Why is new Martin Luther King Jr monument in Boston labelled obscene

A new Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Boston is being mocked on social media and has drawn mixed emotions from the civil rights leader’s family. The statue entitled The Embrace which was unveiled on Friday amid annual tributes and commemorations of the life and legacy ahead of MLK Day – the 38th since its federal recognition in 1986. But what do we know about the statue? And why is it proving so controversial? Let’s take a closer look: What do we know about the statue? The 20 foot tall and 40 foot wide monument cost $9.5 million. The statue, which depicts intertwining arms, was inspired by a photo of King and his wife Coretta Scott King embracing when they learned that he had won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. The civil rights leader first met his wife in Boston in the early 1950s, when he was a doctoral student in theology at Boston University and she was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The sculpture was designed by Brooklyn-based artist Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group and was selected out of 126 proposals. It has been installed on the historic Boston Common – not far from where King led a rally and march in 1965. Thomas on his website explained the sculpture thus:  “When we recognize that all storytelling is an abstraction, all representation is an abstraction, hopefully it allows us to be open to more dynamic and complex forms of representation that don’t stick us to narrative that oversimplifies a person or their legacy, and I think this work really tries to get to the heart of that.” The Boston city website notes that the monument was funded through a public-private partnership. Interestingly, the statue was unanimously approved by the Boston Landmarks Commission in May 2021 on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death. Why is it proving so controversial? Some like Seneca Scott, the cousin of Coretta, have described the statue as obscene. Speaking to The New York Post, Seneca further claimed that the mainstream media was calling it beautiful because they were told to. Seneca went even further in an op-ed for the journal Compact. “For my family, it’s rather insulting. The sculpture is an especially egregious example of the woke machine’s callousness and vanity.” “Ten million dollars were wasted to create a masturbatory metal homage to my legendary family members — one of the all-time greatest American families. … How could anyone fail to see that this … brings very few, if any, tangible benefits to struggling black families?” Seneca wrote. Twitter, predictably, went bonkers with the reaction ranging from calling it downright ugly to graphic and lewd.

The new MLK statue is ugly because it's grotesque. And it's grotesque in precisely the way that so much of modernity is grotesque: it forgets that men are supposed to have heads and chests. pic.twitter.com/8zRnCkfOsJ

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) January 15, 2023

That MLK statue looks obscene from certain angles, but when you see the whole thing you realize it’s supposed to depict the result of Martin Luther King Jr. and Corretta Scott King having gone through the teleporter in The Fly together.

— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) January 14, 2023

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But not everyone agrees. King and Coretta’s son Martin Luther King III, attending the dedication, called the statue beautiful. He told onlookers his parents “loved this city because of its proud heritage as a hotbed of the abolitionist movement and its unique intellectual and educational resources.” “And indeed, Boston became a place where they forged a partnership that would change America and make a powerful contribution to the Black freedom struggle,” he added. “It’s subjective, everyone has their opinions,” Martin Luther King III told CNN.

“But opinions are like butts. Everybody’s got one.”

Yolanda Renee King, who never met her grandparents, said she and everyone else are challenged to “carry forward” the couple’s “unfinished work.” “This is the spirt we must keep as we commemorate (the King holiday),” the 14-year-old said, as those in attendance cheered. “Let’s make it a great day of community service; a day of brotherhood, a day of sisterhood; a day of using your platform for good; a day of love and healing in the spirt of this wonderful monument.” City newspapers also seemed divided on the statue. While the Boston Globe’s Adrian Walker in a piece called the monument “stunning, impressive up close in a way photographs struggle to capture” due to its size, the rival paper Boston Herald’s Rasheed Walters called the statue “aesthetically unpleasant” and a “huge swing and miss in honouring the Dr & Mrs King.” With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.