There is a worrying development in The Funny Little Bungalow’s interior decor. It is so unnerving that I almost daren’t share it.
But I like to share. It’s cathartic. And so…
My son’s bedroom is looking quite good. His, like all of the other bedrooms, now has carpet. I gloss over this merely because of the aforementioned worrying development being a priority, but carpet is MAJOR. It’s huge! It is monumental. I am not taking it for granted in any way. But I mustn’t digress.
Boy Seymour has his carpet, and his rug and his new fluffy red throw. He has his books, and his toys are neatly stowed. Ish. His cabin bed has been reconfigured to fashion something more befitting a senior school child, and life without a ladder up to bed seems to make things much easier somehow.
Upon Boy’s walls (for we have finally managed to bully Big Seymour into drilling holes) are pictures. There’s the reproduction Banksy canvas; a quick glance and you might see a cute representation of Thomas The Tank Engine, but being Banksy-esque, Thomas is being subtly defiled.
There’s a framed cover of a book all about the Westland Lysander plane. There’s a Jaws movie poster and some men on a New York scaffold. All quite classic and/or appropriate items that have more or less been approved by the interior designer-in-charge, me.
However…
Unfortunately, there is one exhibit that has not met with my approval. Upon tidying his room one day, Boy chose to hang a piece of Art he had created at school. It’s a scraggy piece of A4 paper, Blu-tacked up and curling at the edges. It is a representation of the most awful man in History: Adolf Hitler.
Boy started with half of Hitler’s face, and in pencil, he filled in the other half. An exercise in mirroring, perhaps? Who knows. Boy can’t really explain it. But there, on the wall, looking out with black eyes and an apparent palsy, is the Fuehrer himself.
This makes me uncomfortable.
I want to point out that this is no homage to the man. We all hate him. Obviously. So why, you might ask, don’t I just rip the thing down?
I do not know. Maybe there is a part of me that enjoys the mental challenge I face whenever I look at the thing. Perhaps it’s because Boy’s artwork is actually quite impressive. Or is it simply because having a picture of Hitler on one’s bedroom wall is just so… bizarre that I don’t know how to move forward?
I will remove it. And soon. Hitler is not welcome. But it does beg the question – what is Art? Art doesn’t have to make a statement or support a cause. It can just “be”. Boy’s picture doesn’t come complete with a complimentary caption, eulogising all that Hitler was and stood for. Of course it doesn’t. Maybe an awareness of Hitler’s existence is all that it represents.
History won’t forget Hitler. Neither he nor his crimes can be erased, sadly. A picture on my son’s wall won’t bring him back to life. Phew! But there is something unsettling about those eyes – taken in life from a photograph and thence photocopied a zillion times, that even endless reproduction can’t obliterate. Wall adorning is an honour Hitler doesn’t deserve, and so his time is up.
But this episode has certainly got me thinking. Hitler was bad, but some people loved him. Where did it all go so wrong? How did one man manage to achieve so much tyranny? Was it something that was always going to happen? Or was it due to a chance event in Hitler’s life? Was it deterministic? (I am currently learning many new words from Number One, who is a budding psychology professor at age 17 and ten days). I am intrigued.
Maybe there are no answers. Sometimes, there just aren’t – even overthinking won’t find them. Perhaps all that is needed is for Hitler’s picture to become a dart board. There would surely be some satisfaction in that. But not on Big Seymour’s freshly painted walls. Even I draw the line there!
No. Hitler can just go in the bin, where he belongs.
Deterministic
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