9/11: 9 Years Later
Nine years ago. It seems like just
yesterday that our generation’s ’date that will live in infamy‘
took place. Nine years ago today the world as we knew it changed.
Nine years ago yesterday, the average American knew little of weapons
of mass destruction, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. . . What were we
doing nine years ago yesterday? I know I was a junior in high
school. But what did the world look like? I can hardly remember.
So let’s reminisce.
September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday that
year. The weekend before, the number one at the box office was Peter
Hyams’s The Musketeer starring Mena Suvari and Tim Roth,
making a whopping $10.3 million in what was its opening weekend.
Also released that weekend were the Black romantic comedy Two Can
Play That Game and the Mark Wahlberg critique of the music
industry Rock Star. That night the music industry had its
focus on two areas. Jay-Z was preparing to release his sixth album,
The Blueprint, the next day while POD was under similar
preparations for their new album Satellite. The music
industry also had its focus on Michael Jackson’s concert in Madison
Square Garden celebrating 30 years of his solo career and to promote
the future launching of what would be his last album Invincible.
On this day, a British man found a way to cheat his way to 1 million
pounds on the British version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.
Many Americans went to sleep that night wondering how the Denver
Broncos would cope with the loss of Ed McCaffrey to a broken leg in
the first Monday Night Football game of the season (Broncos beat the
Giants 31-20 in their first game in a new stadium). Other than that,
the days leading up to the defining moment of the 21st
Century were just average ordinary days. The day before, the New
York Daily News’s front page story spoke of the biggest threat
to the city at the time: killer mold in an east-side apartment. So
what were some of the other main differences between now and then?
Let’s look at what our culture looked like through a lens that
gives profound snapshots of culture at that or any time: movies.
Two years before 9/11, the movie
everyone was talking about as the perfect snapshot of our culture was
the Oscar-winning film American Beauty. The focus? A man
going through a mid-life crisis that quits his job, buys his dream
car, and tries to get in shape to impress his daughter’s friend
while his wife looks for great success as a real estate agent. Many
of those themes are now long lost dreams in a society where jobs are
scarce, classic “gas-guzzling” cars are almost considered evil,
and the real estate market is struggling to say the least.
Other ideas found in movies are
considered foreign and obsolete now. No more can we see Nicolas Cage
doing his action sprint down an airport terminal to meet Tea Leoni
just before she gets on her plane like in 2000’s The Family Man.
No more could Lloyd Christmas fall off the jetway, again, as a limo
driver in Dumb and Dumber. No more can Fletcher Reed hijack a
flight of stairs and chase down an airplane, making it stop by
throwing shoes at the cockpit so his son won’t have to go Boston in
Liar Liar. No more can Greg Focker use his Chinese Death Grip
on his suitcase while screaming it’s not a bomb (which makes
everyone think it is a bomb) and not be considered an enemy of the
state like in Meet the Parents. The days in which these acts
were acceptable are now gone due to them being breaches in new
security and potential terrorist threats. Films that depict direct
attacks on our nation are even more forbidden. No more can we watch
President Harrison Ford make terrorist Gary Oldman “get off his
plane” in Air Force One. No more can aliens come down to
Earth and blow up the White House like in Independence Day.
Even films like Con Air where an airplane is seen crashing
through the streets on Las Vegas would have a tough time being
filmed. If you really think of these moments being filmed the way
they were in our post-9/11 culture, you realize that there is no way
they could be made.
So what has changed in our movies these
last nine years? Instead of the care-free Lester Burnham in American
Beauty, we have Ryan Bingham, George Clooney’s professional
downsizer in Up in the Air. This film also portrays the new
look of airports, with stricter security checks and a lead character
that purposefully wears slip-on shoes to be more efficient after they
run through the X-ray scanner. Instead of war films looking back at
the great wars of our past like Saving Private Ryan and The
Thin Red Line, we have our new war to dramatize on the screen in
films like The Hurt Locker and Stop-Loss. Outside of
Up in the Air and films set before 2001, I cannot even think
of a meaningful scene in a movie that takes place in an airport that
does not involve Viktor Navorski. This used to be a stereotypically
perfect place for a climactic scene. Now, it is not even attempted.
Instead of trying to create something fresh and original, we find
more often than not our focus goes towards direct critiques and
commentaries on our culture and government in films like W.,
Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, Michael
Clayton, and others. It almost feels like our originality was
put into a recession when the World Trade Center tumbled to the
ground, as most of the more original ideas of the last decade have
been remakes of older films. Life as we know it was changed forever
that day, and our movies show it.
[ADDENDUM] If there is one other trend in this post-9/11 era of film making, it is the emergence of the superhero movie. These blockbusters have dominated the box office almost every summer since Spider-Man in 2002. This new brand of superhero film is far different from the campy, quirky styles of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher who sparked the superhero interest in the 80's and 90's. Now, superhero films are dark and realistic. They try to make it feel like this situation could actually exist in our world. Tony Stark was even taken in by cave-dwelling terrorists. Also, every superhero film seems to threaten the well-being of the entire world in some serious way before good wins out in the end. It is as if we were so starving for a sign that good can triumph over evil that we wanted to meld our fantasy superheroes with our terror-stricken society. Why couldn't Batman come flying in and save our world from the terror about to strike? Why couldn't Iron Man travel to the Middle East and wipe out a group of terrorists in an afternoon? Why couldn't The Avengers assemble and defend NYC from a seemingly unstoppable onslaught of evil? We needed a disconnect that gave us hope. Superheroes have been able to do that, and will continue to as many of the big blockbusters announced in future years continue this trend. [END ADDENDUM]
As the years pass, life will slowly
start to look a little more like September 10, 2001. With each year,
you can see small changes. The fact that we just had a film like Up
in the Air, focused in airports and on airplanes, nominated for
Best Picture is showing that change. Also, the events are starting
to be a little less vivid in everyone’s mind. We observe and
remember the day, but it does not resonate as in our everyday lives
anymore. (My way of observing the day is viewing one, if not both,
of the movies made about that day: Paul Greengrass’s United 93
and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center.) If you think about
it, 90% of teenagers now most likely remember very little about that
day because they were so young. On a day five years ago when all
news channels were broadcasting different remembrances and tributes
around the country, today the tributes can now only be found on The
History Channel. Life is moving on, and the post-9/11 life is the
normal way of life more and more every day. And as we remember and
observe the 9th anniversary, it is fascinating to look
back now on what we looked like before that day, to keep in mind what
happened, and to step back and see the lens that our new ’date that
will live in infamy’ has created for us to see the world through.
What do you remember? What are your thoughts?
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