Mt Rushmore and Deadwood

It would be unacceptable to drive around the United States without visiting the famous Mt Rushmore, where the giant heads of four dead Presidents are carved into a mountainside. This granite pronouncement of monumental patriotism was definitely a must see attraction.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that I am not good at nationalism. Not only am I not a good patriot, but I don't even understand the energy behind it. I like Australia and lots of things about it. I eat Vegemite and think rock wallabies are extremely cute. Yet for all that I like about my native land, I still find it hard to convince myself that my country is the best place in the universe simply because I was born there. There are other things about Australia that I don't get at all, like opals. It's probably treason to admit it, but opals just don't do it for me.

In addition to having a defective patriotism gene, I also have a chronic suspicion of those who do feel moved to extreme declarations of patriotic fervour. I have a lot of trouble keeping a straight face when people get sniffly while singing the national anthem or use their national flag as an article of clothing, except at international sporting events where such behaviour is quite proper.

Because of my peculiar prejudices, I am perhaps not representative of Mt Rushmore's target audience. The intended beneficiaries of Mt Rushmore's symbolic power are, of course, Americans, a people who are compelled to pledge allegiance to their flag before they can spell "allegiance," or even "flag." Americans also appear to practice ancestor worship of some past Presidents, an honour reserved in Australia for genuine cultural deities like Sir Donald Bradman.

Many Americans I have met here have internalised their concept of the nation to an extraordinary degree. The sense of self and the sense of the nation become fused, so that any critique of the nation or its symbols is experienced as a personal attack. Consider the oft repeated argument that it is unAmerican for Democrats to suggest that America should withdraw forces from Iraq. The accusation is that these filthy Democrats are 1) invested in America's defeat and 2) encouraging criticism of America, a sacred nation that is practically perfect in every way. To advocate stifling policy debate on the grounds that dissenting opinion is treason is curious in a nation supposedly committed to personal freedoms, including freedom of speech.

To all the deeply patriotic Americans who love their dead Presidents, their flag, their mother's apple pie, and their giant Presidential stone heads, I humbly suggest that you skip to the next post. You are more than welcome to attribute my attitude to exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a foreign barbarian.

As you may have gathered, I was disappointed with Mt Rushmore. It's an impressive feat of engineering, certainly. It's very big. It's just a bit odd. We have the ability, at massive cost, to make mountains resemble men, and this is what we're doing with that power? The resources and effort that went into constructing this thing was far more monumental than the finished product appeared to me. Somehow the whole is less than its parts.

Of course, there has been a lot of controversy about Mt Rushmore and the land on which the sculpture was chiseled and blasted. Having been stolen from the traditional inhabitants in the traditional way, the land was then granted back to them as an act of token compensation, then snatched back again to mine gold and eventually, to build a few really, really big heads. Now, apparently, there is talk of building a similar (but even bigger) monument to an Indian chief.

There has also been controversy about the artist Gutzon Borglum, himself famous for having a really, really big head, on which he sometimes liked to wear a big pointy hat. There was also controversy about the choice of Presidents for the monument, which Borglum made himself to represent 150 years of American History according to his personal taste.

Perhaps some of my disappointment had to do with the weather. It was freezing cold and had been raining for much of the day, so the heads were all a bit soggy. Washington looked like someone had thrown egg on his face, and Jefferson appeared to have something unfortunate coming out of his nose.

I decided to sit around and eavesdrop on American tourists until the nightly "lighting ceremony" took place. Before they switched on the lights I was treated to half an hour or so of rousing marching band music being piped through the speakers. I happened to be talking to an American for part of this episode and he, much to my amusement, expressed some outrage that such frivolous "fairground" music was being played at such an important site. He went on to express his bitter disappointment that Mt Rushmore was not all he had imagined it to be: "I thought it would be more majestic." When I expressed amusement at the idea that sculpture demands somber music he explained his distress: "But they're carved into a mountain." I wondered how that was really very different from a bust on a mantelpiece. The conversation went back and forth for a while, but the gist seemed to be that "majesty" in patriotic symbols covaries directly with size. This guy was from Texas though, so I might need to expand my sample before attempting to generalise my findings.

Finally, almost an hour after the advertised time for the ceremony, by which time I was perilously close to freezing into a solid monument myself, they turned on the lights. I took a photograph and sprinted for the Cream Puff.

I drove to Deadwood where I was spending the night at a campground. It was dark when I rolled through town. Still, the only obvious signs of its lawless past were the large number of casinos, which are no longer illegal and signs pointing to the graves of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. Since the only things I knew about either of these two characters was gleaned from the 1953 movie Calamity Jane, my excitement at seeing their names was entirely ridiculous.

In the morning, I made an early start to the unforgettable view of the sun rising in the Black Hills. The deep reds and browns in the soil, the bleached timber and fire blackened stumps of trees, all seemed strangely familiar. It was only later that I realised how Australian this palette of colours really was. As the orange sun pressed down onto the hills, I drove west, away from the dawn and into the heavy black cloud of an electrical storm. The air tingled and I rolled down the windows to be a part of it, despite the beginnings of rain. The land was wild, and beautiful and seemingly untouched. It was what Mt Rushmore must have been before it became a national monument. It was perfect.