Museums: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
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Channel: LastWeekTonight
Views: 5,182,272
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Length: 34min 9sec (2049 seconds)
Published: Sun Oct 02 2022
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Classic Joke:
"Do you know why the pyramids are in Egypt?"
"Because the British couldn't figure out how to get them onto a boat."
Stuff the British Stole is a great podcast that gives a much more in-depth and nuanced view of this issue.
A common issue is the artifacts often only became important because of the involvement of the British, and would have been lost/forgotten/destroyed if not for the British taking and preserving them. Throw in the fact that the demands to return them are often political stunts by corrupt or oppressive governments (the Benin Bronzes, covered in the Blood Art episode, has some large issues here) and it becomes really thorny. In many of these cases its even divisive among the original culture whether they should be returned or not.
The most famous example is the Rosetta Stone - most of its importance comes from the fact that it was discovered and deciphered by a French scholar. As an artifact its not unique - there are at least a dozen comparable stones that were discovered later, many still in Egypt - but the symbolism of being the stone that allowed European scholars to crack hieroglyphics gives it a very complicated history.
James Acaster has a good bit on this topic
Rutherford falls had a fun take on this for the second season.
Just one of the best shows on TV. Always bringing up important interesting topics while making you laugh. Enjoy it alot.
Yes, repossession of some cultural artifacts can be and has been awful. And there's more that could and should be done.
But it's a bit revealing when Oliver and LWT bring the same white hot rage over say a pottery fragment being exhibited as they do for cases of ongoing direct human suffering.
It kind of diminishes the "proper" issues.
It's like someone having the same outrage over patting someone's hair without permission as they do to an instance of years of gang rape in captivity. Yes, both issues can be wrong, but never moderating the outrage level between them degrades the overall credibility of the party expressing the outrage.
I think this is a lot more complicated than what Oliver is stating.
On the one hand, yeah, most of this stuff was looted against the wishes of the native country. That's not great.
(I hesitate to call it properly evil because a lot of items were given by the occupying government of the native country...and then things get very complicated, historically, as to how legitimate that government was.)
On the other hand...having pieces being displayed to a different culture is, invariably, a good thing. There's also a rather practical moral argument that if a museum has one unique thing but the native poulation has thousands, it's a social good to have a different culture appreciate the one thing.
Yeah, we should probably go through the motions of "We're giving this back, but can we have it on loan indefinitely so other people can see it?" which is probably what will end up happening. The number of actual "sacred" or truly unique things we see in museums isn't as big as people think.
Well, the last half of the segment is probably the biggest argument. If they peddle with their artefacts like this, what would happen if you'd return them? I 100% agree to return the artefacts back to Native Americans, because they've proven to value their culture, but I wouldn't trust the countries the other peddlers are from. One slap on a wrist doesn't do anything.
Sure, it's the Museum fault there's a demand for something like this, and not properly checking provenance, but it's also the obligation of the country of origin to make sure nothing like this happens. I'm talking strictly about "purchased" objects, not looted. Private collectors are another issue. One could say they are holding their heritage hostage, but heritage that is not taken care off (both physically and metaphorically) is lost. We don't have the right to decide which culture deserves to keep their heritage, but if culture want's to be forgotten (accidentally or deliberately) by their action, does the right of human culture itself overrides the wish of few?
Btw, you rotten fish eating, raiding, papist bastards, return the big ass book! Sure, we started the war by communal yeeting, but that's what you get by destroying someone's else shit.
I knew Indiana Jones was the bad guy