Cricket, baseball, and football all have their heroes with golden arms. Cricket’s famous bowlers include Sydney Barnes, Fred Trueman, and Wasim Akram. In baseball, there were Cy Young, Nolan Ryan, and others too numerous to mention. Football has also had its share of great arms in players like Dan Marino, Brett Favre, and, again, in quarterbacks too numerous to mention. Great arms were evident from the three sports’ beginnings to the present time. But even for those golden arms whose owners were enshrined in the various halls of fame, no accolade matches the reverence paid to the arm of Hubert van Eyck, that’s van Eyck of the famous Flemish painter-family, the guy who worked a long time on the Great Polyptych, a work his brother Jan had to complete when death interrupted Hubert’s brush strokes. And what was the nature of that reverence for the arm of a painter?
Upon his death, Hubert was buried in the church he had worked to enhance with his paintings. But in 1533, his remains were removed to the churchyard to allow for the building of a new aisle. But not all of his remains. One of the bones of his right forearm was placed in an iron casket and hung in the porch of the Cathedral, so much was the respect for his art.
Most likely the cricket, baseball, and football players enshrined in halls of fame would probably not prefer to have a similar disjointed burial. Those who have passed on probably lie whole beneath a marker or in a vault, their avatars serving as statues in those halls or in videos of their famous exploits. Hubert’s separated arm appears to have been a one-of-a-kind burial.
When we think of those great-throwing athletes, the bowlers, pitchers, and passers, we realize that we do at times refer to each of them as “an arm,” reducing the whole to a part. Such is our penchant for metonymously using totum pro parte maybe as a shortcut, but possibly because we tend to see others as caricatures. Seeing caricatures is easier than seeing complex characters. Thus, our language is filled with synecdoche.
Using a part to represent a whole is a common practice, but it comes with a downside. By reducing the whole to a part, we miss out on the complexity we know to exist but choose, probably through laziness or insecurity, to ignore. No doubt you understand why I associate the former, the motivation of laziness, with totum pro parte better than you understand why I associate the latter, the motivation of insecurity, with metonymy.
But think about it. If I can reduce a complex character to some obvious trait, don’t I pigeonhole that person while assuming that I am superior by my complexity? True, as in the case of bowlers, pitchers, passers, and painters, I acknowledge a special skill that others—including me—don’t have. But in athletics or in art I might find no threat since I might not intend to participate in either activity. In daily living, however, I might find myself reducing someone else to a part to diminish the stature of a person: “What a gossip! No one should listen to her.” “Sure, if you listen to that Leftist, you’re going to be brainwashed.” “Southerner!”
We don’t put those parts in iron boxes that we hang from cathedral porches, but we do hang those parts that substitute for wholes in the shrines of media, both mass and social. As we look at the boxes hanging at the entrances of every media platform, do we see more that receives respect and praise like the arm of Hubert van Eyck or more that hang as effigies to disdain?
I think it’s time to ask ourselves what parts we use as representations of whole people and why we choose to use them.
Upon his death, Hubert was buried in the church he had worked to enhance with his paintings. But in 1533, his remains were removed to the churchyard to allow for the building of a new aisle. But not all of his remains. One of the bones of his right forearm was placed in an iron casket and hung in the porch of the Cathedral, so much was the respect for his art.
Most likely the cricket, baseball, and football players enshrined in halls of fame would probably not prefer to have a similar disjointed burial. Those who have passed on probably lie whole beneath a marker or in a vault, their avatars serving as statues in those halls or in videos of their famous exploits. Hubert’s separated arm appears to have been a one-of-a-kind burial.
When we think of those great-throwing athletes, the bowlers, pitchers, and passers, we realize that we do at times refer to each of them as “an arm,” reducing the whole to a part. Such is our penchant for metonymously using totum pro parte maybe as a shortcut, but possibly because we tend to see others as caricatures. Seeing caricatures is easier than seeing complex characters. Thus, our language is filled with synecdoche.
Using a part to represent a whole is a common practice, but it comes with a downside. By reducing the whole to a part, we miss out on the complexity we know to exist but choose, probably through laziness or insecurity, to ignore. No doubt you understand why I associate the former, the motivation of laziness, with totum pro parte better than you understand why I associate the latter, the motivation of insecurity, with metonymy.
But think about it. If I can reduce a complex character to some obvious trait, don’t I pigeonhole that person while assuming that I am superior by my complexity? True, as in the case of bowlers, pitchers, passers, and painters, I acknowledge a special skill that others—including me—don’t have. But in athletics or in art I might find no threat since I might not intend to participate in either activity. In daily living, however, I might find myself reducing someone else to a part to diminish the stature of a person: “What a gossip! No one should listen to her.” “Sure, if you listen to that Leftist, you’re going to be brainwashed.” “Southerner!”
We don’t put those parts in iron boxes that we hang from cathedral porches, but we do hang those parts that substitute for wholes in the shrines of media, both mass and social. As we look at the boxes hanging at the entrances of every media platform, do we see more that receives respect and praise like the arm of Hubert van Eyck or more that hang as effigies to disdain?
I think it’s time to ask ourselves what parts we use as representations of whole people and why we choose to use them.
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