start out short as there were few deaths in the beginning of the war. Then the walls get taller, and the path next to the wall descends deeper in the ground, as the number of names grows. In the middle, when there were thousands of deaths per year, you figuratively and literally turn a corner, and gradually climb out of the depths of war as you walk along the memorials walls. At first many people were outraged both by the design and by the designer. The undergraduate who submitted the winning proposal was a Chinese-American woman named Maya Lin. China was a supporter of North Vietnam, and many said at the time that it was disrespectful to the soldiers that someone associated (even loosely) with the other side should design the memorial. Its likely that many also objected to a woman creating a memorial to fighting men, even more so a woman that looked like the enemy. However, an American ideal is that people are judged by their character and work, not their ethnicity. Objections faded after the wall was built, as veterans and visitors came to realize its enormous emotional power. The symbolism of the wall itself, and of who designed it, and of how it came about, are all nearly perfect. Trivia: the walls of the memorial are foreign born. Theyre made of black granite imported from Bangalore, India.
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 01:37:14 +0000
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