When roadside memorials are discussed, it’s usually because someone is for them and someone else is against them. A recent case in the United States illustrates how debate about the topic usually goes:
Ehm said it’s all because one Mesa man complained about several memorials throughout the city being “unsightly,” and specifically named Jensen’s memorial.
“This man has obviously not buried a child or lost anyone close to him,” said Patrick Jensen, Jason Jensen’s father.
Below are photographs of two roadside memorials in Melbourne: one is in Brunswick and the other is in Carlton. It’s probably the case that such memorials evoke a whole range of (complex) responses from the general public and friends and family of the deceased. Of course, some people simply find them ugly, while others think they do nothing but good. These seemingly transitory monuments also raise issues to do with the way people choose to grieve outside of traditional forums such as churches. Are roadside memorials proof of the decline of faith, or just another form of worship?
Being fascinated by all things suburban gothic, I’m intrigued by the phenomenon of wreaths or spontaneous memorials at the site of a death. They are an important part of the grieving process for many people and in a broader sense (can) remind us of our own mortality.
Perhaps one of the most cryptic signs in Qld is the yellow and black standard issue Main Roads diamond sign which merely reads Sharron Phillips, halfway between Brisbane and Ipswich.
There is nothing to indicate it is the name of a woman who went missing at that site two decades ago and one could be forgiven for thinking it is the name of an upcoming site or venue.
Anyone know the history of the sign?
There is another side to the story. I know someone who was the innocent vicitm in a horrendous road accident. She was hospitalised for many months and has ongoing pain and dysfigurement as a result of the accident. These are secondary to the PTSD she has had for many years. Each anniversary, wreaths and temporary plaques are placed by the family who lost the other driver, who casued the accident. For the one who survived, as she lives in a small town and can’t avoid the crash site, it brings up the grief and anger she feels for the driver who if they had survived would likely have been imprisoned for her actions.
Yet the family does have a right to express their grief, though they probably have no idea how it impacts on another.
Well if there is religion in it, it seems more like a pagan remnant rather than a christian thing. Little altars to the dead replete with gifts and flowers and photos. Its symbology references the prechristian for me – gifts to the dead for their afterlife existence.
But its mostly young people that die at these sites isnt it? So it also reads to me as another space where the risktaking behaviours of youth can be transformed into a narrative of the sacrficial. Where the young are snatched by impersonal and dangerous social forces like fast driving, drugs, drink – all that stuff. So, these roadside alters offer both a warning to other youth and also a continued existence for the departed – even if its only in the narrative of caution, even if its only experienced in the momentary wave of sadness at the site of a little white cross.
Impersonal & dangerous social forces?
Driving beyond one’s capabilities & taking drugs are very much a personal choice.
Often the people who die in these accidents aren’t the ones who were speeding or taking drugs, SATP.
Thinking about it some more – they can function like war memorials, which can evoke a meloncholia about loss and sacrifice – but which also raise violent/tragic death into the spiritual realms – those spaces do not seem to me to contain critiques of war or, in this case, personal responsibility narratives Steve. Darlene you were right – it probably is a religious experience the same way war memorials are religious experiences. They replace the sacrificed God with the human sacrificial (still paganish).
Amongst other meanings, including the overly religious symbolism, they are concrete markers of the destructive potential of the system of automobility.
They are much more forceful than the forgettable ‘black spot’ signs. The ‘black spot’ signs are a marker of the neutured statistical power of the governmental road safety industry. They mark the geography of automobility with statistical aggregates of death.
The roadside memorials do not express a ‘statistical’ death, which is the comfortable reality of death that most people live with, but death as a personal trauma of loss. Drivers and other road users are reminded that 1) they are not entirely safe in their metal cocoons, 2) people who use the road are people and not other metal cocoons, 3) and these people have families with the capacity for love and loss.
The personal nature of the memorials is double. They actually relate to an actual death and an actual family. Secondly, the disavowal of the trauma of everyday car use is dissolved in the little reminder that death is lived for the most part as a statistical reality, it is eventually always personal.
SATP, the capabilities that matter in the system of automobility are not one’s own, but the relations between all those human and non-human actors who go into the collective enterprise of producing traffic as part of the socio-technical system for the distribution of the road as a resource. As the RTA motorbike ads suggest (or plead): The road is there to share.
