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Darth Vader Sculpture on Washington National Cathedral
Michael Breeden writes "Star Wars has apparently taken another step in becoming part of our national history. The Washington National Cathedral, during its expansion, has placed a sculpture of Darth Vader's head into the carvings around one of the exterior arches. This space is normally reserved for grotesques (gargoyles), and ol' Darth seems to have fit the bill. "
A clear violation!
Why? Why?
/.ed already.
I've been to the National Cathedral... it's a beautiful place, even for pagans such as myself. Why would they carve a Darth Vader into the arches?
I'm sorry, but I just find this amazingly stupid. Maybe someone could enlighten me as to why this was done? The page seems to be
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
I find your lack of server bandwidth disturbing...
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I am your holy father!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I've got Jar-Jar's head on a stake in my front lawn. Much more pleasing to the eye, imo.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
So the church isn't shy of putting up a bust of the second in command of another religion. I'm wondering whether (and when) they'll add people like Ayatollah Khomeini to the mix...
Isn't there something inherently wrong with Slashdotting a webserver of the Church?
Join me, and together we'll harness the power of the slashdot, and spread 'cannot find server' errors across the galaxy.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Ooops there are good guys now.
forgot.
What about a Romulan statue stabbing jesus with a phaser right above the alter?
Darth could be on the other side with the light saber with angels of long dead jedi coming down...
Sorry, I digress into blasephemy and damn its fun!
ACK
has failed me for the last time....'
Link
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
I'm pretty sure the Darth Vader Gargoyle has been there for ~20 years. I've looked for it a few times, but never found it. Now I'll know where it is!
The Darth gargoyle was carved and placed on the Cathedral in the 1980s--it was carved by master sculptor Palumbo (RIP) by a young lad who received honorable mention in a "Design-a-gargoyle" contest sponsored by World magazine (National Geographic for children).
The winner was a smiling gargoyle toting an umbrella.
***Foucault is watching you..***
Actually.. It was meant as a joke about a head of state having his head literally connected to a cathederal.
;)
Hey.. it's hard to get a legitimately funny post up as first post too!
Your servers have failed me for the LAST time...
Mirros:
8 /http://w ww.cathedral.org/cathedral/discover/darth.shtml
r xapSYQmgC: www.cathedral.org/cathedral/discover/darth.shtml+& hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Archive.org mirror:
http://web.archive.org/web/2002060718373
Google archive:
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:1i
Not much faster, though. Wasn't this posted a long time ago?
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's bandwidth.
Thou shalt not slashdot thy neighbor's server.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
One of the few medieval churches in Norway, nidarosdomen, was restaurated many years ago, and some people have noticed that the figure of the archangel Michael bears an uncanny resemblance to someone...
And this year the artist admitted it: it IS in fact Dob Dylan.
(It's true! Pity I don't have a link)
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Isn't this about 15 years out of date? The gargoyle was put up in the 80's. (There was a children's competition to design new gargoyles. Darth made it up there along with a raccoon and some other less threatening images.)
The national cathedral has many unique gargoyles, that's typical of the medieval style actually. Since many of them could never be seen except (in the pre-binocular/telescope age) the carvers, they could sculpt bosses they hated, cultural figures, politicians, etc. There was an issue of Smithsonian magazine that described some of them (the artists were left to their own will, mostly, on what they could put up there). There's undoubtedly a number more of these little "easter eggs" put in those doing the construction.
And it's a nice complement to the chunk of moon rock in the 'creation' stained glass window there also.
In principle, this is no worse than "the green man", a folk-religion symbol that is often insinuated into the carvings of old English churches. (e.g. Chiseldon, nr. Swindon, Wilts).
But in a Christian church, a bit silly.
As Washington National Cathedral approached completion, the west towers rose towards the sky, striking toward heaven. During the building a startling idea was hatched: hold a competition for children to design decorative sculpture for the Cathedral.
Word of the competition was spread nationwide through National Geographic World Magazine. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader, with his drawing of that fearful villain, Darth Vader. The fierce head was sculpted by Jay Hall Carpenter, carved by Patrick J. Plunkett and placed high upon the northwest tower of the Cathedral...
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
In honor of Lord Vader's contributions to the Washington National Cathedral, he will be remembered as Saint Anakin, who performed the miracle of telepathetically choking sinners.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I recall reading about the Darth Vader inclusion back in the 1980s. ^^ It's not something new; he was actually included by a fairly famous sculptor during that time. You can see his bio and a picture of Vader here:
http://www.stoneguild.com/m_plunkett.htm
I hear from reliable sources that it is not in fact Darth Vader. Instead, it is William Shatner in a Darth Vader mask.
In this case though, I've not seen the picture mind you, but gargolyes, I believe technically, are water spouts. So in this case, being technically correct, Mr. Vader is probably a grotesque.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Does anyone know if this Star Wars fascination is as big in Europe, specifically the UK, as it is in the US? I really think it fulfills some kind of "missing race memory" or something here, the US missing out on the Dark and Middle Ages and all. Coup Sticks and Dreamcatchers are all very well and good, but they don't hold a cathedral candle to long swords and grail quests.
