A new monument in Boston commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. is taking flak, some it for the purportedly pornographic appearance it has from certain angles.
“The Embrace” is an undeniably striking statue unveiled last week at the Boston Common. It portrays the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King locked in a hug — but it depicts only the couple’s hands, arms and shoulders.
The $10 million creation from the nonprofit Embrace Boston is based on a 1964 photo that shows the couple delightedly hugging after King won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Artist Hank Willis Thomas’ submission was selected, and Martin Luther King III approved it.
The creation was unveiled in front of a cheering crowd on Jan. 13, and Boston dignitaries hailed it with soaring speeches.
But a video tweeted out by a TV reporter of a particularly unfortunate angle captured the raunchy imaginations of America, and a few shots from other angles also provided fodder for guffaws.
Basically, the big statue, to some observers, looks like a couple of different sex acts. Others see a more scatalogical image.
In the online magazine Compact, Seneca Scott — a union organizer identified as a cousin of Coretta Scott King — panned the statue as “racist and classist.”
“The new Boston sculpture … looks more like a pair of hands hugging a beefy penis than a special moment shared by the iconic couple.” he wrote.
That is actually the less explicit of the two most popular sexual interpretations.
On aesthetic grounds, some critics have taken issue with the elimination of the Kings’ faces.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said the decision dehumanizes the couple.
“It doesn’t sit well with me that Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King are reduced to body parts — just their arms. Not their faces — their expressions,” she tweeted. “In making MLK a whitewashed symbol of love, the Embrace statue is both safe and grotesque. Says little about the man, a lot about America.”
Then she added: “And yes, I’ll say it. From another angle, the statue for real looks like one person is performing disembodied oral sex.”
Boston radio host Notorious VOG told the Herald, “It reinforces a lived perception that Black faces aren’t seen in Boston but used as props to further other agendas and conversations.”
Not all of the reviews were negative. In Bloomberg CityLab, for example, authors Kriston Capps and Linda Poon wrote that “the message of the piece is intimate and unique. The sculpture celebrates notions of support, care and vulnerability that aren’t usually associated with monumental depictions of heroic men.”
Imari Paris Jeffries, the executive director of Embrace Boston, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Thomas, the artist, wrote on his website of the piece, “By highlighting the act of embrace, this sculpture shifts the emphasis from a singular hero worship to collective action, imploring those curious enough to investigate closer.”
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