I find the idea that anyone would complain about such memorials on the grounds of ugliness quite laughable, given how ugly much of the Australian built environment is.
The fundamental principle of a secular society is that religious displays or behaviours be kept in the private domain. When they intrude into the public domain, they are liable to cause offence to those of other faiths or of no faith at all.
While they may be deemed “pagan”, they are most often associated with Catholic practice. There was a case earlier this year where a young man was killed in a road accident, and the family, Maronite I believe, built a shrine in their own home. This is acceptable in a secular society. However, the family went out of their way to advertise the shrine in the local paper, to get other Maronites to join them in their religious practice.
Hmm, now you’re getting right into my area of interest.
Interesting. I have already pencilled in a couple of hideous war memorials for Worst of Perth blog, but probably wouldn’t consider one of these more personal items. Was that Stalin, one death a tragedy, a million a statistic?
I would consider that this grief would be more appropriately expressed privately than on the roadside, but it’s not possible to say that to someone is it?
I suspect they are informed by the Diana/look I’m grieving school. Tabloid journalism has a bit to answer for. Its requirements have shaped the way people demonstrate the truth and extent of their feeling. On roads in South Australia I have observed black roadside markers which are not so much memorials as devices to heighten driver awareness of dangerous roads. In the country the cellophane, ribbons and dead flowers seem sad rather than ugly. In a way they remind me of very small rural cemeteries. In Lygon Street or somesuch they have an infectious hysteria that sits awkwardly with the anonymous urban lifestyle.
The Sharon Phillips sign was put up by some officials, I remember reading a statement in the paper about its placement, but can’t remember by whom. I’ve always suspected that the police have some idea who may have abducted her and the sign was a psychological challenge to that person. Always feel uncomfortable that the perpetrator (if indeed there was foul play involved) could still be travelling up and down the Ipswich Motorway every day. It was always a good reason to make me check that I had the mobile when making the trip regularly from Tombtown.
So does that mean that those of faith get to complain when our public expressions of atheism offends them? A secular society means that people don’t have to adhere to a particular faith, and that the state should not involve itself in organised religions. It has nothing to do with “offense”.
Mostly, I find it troubling that so many people want to commemorate a person’s death, rather than their life. I was in a car accident last year with my partner, and although their were no serious injuries or deaths, I hate going near it. I can’t see that I would want to go back there had my partner been killed. It doesn’t seem terribly healthy to focus on the violent way in which a loved one died.
That such sites disrupt the everyday use of public space is undeniable and that is certainly their function, so it is unsurprising that some would take offense or be disturbed by them. This is not strictly religious in a formal sense even if the symbols etc are often religious ones. It is about registering a site of profound disruption of the categories of everyday life, and inscribing that socially. While I think that they speak to the social world, they do not speak for it – they don’t function as symbols of what ‘we’ are, but of what someone has lost and how they respond to it, and that is why I don’t think it is an adequate response to see them prevented on the grounds of secularisation.
I don’t know if they signify anything especially in terms of religious trends. Perhaps they respond to the diversification and democratisation of sites of spiritual observance: mourning in the traditional context performs several functions, and the fact that communities no longer gravitate around singular religious sites means that one of those functions – of registering grief socially – is no longer felt to be adequately served by church services?
Socially these sites can function as glen suggests, to remind us about the consequences for some of the taken for granted system, where those consequences have effectively been neutralised and depersonalised by the ways in which they are taken into account as statistics and warnings. Personally, they function for me as a memento mori.
The most impressive one is the Diana site in Paris, near the tunnel where the crash occurred. I came across it by accident one morning, not realising what it was. Hundreds of bits of paper, flowers, little tributes wrapped in plastics, drawings, ribbons etc. Makes you wonder if people put that much energy into grieving for their own relatives. Obviously, some do judging by the increasingly elaborate roadside tributes here in Oz. I do remember reading somewhere that one of the roads and traffic authorities was blaming them for increasing accidents, as people rubbernecked when they saw one.