If we had our own, *real* King Arthur (or as real as King Arthur was, anyways...) would we be clamoring so much for George Lucas' pre-fab techno Arthuriana?
DV isn't head of State, he's head of Government. DS is head of State. He finds your lack of political knowledge disturbing.
Right on! Ditto for freedom of speech and habeus corpus. Just ask anyone in the Bush administration.
--Fighting trolls with trolls since 1999.
Off to the guillotine with you then.
"I've been called ugly, pug-ugly, fugly, pug-fugly, but never ugly-ugly."
I imagine if he did, there'd be some sort of huge lawsuit for copyright infringement or intellectual property theft or something along those lines. Pretty soon there'll be royalty fees and you're not allowed to look at it without paying admission... this is a bad idea. :)
Join Tor today!
When in doubt, use The Internet archive. It works wonders, and it archives images (unlike Google Cache).
Darth Vader at National Cathedral Mirror.
Just for those who aren't aware, Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. His objections to Christianity most likely weren't along the same lines as those objections many people today might have. The quote, out of context, may seem to be something it is not.
According to a visibly self-impressed George Lucas, "yeah, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, I'd still be filthy rich. But seriously, I figure all you need is an inside man at the church. According to my metaphysical effects team at ILM, a gargoyle at the National Cathedral should let me bypass all those philanthropic hoops John D. Rockefeller had to jump through."
(Parody? Perhaps....)
...Does that mean that the Bazaar has Luke Skywalker?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
As Washington National Cathedral approached completion, the west towers rose towards the sky, striking toward heaven. During the building a startling idea was hatched: hold a competition for children to design decorative sculpture for the Cathedral.
Word of the competition was spread nationwide through National Geographic World Magazine. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader, with his drawing of that fearful villain, Darth Vader. The fierce head was sculpted by Jay Hall Carpenter, carved by Patrick J. Plunkett and placed high upon the northwest tower of the Cathedral...
To Find Darth Vader you have to leave the building through the ramp entrance. This is located at the northwest corner of the nave, through the double wooden doors of Lincoln Bay. Go down the ramp, and step into the parking lot. Then, turn around and look back up at the tower closest to you. He is almost impossible to see without the assistance of binoculars.
Way way way up, almost at the top of the tower is a gablet, or small peaked roof, located between the two huge louvered arches. At the bottom of each slope of this gablet is a carved grotesque. Darth Vader is on the north, or right-hand, side. There is a carved skull situated on a gablet much closer to the ground which many people often mistake for Darth Vader. From this skull, Darth Vader is up and to the left.
Yoda: "The /. clouds everything, impossible to see the page it has become"
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
God's gonna be pissed...
This isn't exactly news. This was done at least ten years ago. Darth Vader is a standard depiciton of evil. There is also a grotesque of Adolf Hitler on one of the towers at the National Cathedral (I live about a mile away from it...)
Come on - this was a post from 1994, and the poster doesn't even say THEN that this was new.
I find your lack of faith disturbing...
Slashdot -- if it's not a dupe, it's old, or ripped from The Register. Or all three.
Heh. This article evokes some memories for me. As a previous poster mentioned, there are hordes of unique gargoyles on the National Cathedral (I had lots of time to check them out as a student on the Cathedral Close in the 90s).
By far my favorite is a gargoyle facing NCS, the Cathedral-affiliated girl's school. It's carved to resemble a constuction worker lewdly whistling at the nymphets passing by on their way to class...
For those that want to read the article but can't due to the slashdotting...
Darth Vader It's slow, but works,
Link brought to you by archive.org
Then here's the text only version...
About Darth Vader As Washington National Cathedral approached completion, the west towers rose towards the sky, striking toward heaven. During the building a startling idea was hatched: hold a competition for children to design decorative sculpture for the Cathedral.
Darth Vader Drawing (img.)
Word of the competition was spread nationwide through National Geographic World Magazine. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader, with his drawing of that fearful villain, Darth Vader. The fierce head was sculpted by Jay Hall Carpenter, carved by Patrick J. Plunkett and placed high upon the northwest tower of the Cathedral...
Newspaper Clipping (img.)
Darth Vader Location (img.)
To Find Darth Vader you have to leave the building through the ramp entrance. This is located at the northwest corner of the nave, through the double wooden doors of Lincoln Bay. Go down the ramp, and step into the parking lot. Then, turn around and look back up at the tower closest to you. He is almost impossible to see without the assistance of binoculars.
Way way way up, almost at the top of the tower is a gablet, or small peaked roof, located between the two huge louvered arches. At the bottom of each slope of this gablet is a carved grotesque. Darth Vader is on the north, or right-hand, side. There is a carved skull situated on a gablet much closer to the ground which many people often mistake for Darth Vader. From this skull, Darth Vader is up and to the left.
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
He has also reportedly been in quite a lawsuit with Lucifer over his soul, claiming that when he sold it he was promised that the Star Wars prequels would be awesome. Lucifer is countering that they were a slam dunk but Lucas f'd them up by reselling his soul to corporate America.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What are the implications of putting Lucasarts intellectual property on a public cathedral?
