John Oliver: "The marbles should absolutely return to Greece"

foreign moving on our main story tonight  concerns Antiquities basically relics from   bygone times that can tell us stories about  people from the past like your nana but less   overtly racist specifically our story concerns  what happens when those relics go missing and   I'll start by giving you just one example if  you go to Greece you might go to the Acropolis   Museum and while you're marveling at sculptures  they're over two Millennia old you might notice   some odd details like this sculpture which  appears to have a white foot or this one   where someone's whole upper half seems to be  suddenly and overwhelmingly white it's what's   known in the art world as season two of The  Wire well there is an explanation for where   those missing pieces are and as a British person  I'm a little bit implicated so the darker stone   is the original whereas this white Plaster that  represents what's in the British museum exactly   and here it is in the British museum the missing  marble head and chest floating in a display space   yeah you took it honestly if you are ever looking  for a missing artifact nine times out of ten it's   in the British museum it's basically the world's  largest lost and found with both lost and found   in the heaviest possible quotation box there  specifically those marbles known in England   as the Elgin marbles were taken by Lord Elgin  a 19th century British Lord who hacked them off   the Parthenon it's something that the Greeks are  understandably Furious about because they weren't   lost they were taken which is clearly worse it's  like being unable to find the last puzzle piece   and learning that you didn't actually misplace it  a British Earl snuck into your house stole it and   then sold it to a museum over a thousand miles  away Greece has been demanding the return of the   Elgin marbles for decades now but the response  from some of the British Museum's Defenders has   been even by British standards unbelievably  patronizing would heart even think about   returning the elegant marbles to Athens until the  Greeks start caring for what they already have   sure they'd take great care of the path  and sculptures if they were returned   but if you knew a woman was abusing her child he  wouldn't let her adopt another and that's what   the Greeks were asking for what that is not a  great comparison especially because it admits   the fact that the woman's child in this example  was basically kidnapped so it's less a woman   asking you to adopt another child than it is her  demanding the return of her first one and look the   Parthenon marbles should absolutely be returned  to Greece even that woman you just saw now says   that she thinks they should go back but those  marbles are just the tip of the iceberg here the   fact is Antiquities largely from the global South  which includes Latin America Africa Asia and the   Mideast have been taken and enshrined in European  and American museums on a much larger scale than   you may realize in 2018 a report commissioned  by the French President found that over 90   percent of all Africa's cultural heritage is held  outside Africa by Major museums but as the voices   arguing for Antiquities to be returned to getting  louder others are resisting any change in 2010   when asked whether the UK would ever return the  Kohinoor Diamond to India prime minister Mr David   Cameron refused saying if you say yes to one you  suddenly find the British museum would be empty

Channel: Ελευθέριος Μάριος Αντάκης

Views: 9,412

Keywords: John Oliver, parthenon marbles, return the marbles to Greece

Id: iXK1TsJ7qo0

Length: 3min 21sec (201 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022