Last Anzac Day the RSL wanted to ban people carrying photographs (iconography) during the marches in memory of their dead relatives and preferred they wear the medals. Their idea was that this ‘is not our culture and comes from overseas’ which was a nice way of saying it was a wog thing to do, not an Australian thing. It ended up that the (very anglo) people got their way and carried their photographs.
Your comments seem to allign with that RSL philosophy Catlick. With the proviso that I could have it totally wrong, perhaps your acceptance of the romantic faded cellophane of country towns and your aversion to the – what did you say? infectious hysteria (is it catchy is it?)has more to with the comfort of your own cultural preferences for certain patterns of mourning.
BTW, I have never seen infecting hysterias unleashed at shrines on Lygon St myself…
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Thank you all for such interesting responses.
Sublime, thanks for raising the Sharon Phillips sign. I just suspect it was an attempt to remind people (and especially to remind anyone who might have seen anything on the night she disappeared). What a terrible thing for the family that they have had no resolution.
Outspoken, I think you have raised one of the complexities of this issue. That one family’s way of grieving is hurting another family. There’s no easy answers for that.
Casey, I think you are right. The two memorials in the photo are both for young men. They were pedestrians who were hit by cars. The usual thing is that they are for young blokes who have been killed driving. One expert claims they celebrate dangerous behaviour, making the dead seem almost heroic even though they may have been engaging in stupid behaviour. So yes they don’t critique such behaviour at all.
“Often the people who die in these accidents aren’t the ones who were speeding or taking drugs, SATP.”
That’s true, tigtog. Indeed, in the newspaper yesterday there was a photo of three white crosses of the little boys who died at the hands of their dad.
“The personal nature of the memorials is double. They actually relate to an actual death and an actual family. Secondly, the disavowal of the trauma of everyday car use is dissolved in the little reminder that death is lived for the most part as a statistical reality, it is eventually always personal.”
It’s true, Glen. A dying flower probably says lots more than a sign ever could.
Suz, that’s a very perceptive comment. What is the woeful Federation Square about?
Silkworm, I don’t think the religious origins are established as such. They often arise due to young people (who may have never stepped in a church) putting them up.
Catlick, your comment about “infectious hysteria” is an interesting one, and it’d be good if you could elaborate so more on it. The urban/rural distinction is worth nutting out so more as well.
Lesley, the thought that someone would drive up and down that motorway knowing what happened to Ms Phillips is a horrible thought, but I suppose if they had any feelings about the issue they would have owned up years ago.
David, that’s another one of the issues that complicates the matter. Do these memorials cause accidents? The whole grieving for Diana thing is a whole different story. I think the term “conspicuous compassion” arose in response to the public displays of grief for her.
“I don’t know if they signify anything especially in terms of religious trends. Perhaps they respond to the diversification and democratisation of sites of spiritual observance: mourning in the traditional context performs several functions, and the fact that communities no longer gravitate around singular religious sites means that one of those functions – of registering grief socially – is no longer felt to be adequately served by church services?”
Well, if that’s the case, that’s a good thing. And to mention young people again, I don’t think a lot of them would get much out a Requiem Mass.
And of course many people don’t like to be reminded of their own mortality which would be part of the objection.
and re:
“What is the woeful Federation Square about?”
I didn’t know anyone else hated that world class design stinker apart from me. I’ve only heard how “technologically advanced” it is when I’ve objected. Nice to know it’s not just me.
Some flowers and a cross for a dead and rotting design would improve it the place.
One some roads in SA there are posts by the side of the road with red or black crosses carved into them indicating where there was a serious injury or death. And around dangerous areas you see clusters of them – probably more effective than your standard slow down or dangerous curve sign.
You seem to think that a person has to go to church to be religious. It also says something about your Christian bias.
What are you talking about?
Silkworm, I’m saying that “I have a right not to be offended” works both ways. If you get to stop people displaying their religion publicly because it offends you, then why shouldn’t Christians be able to prevent you trying to prove there’s no god if it offends them? Secularism has nothing to do with not offending people with different religious beliefs, and while there may be many reasons to oppose roadside memorials that isn’t one of them.
