Time Will Come
Last week, in a comment on my In the Midst of Manhattan post, Jer linked to a Katrina Onstad article from cbc.ca that echoed my sentiments about New York and the movies. Or rather, my sentiments echoed hers, I guess, since hers appeared three days before mine. Had I read it before I wrote that entry I would likely have simply pasted a link with a few additional personal reflections. It's remarkable that she's used a number of the same reference points I did, citing similar films, actors and directors.
In the days, weeks and months following 9/11 I wondered how writers and filmmakers would respond, and how the culture and character of New York City could never be represented in exactly the same way it had been. The shot of the World Trade Center towers in the opening credits for Friends, for example, suddenly took on a profundity that the show was unprepared to deliver.
And while Hollywood seems to have recently returned (with limited success, it seems) to making New York a backdrop for beautiful, wealthy, navel-gazing intellectuals in their multi-million dollar loft apartments, I'm waiting for the films and novels in which the events and aftermath of 9/11 and how it has shaped the way we live are explored in greater depth and with historical insight, with the perspective gained from the passage of time. And I don't mean movies and books literally about 9/11, such as United 93 or Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. That doesn't really interest me.
Well, since Onstad already said it, (and in case you don't want to read the whole article even though it's so good you really should...), I'll quote her:
"Some might say that seeing New York function once again as set dressing means that the terrorists aren't winning, but maybe it only suggests a kind of artistic denial, or complacency. Of course, "movie New York" has always been a myth, but on 9/11, that myth was shattered, maybe irreversibly, leaving a space at the movies for a new kind of New York. Wouldn't it be great if filmmakers could find a way to show New York that is neither blinkered to the new world reality nor directly addressing 9/11? Soon, perhaps, films will catch up to our own stretched imaginations and New York will turn up not just as a changed city, but also as a changed symbol. The city means something new now, and it is up to artists to tell us what that is, however complicated, however divisive." ~ Katrina Onstad from New York State of Mind, cbc.ca
What, for instance, does Woody Allen have to say about what has become of his town? And I wonder if that has something to do with why his last few films have been mounted in London, England. Similarly perhaps, Spike Lee took on Hurricane Katrina in a much-ballyhooed documentary, When the Levees Broke, but has not really addressed the attack on the city that has become synonymous with his persona in any significant way.
That I'd like to see. And the time will come.
4 Comments:
I find it interesting that there seems to be a delay in US pop culture when dealing with topics close to home - particularly raw ones.
When did the movies about Vietnam come out, and even those simply eluding to it, or featuring a charater impacted by it? the 1980s
9/11 will probably have to undergo a sort of digestion, and then writers and directors might feel a little more comfortable broaching the subject, or in what you mentioned, factoring it into their writing.
9/11 is a shadow, perhaps the light is still going to come.
You bring up an interesting point, Myron. By the way, which are the important Vietnam movies? 'Platoon', obviously, which came out in 1986. 'Fourth of July' (1989)? 'First Blood' (1982) was a little sensational, but somehow managed humanize the plight of returning veterans who had "lost the war". I caught a bit of 'Uncommon Valor' (1984) on cable the other night, and although I love Gene Hackman, I'm not sure it's an important Vietnam film.
It also occurred to me that there were a lot of great, heroic WWII epics in the 50s and 60s, but I've never seen anything that humanized the war and gripped my heart like 'Band of Brothers', which, as you well know, only came out in 2001.
Has there been a great film about Pearl Harbor?
The difference with Vietnam and WWII is that those were foreign wars. And I can't help but think that European and Vietnamese filmmakers probably had a more visceral, immediate reaction than North American filmmakers did, although I can't think of any specific films to reference at the moment.
But I'm certain that you're right, it'll take some time for New York filmmakers and artists to adequately process what has happened to their city. Right now they've all got their sights set on toppling the reign of the Republicans.
Yes....one of students brought up a very apt point after we watched the beginning of Farenheit 9/11:
"But he won the next election."
Toppling the Bush junta, is "unfortunately" inevitable - I still have a raw wound in that he won his second term. He should have lost. My frustration was amplified considerably when it was the American public that brought him in more convicingly the second time around.
To now pick up the shards of glass of US foreign policy dooms either Dem or Rep in the next term.
Bush junta. I like that.
There seems to be a glut of Iraq documentaries making the festival rounds this year, but none of them are getting anywhere near as much attention as Fahrenheit 9/11 did. I think everyone knows as much as they need to know by now. If anyone's still in the dark, they're willfully so.
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