Other Things Worthy of Your Time
Still Acting Like It's the Day After
5/25/04
(This was in reply to a review of the movie “Day After Tomorrow” by Fox News Channels’ Roger Friedman, which can be found at the following web address: <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120825,00.html>.)
“There's also a peculiar insensitivity, I think, to those of us who lived through September 11.
In "Day After," downtown New York, in an aerial view, is flooded with water and then snow. The whole thing resembles the billowing smoke that poured between the canyons of buildings on that horrible day from real life. Later, survivors are seen waving from rooftops of buildings, a grisly reminder of the tragic souls who made that mistake at the World Trade Center hoping for safety.
New Yorkers do not need to see our city in this condition, whether or not it's fantasy. I'd rather fly on the wings of soaring birds with Harry Potter than relive those grim images as entertainment.”
Maybe it's the fact I'm not a New Yorker and really had no personal connection besides an uncle flying out of Logan that fateful day three years ago. Maybe it's the fact I would have just been getting out of bed 2,000 miles west. Or maybe it's the passive attitude I seem to take to things, but I don't understand how some (and perhaps a lot) of the people that experienced 9-11 up close and personal in New York still treat the situation like it was the most important event ever, and even recall the event for personal motive.
Terrible things happen. It doesn’t matter where it is, and it doesn’t discriminate. Death, destruction, and sadness have been happening since the beginning of time. It’s a part of life, even as hard as it is to accept. When the tragedy comes though, how do you deal with it? You have to clean up the wreckage, you have to bury the dead, and you have to move on.
Not only did the 9-11 attacks affect the likes of New York and Washington, but it pierced the entire country. We were pulled out of class in a small school in the middle of Montana, to watch smoke bellowing from national landmarks. The entire school in a single room, silent. How are you supposed to look at that? Surely, in all the tragedy, it’s a memorable event that will mark that day through history, but regardless of the importance of the events, no one should be able to say that it should have happened. Regardless of the national pride it spurred, and the history it made, and all the significances, there’s no question that it would have been better had it never happened at all.
Why should we immortalize the event? Why should we change our livelihood because a bunch of cowards killed thousands in cold blood? Isn’t that the purpose of terror, to terrorize, and to change the way people live? The fact is, we need to remember, because when the memory fades, the pride fades, and the true importance fades.
Remember Pearl Harbor? The Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin flick? I don’t know what anyone else’s opinion of the film was, and don’t really care since I’ve seen it for myself, and think it was pretty good. That movie, better than many others based on the event that came before it, played in cold detail the events that plummeted our country into the biggest conflict in the history of the world. What about the scenes of the bombs dropping, and the ships sinking? They were certainly exhilarating, and certainly entertaining. What about the scenes that portrayed people that would have gone through the events? people that died. There was a pretty powerful scene showing men frantically trying to free their friends and shipmates from a rapidly sinking vessel. They would fail, holding the hands of the doomed men as they perished. These were pretty powerful images, but they weren’t real. They were still entertainment—something that stimulates your emotions. It’s not an exploitation of them, just a stimulation. What’s wrong with that?
In fifty years, maybe they’ll come along with another epic movie, and maybe they’ll get just as straight to the point with it. They might call it something else, but the likes of ‘9-11’ or ‘September 11th’ would be more fitting anyway. They’re going to portray the events with special effects and attempt to capture the people through the characters. Like Pearl Harbor they might make up a nice little plot to make it a movie and not a documentary, and move it along. They might even tell true stories, tell about innocent people who got on those flights destined for New York and Washington. They might tell about the fireman and police officers, and all the people that volunteered, trying to make a difference, and died along with the hundreds and thousands that were already doomed. If they follow in the steps of the other noted film, they’ll probably do it pretty well. They’ll exhilarate with the scenes of destruction. And they’ll touch hearts and draw tears with the truths they portray the lives taken in the planes and buried under the wreckage. And this won’t be the first time the story will have been shown, and profited off of, because it’ll be shown a hundred times, and, many of those times, it probably won’t nearly show the event in all its glory and integrity, because that’s what it means to be history.
I haven’t seen The Day After Tomorrow, but I plan to, cause it’s the type of flick you see in the theater—something with big booms, lots of special effects. The worthwhile plots and stimulated emotions are better suited for a personal experience in the comfort of your home. Maybe the movie is as bad as some say it is, but that’s not what I’m attempting to argue. The fact is, it’s a flashy movie that blows stuff up just like every other flashy movie that has blown stuff up. What I don’t understand is how someone could take the shot at it saying that the images portrayed resemble too closely those that actually happened in New York a few years ago.
“New Yorkers do not need to see our city in this condition, whether or not it's fantasy.”
But go ahead and blow the other cities up. That didn’t really happen.
Actually, neither did this. This isn’t even the movie that relives the events like I spoke of, because there are people that aren’t ready, and wouldn’t accept it. If the developers simply wanted to exploit emotions as best as they could, they could have made the movie that would have done so bluntly, but this wasn't it. It’s a tacky and exaggerated movie based on the concept of global warming. New York didn’t flood. And as far as people waving from buildings, people aren’t going to just not do it so to honor 9-11. Why does everyone try to turn someone into the bad guy or something into poison with the accusation that it’s insulting to the families of New York, and so, America. If these accusations are essentially unwarranted, is it the movie that’s exploiting, or the accuser?
September 11th was historic, and terrible, and tragic. But what makes it different than the other terrible and tragic events in history? Is it the fact that it’s not yet history to us?
Those people that died would have wanted to live if they were given the choice and freed from their circumstances. But they’d want us to live too, and live free too. They definitely wouldn't have wanted someone to abuse their names and fates in a call for censorship.
NOTES
I sent this to a local newspaper besides the actual person who wrote the article. It seemed so pointless to write it and never have it see the light of day. It never did though.