Darlene and Everyone:
If commorating the loss of a loved one in this way helps ease the grief then i’m all for it. It generally does no harm at all and probably a lot of good. My only worry is that a lot of accidents have happened at hazardous places …. and there is no sense in adding to the death-toll there by taking risks setting up a roadside memorial or stopping to look at one.
Another Outspoken Female:
The harmful effects such memorials inadvertently have on others is a hard issue. Any chance of clergy or a counsellor or some other detached person bringing both the victim and the bereaved family together so that each can come to terms with the tragedy?
Casey:
Take no notice of the RSL whingers. ANZAC Day belongs to all Australians and especially to the relatives and friends of the fallen. I myself prefer to wear medals but if others prefer to respect and commemorate those near and dear to them by carrying their photos, good luck to them; it’s not iconography, it’s remembering …. and it’s certainly not celebrating war!
I assume we are talking only about temporary memorials?
There’s a large difference between the public space of the roadside and a debating forum on the Internet.
I can’t think of any public space (in the real world) where atheists get to express their lack of faith. Atheists don’t build shrines to the dead.
Since religion is a private affair, placing a cross or shrine in a public space amounts to a theft of that public space for private ends.
I think temporary shrines are good outlets of community sorrow. But I don’t agree with leaving something there forever – that’s occupying public property for private use. If a lot of citizens don’t like it, for whatever reason legitimate or not, they shouldn’t have to put up with it.
This is quite away off topic but may interest some.
“Atheists don’t build shrines to the dead.”
I would have a calculated guess that Shinto shrines are just that. Shinto is erroneously called a religion because we dont’ know what other way to describe it.
Shinto is an elaborate creation myth and essentially celebrates the idea of being Japanese.
Most burials in Japan are conducted by Buddhist monks and Shinto is the apparatus used to rejoice about positive things in life- birth , marriage and the like.
Except for commemorating the dead – that’s done at shinto shrines.
So no more crosses or angels in cemeteries then?
The policy of VicRoads, the Victorian state road authority, is for the removal of roadside shrines as their research shows that the shrines increase accident rates as they distract drivers’ attention from the road.
They are private…
And where they aren’t, they are created with the intention of allowing loved ones to remember the dead in ways they want. Completely different to occupying ordinary public space. If you want an atheist simple on your grave, have one…
Cemeteries are public spaces in most states. All I’m saying is that “religion taking up public space” is not a very good reason to oppose the roadside memorials. Atheists can do those, too, and I’m sure they do.
That said, I think there’s plenty of other reasons to question their growing use, and they certainly make me feel very uncomfortable.
Ah sorry Anna. I should have read the whole thread
. I agree that religion is irrelevant.
Rubbish, silkworm. For the political atheists, Comrade Lenin had pride of place, pickled and painted, propped up for display at 15° to the horizontal in the Soviet pool room mausoleum for years. For the scientists, every Natural History museum on the planet, where children are taken to do botany and Year Seven Science exercises, announces itself with pillars and lobbies and high ceilings, with double-helix sculptures and all the usual Questacon kitsch. Atheists love their iconography too, they just don’t like to admit it.
I’m with Adam Gall, the whole point of the memorials is disruption of the experience of the road for drivers and passengers. It’s families and loved ones reminding themselves and other road users that the road isn’t just a transitory experience between home and work and wherever, the road’s also somewhere where lots of people go to die.
I’m not convinced of any of the counter-arguments to roadside memorials here. Personal grief outranks an abstract public title to telegraph pole space, I’d say, and if flowers distract you from driving, you shouldn’t be on the road.
Any person who worships or prays to Lenin at his shrine is not an atheist.
So people are using roadside memorials to worship relatives killed in car accidents?
Weird, dude.
Liam:
Yep.
Bored in HK:
Good point.
Silkworm:
You reckon? Well, what was that whole paddock of memorials to revoutionary heroes I saw in Shijiazhuang in north China? Scotch mist?
I’m jumping in very late in the thread here , but –there is a problem with proportion. In a city street thousands of people share the space of a roadside memorial, so how much should a personal grief intrude on other peoples’ lives? In a country area the proportion is different, with a smaller population. Then again I know of memorial which is large, right outside a rural property which I would find very intrusive if were outside mine – I think that is unfair, flinging private grief onto some unrelated party, and the same for city street space, what is the appropriate space to allow for respect of all parties?
