The Weekly Screed (#627)

The civic vandals of Paris…
and the philistines on the bridge
by David Benjamin

PARIS — The vandals have struck Paris and they look like us.

“Vandal” is a word derived from the name of a Germanic tribe that invaded and sacked Rome about 1,560 years ago. Vandalism is now defined as “any senseless destruction, particularly the barbarian defacing of artworks.”

Of course, every big city has its own pack of resident vandals, who scurry though the night with cans of spray paint, covering bridge abutments, delivery trucks, train tunnels and doorways with nonce words in giant fat letters. But lately, Paris has developed a tolerance for vandalism that’s inconsistent with its sanitation practices and bourgeois heritage. The biggest barbarian defacement currently on display here lately is actually the work of the city’s own brain trust.

They’re celebrating the 850th birthday of the cathedral of Notre Dame by, well, hiding it.

Any tourist who has visited Paris, or merely watched someone else’s slideshow of their visit here, knows that the cathedral vista most photographed and coveted as a memento — “And here’s your Aunt Effie standing in front of Noader Dayme!” — is the full-frontal, twin-phallus, plaza-to-towers pose, shot usually from around the crypt entrance, about 120 yards from the façade. This view provides — in your snapshot-camera viewfinder — not only the full height of the massive, truncated steeples but a sense of the wisdom of Paris’ caretakers. Over a remarkable span of 850 years, Parisians, jealous of this magnificent view, have kept the vast Parvis Notre Dame — between the church and the nearest street —  absolutely naked. The square bears no obstruction or distraction. No trees stand in the way. The only statue, Charlemagne on a horse, has been shoved off to the side.

Thar she blows!

There are other European cathedrals that might be judged more beautiful, more majestic, more soaring than Notre Dame. But no one can credibly insist that any other church anywhere occupies a more sublime and apposite setting. As you cross the cobbled expanse, slowly approaching, gazing upward, Notre Dame grows before your eyes and expands in your senses.
Well, it used to. And it will next year.

But today, you stand at the crypt entrance, peering east toward the view of Notre Dame that has awed and moved millions of shutterbugs, and you say, “What the hell is that thing?” Today, at the bottom of the Parvis, where you used to see Notre Dame in the distance, you see this huge blue plywood shoebox, just about where Aunt Effie would normally stand to smile for her souvenir photo.

In the middle of the square, the city of Paris has pitched a tent city, for which there’s no evident explanation. I guess it could be full of exhibits and documents chronicling the history of Notre Dame so exhaustively that the actually sight of Notre Dame becomes a matter of wretched excess. Maybe so but, passing by the tents the other day, I didn’t go inside to investigate. I didn’t see any way to get in. I noticed, however, that the long white tent walls would be great for graffiti.

Closer to Notre Dame’s facade, there’s a second plywood megalith. This turns out to be, as you round the corner, a grandstand. From here, I guess you’re supposed to admire the cathedral, an activity which — for 850 years — has been accomplished plywood-free, without having to climb any steps, from the plaza. The enormous grandstand’s principal effect is to complicate the chore of situating Aunt Effie for her snapshot, especially if you’re using a normal tourist camera, whose lens isn’t wide enough to capture the entire church from this close up. You get a picture, but it only has some of Notre Dame and two-thirds of Effie.

Not that I sympathize with the tourists. Humanity hardly needs another effigy of one more Effie at Notre Dame. Actually, there’s no need for anyone to ever photograph Notre Dame again, especially in the bad light tolerated by most tourists on most days in Paris, especially since every such photo is cluttered with other tourists shooting the same cluttered-up, ill-lit snapshot. I keep telling strangers, “You want a nice picture? Buy a postcard.” Or when I see someone aiming a camcorder and filming a motion picture of a building that hasn’t shifted an inch in eight and a half centuries: “Y’know, it’s not moving.”

Actually, if the reason for the civic leaders of Paris to clutter Notre Dame’s plaza with tents and bleachers is to scare tourists away, well then, OK, I’m in favor — especially if it means ending the barbarian defacement of the little pont de l’Archeveche behind the church. Thousands of lemming-like tourists have covered every inch of the bridge railing with shiny new padlocks.

Each is signed by a couple and etched with darling little heart-shapes. The lovelorn vandals attach the lock to this bridge or — far more offensively — to the pont des Arts, Paris’ most graceful span. Then they toss the key into the Seine.

Love, thus defined, is something like a jail cell, a meat truck, or a tin box full of petty cash. When this Alcatraz version of amour spreads like a skin disease — as it has all over the bridges of Paris — it’s no more the cute impulse of a few nitwit newlyweds. Lovers become invaders, turning an artwork into an eyesore.

So, a word of advice to Mayor Delanoe. Your honor, if you want to pay true homage to Notre Dame, the first thing you do is go tear down the grandstand. Then, strike the tents and make the big blue shoebox into a big fat bonfire.

And then — listen. Remember how the bronze column in the Place Vendome was fashioned from enemy cannons captured by Napoleon? Good. So what you do next, Mayor, is you collect those damn love-locks — all 20 tons of them. Then melt them down, like Napoleon, and make a cannon.

Finally, you park the cannon at the end of the bridge, prime the fuse, and wait for the next pair of lovey-dovey vandals who tries to hang a padlock on Paris.