If we allow the Star Wars saga to be written in stone, how will George Lucas collect royalties from people 10,000 years in the future who gaze at the carvings?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Found it!
http://forum.mur.at/terminator/
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
This is old stale news. I believe their was a contest to come up artwork for one of the gargoyles back in the late 70's/ early 80's, and darth vader was the winner.
If you visit the cathedral, they have a printed self guided tour of the gargoyles with some history and locations of some of the more interesting ones.
There is nothing wrong with a Church recognizing a head of state, even a head from an evil empire. A church can also endorse or suppress the U.S. government, within the limits of law.
The U.S. government can also give money, tanks, cheese, or anything else to churches. But it has to do so without preference to any single church.
This is one fallacy often used in discussions about government programs which might give money to private or church-operated schools. Most common is a "voucher" system, where parents get a voucher for a child's education, and they can give that voucher to whatever school they want the kid to attend (and the school then gets the specified amount of money for the service). If a parent chooses a Catholic, Jewish, or SubGenius school, that is no more relevant than if the money goes to a public or private school.
Another oddity recently showed up in news reports: a Catholic church leader urging tax increases for funding of "social programs". Well, a non-profit agency doing lobbying is not allowed. Also, if a church wants to have the State take money from people then that church should stop accepting donations and use only that money from the State which is considered to be so important that it must be taken from people by force rather than being donated. But the U.S. government can not show preference -- so all churches would get such funds. I haven't heard that church leader considering the effects of forcing people give money.
Does anybody remember the flak when Cathedral sculptor Frederick Hart sued about the Devil's Advocate using his sculpture Ex Nihilo?
In the movie the people in the sculpture get a little randy, and "the National Cathedral denounced the film as a grotesque distortion of sacred art."
I suppose if they have Darth in a choirboy outfit leading the procession, Lucasfilms might have a similar case.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Anyways: gargoyles on cathedrals, besides serving the essential function of spouting wainwater off the roof, are meant to embody the culture's fears, like bogeymen. Darth is up there (on the North side, very high up) in part because he was kinda a bogeyman circa 1980. There are a couple other "gargoyles" of people wearing gasmasks, etc., reflecting more modern anxieties.
In a related story, one of the stonecarvers about the same time wanted to immortalize his just-deceased wife in a sculpture, nowhere prominent, just out of the way somewhere. The higher-ups vetoed the idea, stating a policy of not having private memorials in a public building (or something along those lines). So the stonecarver took her ashes and mixed them into some mortar, making her remains part of the building itself. Or so I heard, anyway....
But come back later in the week for your Darth-as-gargoyle fix. I wonder what architectural historians a few centuries from now will think of it.
The ratio of people to cake is too big.
"Centuries ago, on our cathedrals, grotesques were intended to symbolize the evil that existed outside the church. Today, Darth Vader is an excellent example of evil in our times."
This is incorrect. The gargoyles were designed to scare away evil spirits. Darth Vader was evil, and that is a concept that's completely different, and therefore not consistent with the traditional gargoyles.
Hmm... if they did it without his helmet, you could perhaps make a case that it is sufficiently grotesque!
bp
It is the entire clan:
For example - George Bush without the "W". Quote (from a 1999 interview): "I trully believe that an atheist cannot be a citizen of this great country".
So is his favourite pet Tony B. He got asked the question about his support for creationism in the house of commons and he could not answer.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I live around the corner from the National Cathedral, and let me tell you that Vader is not easy to spot. A few years ago I remember a kid walking around the cathedral grounds handing out photocopies of hand-drawn instructions telling you how to spot the Sith-lord. I tried to follow, but never could find him. I wasn't sure if the kid was was telling the truth, until I went into the Cathedral's gift shop and found a book of gargoyles with Darth Vader featured next to another icon familiar with the dark side: A lawyer carrying a briefcase. If you ever visit the Cathedral, bring your binoculars and plan to spend some time searching the highest towers. He's way up there.
Early in the morning in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys started a fight.
Back to back, they faced each other,
Turned around, drew their swords, and shot each other.
A deaf policeman hear the noise,
And he arrested the two dead boys.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Actually, it's the cathedral church of the Episcopal Bishop of Washington. Although the cathedral is somewhat ecumenical, the National Cathedral is no more associated with the Federal government than say, The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (a largish, non-parish Catholic basilica in DC.)
You can't acutally see the Darth sculpture on the page linked to in the article anyway. It just shows a picture of Darth Vader from Star Wars and a diagram pointing to his location on the Cathedral face. Here is a picture of statue itself before it was put in place.
Don't be too proud of this architectural terror you've constructed. The ability to carve a head in stone is insignificant next to the power of a Slashdotting.
I find your lack of bandwidth disturbing...
Read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. I think you would be very surprised how the Founding Fathers criticized christianity, and all religions. Their reasons are very contemporary.
One could EASILY argue that the American Revolution lead to Emerson's transcendantal ideas, which inspired Nietzsche to create the modern criticism of religion as a tool of enslavement.
I don't read or respond to AC posts