The reasons behind the memorials can’t be cast into a single mindset, people do them for different reasons and religion has nothing to do with it. I find temporary ones understandable and acceptable, and I find permanent unobtrusive ones reasonable. I can’t understand the Diana one in Paris at all, or the Marc Bolan tree in south London (though that one at least amuses me)
There is a place for people to show their grief, and we should respect it, but there is a point at which that becomes too much “ME ME’. It isn’t grief any more it is people’s self importance, and at that point _my_ patience certainly snaps.
By all means note traffic deaths in some unobtrusive way. Don’t ever equate them with war memorials though, that is disgusting. War memorials are a mark of their times as well as a mark of respect. The ugliest one I know is in Gladesville, Sydney, but I wouldn’t change it for quids, it’s a mark of the times, and a serious cultural icon.
If you worship at a shrine, you are not an atheist. Wake up!
You’re the one who brought shrines into the conversation. I guess we all just assumed you were using the word to mean whatever roadside memorials are.
AdamC, the point is that it’s *supposed* to intrude on other road users’ use of the road. A lot.
I’m reminded of Benedict Anderson’s musing on nationalism that he couldn’t imagine a tomb to the Unknown Marxist, or cenotaphs to the Fallen Liberals, but that only nations could properly host secular sacredness. People are able to memorialise their dead friends and family beside the road only because it’s such a central part of other drivers’ lives.
They certainly make me squeeze the brake a bit when I see them.
silkworm: “The fundamental principle of a secular society is that religious displays or behaviours be kept in the private domain.”
No, the fundamental principle of a secular society (at least the ones I can recognize) is that religious belief not be dictated nor established by the government. That is quite different from the claim you have made.
As an atheist I don’t hold to the idea that atheists can simply move outside of those human experiences and practices otherwise understood by the term ‘sacred’, even if they would very much like to. At a very fundamental level our secular culture replicates religious elements and structures. For me the image of the hyper-vigilant atheist has as many disturbing political possibilities as that of the fundamentalist iconoclast.
At any rate, these shrines make no assertions about what the observer should or should not believe in terms of content, even if they do disrupt our experiences of everyday life and make certain ethical demands upon us. As to the question of permanence or the duration of the shrines: why not let them persist as long as they are maintained? Let’s not be too hasty to calculate with respect to the incalculable. Advertising already takes up so much of the everyday visual field, and that is not being held to account.
Oh yes, Perth, Fed Square leaves me speechless, which is a difficult thing to do.
“If commorating the loss of a loved one in this way helps ease the grief then i’m all for it. It generally does no harm at all and probably a lot of good. My only worry is that a lot of accidents have happened at hazardous places …. and there is no sense in adding to the death-toll there by taking risks setting up a roadside memorial or stopping to look at one.”
The accident issue seems to be one that’s coming up quite a bit. It would be a sad thing indeed if something meant to remember someone killed in an accident caused one.
“The policy of VicRoads, the Victorian state road authority, is for the removal of roadside shrines as their research shows that the shrines increase accident rates as they distract drivers’ attention from the road.”
Thanks for telling us about that, Greg. Of course, the two I mention are in Vic, but perhaps VicRoads have rules about the size of the memorials etc
“So people are using roadside memorials to worship relatives killed in car accidents?
Weird, dude.”
Hi Anna, that comment was directed at someone else, but I think there is an issue about the “worship” (perhaps that’s the wrong word) of dangerous behaviour implicit in some of these memorials.
“Marc Bolan tree”. The mind boggles on that one. What would a Marc Bolan tree look like? Incidentally, I believe that in South Australia there has been a garden built to commemorate victims of road trauma. Perhaps a better alternative?
“so how much should a personal grief intrude on other peoples’ lives? In a country area the proportion is different, with a smaller population. Then again I know of memorial which is large, right outside a rural property which I would find very intrusive if were outside mine – I think that is unfair, flinging private grief onto some unrelated party, and the same for city street space, what is the appropriate space to allow for respect of all parties?”
