The much-discussed United 93 has been in general
release for over a month, and so far no one has died from the shock
of seeing its events recreated “too soon” after their occurrence.
In August, Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center will debut, and it has already
begun previewing in theaters. Stone is of course renowned as a
controversialist, but he has apparently made a film focusing not on
politics but on the bravery of some Port Authority police officers
on that day.
United 93 and World Trade Center, depicting as
they do the responses of innocent Americans to terrorism, should be
relatively uncontroversial. Yet just as the opening of United
93 prompted media hand wringing over the film’s timing,
Stone’s film has already begun to arouse concern for the tender
psyches of American audiences. According to an AP story, when the
film’s trailer was released, “producers reportedly sent theater
owners a warning that some members of their audiences might find
the images upsetting.” Imagine that.
The American moviegoer’s typical evening at the multiplex
features a staggering array of images of violence, sex, and
criminality, a generous helping of political propaganda, and an
unrelenting assault on what Hollywood derides as bourgeois values.
Among the smart set, the more customary response to popular
concerns about violent or disturbing content is to scoff at the
rubes in the sticks and tell them to stay away from the theaters if
they can’t handle it. Now the 9/11 films are coming, and their
usually intrepid souls have turned to fluffernutter.
One doesn’t have to be a cynic to notice that the rare outbreaks
of sensitivity on the part of critics seem to arise for only
certain kinds of films. When Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of
the Christ was released in 2004, it caused a firestorm of
controversy stemming not only from its portrayal of Jews, but also
from its graphic, almost unbearable violence, which some critics
compared to pornography (usually, critics are praising a film when
they make such comparisons).
Later in 2004, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11
prominently featured the attacks in its opening moments, when the
roar of the planes’ engines and the sound of their impact into the
Trade Center towers were heard against a blackened screen. While
the film provoked a blizzard of commentary on the right and the
left, I don’t recall Moore being criticized for insensitivity in
using the 9/11 attacks to advance a political position. While he
was called on the carpet by his critics for his fast and loose way
with facts (and is now being sued for misrepresenting a veteran’s
views), no one suggested that American audiences somehow couldn’t
handle what he was dishing out.
Yet according to one recent news account, a moviegoer (in New
York, no less) shouted out “too soon!” when a trailer was shown of
United 93. Perhaps I am not giving this individual enough
credit for independent thought, but I find it hard to believe that
his outburst would have occurred without the media’s first giving
currency to such an idea.
ALL OF THIS PUTS ME in mind of my most memorable experience in a
movie theater, which provided valuable perspective on what
constitutes “upsetting” content.
I saw The Passion one weekday afternoon not long after
it opened, at a sparsely filled movie theater in suburban Michigan.
Shortly before the coming attractions began, a half dozen elderly
nuns in habits entered the theater and sat in the front row. I felt
for them when the trailers started. Not only was the volume at
decibel level, causing several of them to cover their ears, but the
content was the usual Hollywood fare: exploding autos, guns, sex,
drugs, crime, bathroom humor, and the rest. The nuns winced and
turned away at several points — it seemed likely they hadn’t been
inside a theater in years — while the rest of the audience sat
unaffected.
Then the feature began, and the audience roles were reversed.
Watching the cruelties inflicted on Christ caused many in the
theater to turn away, bow their heads, or cover their eyes. A few
people walked out. What were the nuns doing during all of this?
They sat calmly without flinching, the way the rest of us had
during the previews. For them, violence with context and religious
meaning, even violence as brutal as that shown in The
Passion, was not nearly so difficult to accept as violence
devoid of both.
It often seems that American pop culture’s main function since
September 11th is to strip meaning from our common experience of
that day and sully every effort to draw resolve from its realities.
At the same time, the culture holds up the trivial and the marginal
as the worthy objects of our loyalties. We tend to yawn, or cheer,
through stylized, ironic violence, but we flinch or cry “too soon!”
when that violence reminds us that life is not trivial and the
world we live in is filled with menace.
The memory of 9/11 has become something of a quasi-religion, and
mostly it has a New Age flavor. We’re at home with endless memorial
ceremonies, candles, and tears; they’re almost like the clean, neat
face of Jesus on postcards. What the nuns knew about Christ, and
what we’d best keep in mind about 9/11, is that the dirty side is
what matters. That means the sound of the planes, the flames, the
bodies falling. If a few filmmakers actually want to take us there,
however imperfect their efforts, we should have at least enough
spine not to flinch.
And if we can’t even do that, how on earth do we expect to
acquire courage in the event of another attack?
