Step 3 of 6

A gift-wrapped disaster

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The enormous eyecatcher of the protest, the replica of the wooden horse that occupied the courtyard of the museum, naturally brings to mind its Trojan predecessor. The tale of the Trojan horse has been told, retold and adapted so many times, that the narrative has transformed into a symbol of its own: the story of the Greeks dealing the last deceitful blow to bring Troy to fall has become so emblematic that it grew out of its original context to become its own proverbial expression. The giant wooden horse is now inseparable from its proverbial meaning as a gift-wrapped disaster. It has been used in countless other protests to visualize the actions of the protestor’s opposition (a type of computer virus has been named a Trojan horse), and the story was even used as a format for internet memes: all to denote something that seems positive, but is actually very harmful. This is the meaning that BP or not BP managed to capture in the case of BP’s sponsorship for Troy: myth and reality. And it is this common denominator that shows what stays the same in translating the Trojan horse to the present.

By presenting its version of the Trojan horse with BP’s sizable green flower as a flag, the group makes BP take on the role of the underhanded Greeks. Accordingly, the place that the horse penetrates takes on the role of ancient Troy: the British Museum. Thus, BP has presented the British Museum with something that appears to be a welcome gift, but will ultimately cause its destruction. One can easily imagine what this gift is: the sponsorship that BP continues to give to the British Museum. The message is explicated by the many activists that intend to convince the public: [find quote] The British Museum takes BP’s funding as an act of cultural charity – without them there would be no exhibition in the first place – but by accepting BP’s sponsorship, the British Museum is inadvertently advertising BP, and thus contributing to the climate change that BP’s agenda of fossil fuel extraction is inducing. In response to the activist’s claims, executives of the British Museum stuck to the argument that many of the exhibitions in the museum were made possible through the generosity of BP. Putting it in the terms of the Trojan horse narrative: the British Museum is in the midst of accepting BP’s Trojan horse under the presumption that this gift is nothing more. Declining the gift is not the way to address the issues with BP’s environmental policy, according to the British Museum.[Video] A number of other London-based cultural establishments had cut their ties with BP in the previous year, adding to the controversy of the British Museum’s persistence in maintaining its relations with BP. By presenting BP’s sponsorship to the British Museum as a Trojan horse, BP or not BP sends a clear message: don’t fall for the seemingly charitable gift, as it is the bearer of destruction of our earth.

But sending a message to the museum was not the only objective of the protestors. Climate change concerns every human being, and so the broad problematics of environmental destruction and its political consequences were also wrapped up in Trojan metaphors. Upon the horse’s arrival in the courtyard, the protestors quite literally poured out of its body, fully clothed in black robes, presumably representing oil emerging from the horse. In this interpretation, another message comes to light: the oil and petrol industry (amongst many others) might have presented fossil fuels as the way to an innovative future, but it’s time to see through the gift’s wrapping paper and lay bare the true effects of fossil fuel usage before it destroys humanity. In this view, Troy is not strictly represented by the British Museum, but by earth and humanity as a whole.