These are fair questions. I remember going to see a road memorial for a loved one and being aware that the person being presented was the one known by his mates; that is, the young blokes of around 18, 19 whatever years of age that he knocked around with. That’s not a good thing or bad thing necessarily. I don’t think religion had anything to do with what they were doing. It felt strange to look at it, and when I see these things I feel terribly conflicted by them.
Some food for thought, going back some years now.
A friend of mine used to live in a country town in SA and she told me about the time there was a great deal of kerfuffle regarding a roadside memorial at the site of an accident (a young man – drunk – had taken a corner too fast and his car had left the road and rolled several times before ploughing through a farmer’s fence and ending up in a farmer’s paddock). Once the farmer in question had repaired the fence, the family came to the scene and placed flowers, cards etc on the fence. Every few days they returned to replenish the flowers and one one particular occasion, the farmer was there when the family were visiting.
He went over to pass on his condolences, but at the same time asked them politely if they wouldn’t mind moving the flowers etc so they weren’t on his property. This caused a hysterical response, so the farmer backed down. As the weeks stretched into months, however, the farmer seized the next opportunity he could to confront the family about the memorial. Again, the response was hysterical, so he rang the local council to get advice on his rights. Council agreed that he was certainly within his rights to ask them to remove the memorial and if they failed to do so, then he could do it himself. He did just that.
The family screamed blue murder and went to the local paper, saying they had a right to grieve for their son and brother and, besides which, it was only a few flowers and mementos. They basically painted the farmer as a heartless bastard and in the wash-up of the article, the farmer found himself on the receiving end of a number of tongue-lashings from other locals (when he wasn’t being sent to Coventry, that is). In the end, the farmer backed down and allowed the memorial to remain.
I understand that the memorial is still there, but now it is even more permanent; they have created a monument made of wistow stone and mortar. At least now though it is on the council’s side of the fence rather than on the fence itself.
Sorry about the long-winded story, but it does raise an interesting dilemma and one I always think about when I see a roadside memorial. Why do people think they have an automatic right to take personal ownership of an area merely because a tragedy occurred there? In the case above, the accident site actually belonged to someone else, but the family still thought it was okay to infringe on that other person’s rights.
I am also interested by the story by Another Outspoken Female. Often the death (as in the one I mentioned) is of the person who caused the accident. What would happen in the case of a double fatality where both families wanted to place a memorial at the same location? I imagine that the family whose loved one was the innocent victim of someone who ran into them because he or she was off their face on drink or drugs wouldn’t be too happy about sharing the memorial site with the person they feel was responsible for the death. And yet, the family of the “perpetrator” has a right to grieve as well.
It’s a very interesting and complex discussion and it’s been fascinating to read other people’s perspectives and experiences.
A useful discussion on the topic: White Lines, White Crosses. I think the “repentance crosses” are particularly apt, as well as the Eleanor crosses. Personally, I find them too publically personal.
On the intertubes, there is the phenomenon where dead people’s myspace pages are maintained and friends continue to leave messages, much like the ones left on the roadside. These young people often die in tragic ways, suicide, road deaths etc. Often the family continue to monitor the pages and allow the friends to have a continuing relationship with the dead person if you will. A kind of digital afterlife. I wonder if facebook will accommodate this as well? Probably.
Lynda, that farmer should never have been made to feel like a heartless bastard about that. Losing someone doesn’t make that family morally right. As someone was saying to me, this is an interesting discussion in that raises issues to do with rights, but we don’t necessarily have the right to inflict our grief on others. Mmmmm, I suspect one could write a thesis about this topic. What if he had killed an innocent party. The press would’ve taken a different line on the matter then, I suspect.
This is an interesting quote from that transcript, Greg:
“Jennifer Clark: I think there’s a very strong argument you can make that people are reclaiming the road. We are a technologically driven society, and I think the roadside memorial is a very earthy response to that technology, and a way of people trying to come to grips with what technology has meant to our society. It’s as if we want to get back to some of those earthy ideas and those concepts about mortality and humanity and meaning and people, and get away from the impersonal nature of road travel.
It’s an effort to express, in a post-modern way, I suppose, our dislike for the human cost of technological developments.
