The Wall, The Screen and the Image: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

I've never been to Washington D.C. I've always wanted to though. To be able to see the buildings that give tribute to our history would be astounding. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial isn't a building that I ever really spent time contemplating about or even seeing, but after reading this article by Marita Sturken, I would actually like to visit this monument. I think that it is amazing how the black wall are not only screens that are projected upon, but also shield itself. I never knew that there were, I'm sorry, are statues that were built to go with this monument. I do like the fact that there are two different statues that represent the men and the women of the war, but I don't like the idea that there are two different statues. It would have been a lot more meaningful to have one statue represent both the men and women of the war. Which calls to my attention, why did they have to add more to the monument? Extra statues weren't really needed to get the full significance across.
I always thought that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was in a shape of a V to stand for the "Vietnam" War. I never thought of it as representing anything else. I found this interpretation to be very weird. Ok, so the monument was designed by a female, that doesn't mean anything. And if we look at the fact that she didn't know anything about this war or what it meant to the people who served in it, she did a pretty good job at making it stand for something, really stand for something. It is a place for people who lost someone they loved, whether they were relative, friend, or someone they fought in the war with.
It doesn't matter that this monument has gone through huge amounts of criticism, everything that is great goes through it.