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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I apologize if my post came off as "get over it". That's not what I intended.
But it seems that everything, war, violence, terrorism, it's all fair game for American entertainment. And yet when it comes to 9/11, we must bow our heads in reverent silence, as though it is somehow separate from, or more sacred than, the destruction that people the world over live with on a daily basis.
Like I said, I come from a place where terrorism is a way of life. It exists in the background of everything you do. In my hometown, they erected gates that would close at 5pm every evening, so there was only one road in and out of town (through a military checkpoint). I can empathize with those who were in Manhattan that day, with people who lost loved ones. I guess I'm just sick of the, "well, you weren't there, so you wouldn't know" attitude that gets hauled out at the merest hint that 9/11 isn't being take very, very seriously.
Speaking of using video cameras as a surrogate for seeing, I thought the film that's done that in the most witty and effective way was "Mr. Bean's Holiday." In that film, Bean uses his camera with such brilliant naivete that it ends up being truly subversive. I've seen previews of Cloverleaf and been completely turned off. A bunch of self-absorbed yuppies in million dollar apartments are menaced by a sea monster. How can help not rooting for the monster?
"On a side note, I wish everyone wasn't so busy clawing for their own sanctimonious high groung over 9/11, and crying about how *their* suffering is so significant. I wish my fellow Americans would show just a little bit of backbone."
It seems like there's always a need to find sanctimony or hypocrisy or weakness or foolishness in anyone who expresses a reaction that might - gasp! - reflect that a person is a thinking, feeling human being rather than just a mindless consumer of pop culture. It's a waste of time even to express any opinion on these message boards that isn't flippant or dismissive, because if, heaven forbid, one should share one's honest reaction, one is immediately accused of all sorts of base motives or flaws of character. This isn't about searching for sanctimonious high ground or crying about the significance of one's own suffering. I'm actually amused that some people find it so distasteful that some people might find "Cloverfield," uh, distasteful. "Oh, come on, it's like a Godzilla film - who doesn't like Godzilla?" (Well, I haven't liked Godzilla since I was about eight years old, but that's another matter. It's also interesting that people are saying that (1) "Cloverfield" is not about 9/11 on one hand, and (2) on the other that it should be OK that "Cloverfield" is about 9/11 because after all "Godzilla" was really about Hiroshima and Nagaski and everyone loves Godzilla right?)
"If they had just a little spine, the Bush-Cheneys of the world would have a harder time wiping their asses with the constitution."
Oh, this is such a stretch. This is practically a non-sequitor. What does liking or not liking the premise of "Cloverfield" have to do with having or not having political backbone? Last time I checked, the citizens of New York City voted overwhelmingly against Bush/Cheney in both 2000 and 2004. The fact that some of us might find "Cloverfield" in very bad taste has nothing to do with the success of the Bush/Cheney agenda. Is liking a stupid monster movie really the definition of courage in our pop cultural landscape?
Fight the power! Watch "Cloverfield!"
Of course no one has suggested burning or boycotts; I thought that was an obvious rhetorical over-the-top gag, as juxtaposed with the real choice, which I'm sure you and many others will make, to simply avoid this movie if it hurts too much.
I have a friend who was struck by lightning, and despite being badly hurt, he lived. A horrific thing, right? But he dealt with it in his own way (partly by buying a Harley with the insurance money, partly by realizing he was lucky to have escaped incineration) and he doesn't live in fear of lightning -- despite that whole "not striking twice" thing having been disproven -- nor does he think the Weather Channel is exploitative.
And he's a fan of Frankenstein movies, which exploit lightning as the jump-start for a life that shouldn't be...which, again, gets to the point of my earlier letter: Monsters, myths and other stories have reasons to exist aside from what is visible on the surface.
Rollercoasters elicit a reaction from our biochemical shells -- not knowing the difference between perceived and real threats -- a kind of thrill. Which is often followed by a kind of sickness, perhaps the result of an overload of adrenaline into muscles that aren't needed to fight or fly. So why do we ride? is a question for further study. But the fact is, we do.
Many of us feel that desire to experience fright in safe, containable doses. Does it brace us for the next time that a real scare comes along, the way stressing a muscle makes it rebuild stronger? Thrill-junkies would seem to suggest so. Having inured themselves to the mundane, they push higher and harder. I know that once I've seen a scary movie -- "Alien," "The Ring," "The Others," whatever -- it's not the same the second time around. Maybe it's just that the surprise is gone, but so is that rush.
So maybe the reason "Cloverfield" -- or the idea of it; most of us have only seen trailers and the effective teasing marketing campaign -- has so many people intrigued is that we're all looking for a new and bigger scare.
And maybe (I know this is a buttload of maybes, but I'm trying to extrapolate from the specific to the general here, always a crapshoot) being scared by measures is, in some ways, good for us.
Face it, New York and Los Angeles get destroyed a lot in movies because it's a win-win for the accountants who greenlight them; horror for blue states and porn for red states.
Destroying countless acres of farmland isn't going to feature in any of our movie plots soon, though you can argue the effect would be far greater.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