As memorials grow in number, the roadside is actually changing. It is no longer some sort of shifting spot, some sort of open space. It is taking on a life of its own. It is becoming a deathscape. It looks different. Its function is now different. And we as a community will need to assess how we relate to that change.”
Ahh, I have discovered, Casey, that once you have a Facebook page, you have forever. Arrghh. I suppose that over time the young people will move on with their lives and comments will cease to be left on such pages.
Greg and Darlene:
Hate to sound cynical but where there is a government, or rather, an administrative policy to remove roadside memorials, it is more likely to do with not disturbing car buyers’ comfort than to do with distracting drivers’ attention and so causing further accidents. Years ago, saw pressure applied to a newspaper by a car firm over a very messy accident – would have been bad for sales – the story was reported, of course, after being sanitized.
Adam Gall, you said
My oath!
Not to mention all those corflutes at election times!
We sure are a weird mob. Never in a million yrs would it have occurred to me that *anyone* would be affronted, annoyed, alarmed, averse to the existence of these. And yet we have all these reactions and more set forth here!
I’ve always viewed roadside memorials with only transient interest but’ve also thought of them, in the moment, as rather poignant reminders of the road toll, of mortality and the dangers of being in a motor vehicle. Good messages to receive at any time.
The linked ABC transcript has some lovely speculation about their possible meanings, but I think Peter Read, simpatico old soul that he is, is a bit off wicket to refer to Aboriginal sense of place in this context – particularly since place of death or even burial site is not of the same significance as it is for westerners, and is irrelevant for a spiritual sensibility that sees death as marking a transition or journey to some place else.
Why are people so ridiculously neurotic about death. Grieve and then move on. The person you cared about has gone, but your turn will come soon enough, so get on about enjoying your own life before your own demise. Building silly little memorials in public places is childish, silly and achieves absolutely nothing. Remember the person in your mind as they were when they were living instead of marking the spot at which they died.
“Greg and Darlene:
Hate to sound cynical but where there is a government, or rather, an administrative policy to remove roadside memorials, it is more likely to do with not disturbing car buyers’ comfort than to do with distracting drivers’ attention and so causing further accidents. Years ago, saw pressure applied to a newspaper by a car firm over a very messy accident – would have been bad for sales – the story was reported, of course, after being sanitized.”
Your cynicism is probably spot on.
“Not to mention all those corflutes at election times!”
Argggh, now there’s a truly frightening thought. Thanks for that one. Not long to go now until election time.
“Why are people so ridiculously neurotic about death. Grieve and then move on. The person you cared about has gone, but your turn will come soon enough, so get on about enjoying your own life before your own demise. Building silly little memorials in public places is childish, silly and achieves absolutely nothing. Remember the person in your mind as they were when they were living instead of marking the spot at which they died.”
Well, I think this issue could be tied up with all sorts of attitudes in relation to the modern rights’ based culture. The treatment meted out to that farmer is an example of such attitudes. Nevertheless, I think when an unexpected death happens, people feel the need to do something, anything. As Peter Read argued:
“The artefact, the flowers, the pieces of car, the sign on the tree, that’s a way of connecting us, almost as if the accident hasn’t happened, with the person we’ve lost.”
Jinmaro, I think there’s going to be as many reactions to any issue as there are people on the planet.
That can be sad when people’s emotions are at stake, but it’s the reality. Anyway, I don’t think I know what I think of them (but I am so grateful for getting such an interesting range of responses to this short post). Some days, I look at them and think nothing, other days I wonder about the person that died and other days I think about my nephew. Some days they don’t bother me, and other times I wish they weren’t there.
hyperbole aside Darlene re billions of separate stances on all and every issue: and referring back to “spirit”, in this case I would put all the reactions in to two big piles – one encompassing meanness and narrowness of spirit, the other encompassing largeness and generosity of spirit.
On the issue of memorialisation by atheists, I’d remind everyone of Jeremy Bentham’s, um, memorial at University College, London. Jeremy decreed in his will that his body first be made available to medical students, and then, when they’d learned all they could from it, that the skeleton be dressed in Jeremy’s clothes and surmounted by a waxwork life mask of Jeremy himself. The clothed and masked skeleton is displayed in the foyer of the college and is dragged out to occupy the Founder’s chair at official College dinners.
