The small rural Tennessee community of Brownsville honored their most famous daughter Tina Turner with a statue on Saturday. The 10-foot tribute to the late rock legend, located not too far from Nutbush, features the singer striking a familiar pose — all big hair, short skirt and microphone in hand.
The statue comes over two years after the death of the Grammy-winning singer, who died at her longtime home in Switzerland at age 83 after a long illness. The likeness not only signifies Turner’s ties to the area, but also celebrates her long career that included classic hits “Nutbush City Limits,” “Proud Mary,” “Private Dancer,” “The Best,” “What’s Love Got to Do with It” and “We Don’t Need Another Hero.”
The Associated Press reported that about 50 donors gave money for the statue, including Ford Motor Co., which donated $150,000. The carmaker is building an EV truck factory in nearby Stanton.
Still, the execution of the statue, and its supposed likeness (or not) to Turner has become the talk of the internet.
Since its public unveiling on the weekend, the Turner statue has elicited mirth, mockery and even anger from people on social media. Many took issue with the likeness with the artist, but most felt the voluminous hair of the statue was too much, even a little offensive.
“This is racism. We need to address why so many statues of Black people are poorly made and fail to resemble the individuals they’re meant to honor,” one X user wrote in a tweet that was liked over 21,000 times. “I rarely see this same issue when it comes to white people.”
The Turner statue is just the latest hometown homage that has elicited the wrong kind of internet attention. Perhaps the most famous statue is the butchered bust commissioned by Madeira International Airport to honor local-boy-turned-global-superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. The former Manchester United star’s grinning statue had the whole world mesmerized, and a little scared, let’s be honest, back when it was unveiled in 2017.
TV icon Lucille Ball was also ‘honored’ with an unfortunate statue, that came to known as “Scary Lucy.”
The 400-pound bronze sculpture, which was privately commissioned and publicly displayed in Ball’s hometown of Celoron, N.Y. became so infamous that in 2015, the sculptor admitted to The Hollywood Reporter that he may have missed the mark with his work. “I take full responsibility for ‘Scary Lucy,’ though by no means was that my intent or did I wish to disparage in any way the memories of the iconic Lucy image,” Dave Poulin said to THR.
Read on to see more reaction on social media to the Turner statue.