I am quite happy to pick up rubbish along public roads when I stop for a break.
I take your point, jinmaro, but I think it’s more compicated than “meanness and narrowness of spirit” and
“largeness and generosity of spirit”.
Thanks for telling us about that Hal. Ewww, not sure what to make of old Jeremy Bentham’s wishes there.
An explanation for Fed Square? Have you ever used a CAD program? Go on, throw up a small building in 3D. Click on the ‘move’ function and drag the corners of the building. You’ll create a baby fed square. I’d have trouble proving the source of inspiration for Fed Square, but it’s interesting that it, and buildings like it have only been built since CAD gave us the ability to instantly flex the framework of the building.
Terry, far from being neurotic many sensible, mentally healthy people really benefit from the practice of making sure they have a human skull (or at least a replica)l sitting on their desk or mantlepiece as a salutory reminder of what is to come. So why not a few roadside flowers, that ya probably don’t even have to look at every morn? Whadda reckon?
Greg M said “The policy of VicRoads, the Victorian state road authority, is for the removal of roadside shrines as their research shows that the shrines increase accident rates as they distract drivers’ attention from the road.”
An excellent idea…may it spread nationally. Distractions in dangerous sections of our roads are just plain dumb.
No, that’s what speed limit signs are for.
I get the impression that a lot of these memorials are attempts to blame road users generally for the death of their loved one, or at least make them feel guilty for driving.
Casey you are right, you have it totally wrong.
Could you be more specific about these religious elements?
Terry:
That would suit only some people. Everybody’s response to death and their response to grieving is different.
Adam Gall, re-read your post
in conjunction with Lynda Hopgood’s story about the farmer who objected to memorializing on his boundary. Time heals all wounds so a little tolerance might help the intensity of grief to pass sooner and more smoothly – and as it passes so too does the compulsion to maintain roadside memorials. Of course, flowers will appear on the spot on anniversaries for many years afterwards, that’s only to be expected.
But then, issuing a pack of regulations forbidding roadside memorials really is the Australian way and it fits in so wonderfully with our love of stupid laws and with our admiration for the boofheads who enforce them ….
Catlick: Right, lemme see; you say I am right and I am wrong….mmm
Meanwhile, Ive been checking out Lygon st for virally transmitted hysterias, but nothing yet…
It depends on what level you’re talking, silkworm, but I would gesture firstly to religious modes of thought. There are a lot of religious features within philosophy and within the various political theories and ideologies, not to mention the work ethic and indeed the whole culture of work as a value in itself, which has very specific origins in certain religious traditions. The iconoclastic gesture is a significant part of secular radicalism, and this too has origins within religious practices. In all these cases, removing the deity or the overt religious elements does not change the structures of thought etc.
At a more fundamental level, in terms of lived experience, it is the experience of the sacred. Liam has already mentioned nations as sites of secular sacredness, and I would concur. This becomes quite obvious on Anzac Day, and perhaps a handful of other events. Outside of that framework, I would suggest that the distinction of the sacred and the profane continue to operate in our culture. Also the irreducible experience of the sacred continues to be a feature of human life, no matter how far from ‘religion’ we happen to be.
Oh dear, to nit pick or not? Casey you took the time to cut and paste my comment, but then you didn’t read it. “acceptance of the romantic”? I said “sad rather than ugly” You really have taken T A’s “change the thought, change the feeling” to heart. Your leap to the ‘pro RSL anti iconography’ assumption was worthy of Marion Jones, and just as spurious.
And it’s not just there they are doing it, Graham, there are plenty of places in the US that are banning them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071008/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_blackwater
Now this is the type of memorial I like – a burned wreck in the middle of the road. It is of course the car that Blackwater guards destroyed in Baghdad recently in the midst of their killing spree. A woman and her son, a medical student, were killed when a trigger-happy guard opened fire on their car. The Blackwater guards went on the kill 15 other innocent people, all bystanders. In this specific case, the memorial has very clear political import, pointing the blame at Blackwater and the United States. This supports my case that in many cases these roadside memorials have at some level of consciousness the intention of apportioning blame for the death of the loved one.
whatever floats your boat catlick!