Popular Reactions to 9/11: Grizzly Man & The Passion of the Christ

Good conversation with Golden Age intern Jasmine Lee about sentimentality after September 11th spanning contemporary internet artists, Obama's America, and A&E's Intervention. No conclusions, but it led to a thought about the sentimental vs. the pragmatic.

A few years after 9/11 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, two films were released that, in contrast, shed some light on the schism between Western Europe and the United States. Both were produced by émigrés, one Australian, one German; both were returns to a traditional genre of art, one is pastoral, one is religious; and both presented dazzling arguments for distinct political viewpoints, one of stoic European equivalency, one of American democratic adventurism. Together, Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ illuminated a divide between a pragmatic Europe and a sentimental United States.

Tracing the life of what he believes to be a quintessential American eccentric, Werner Herzog edited together video taken by Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor and amateur naturalist, as he spent 13 summers living mostly in isolation and with unprecedented proximity to the grizzly bears of the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. During an unexpectedly long stay his final summer, Treadwell and his girlfriend were mauled and eaten by the bears he had lived with in peace for over a decade. Herzog's presentation of the videos highlights the remarkably beautiful images Treadwell was able to capture and the director's narration is generally fair. That said, there is a bit of a cultural divide. In his 2005 review, David Denby sums it up best:

As Herzog frames it, the entire movie is a very dark joke. Yet there’s an element in the comedy which Herzog may not have intended: the contrast between the self-dramatizing American, with his naïve egotism and optimism, and the hyper-cultivated European, who brings his own burden of despair to nature. Whereas the tormented Treadwell longs for harmony and doesn’t seem to understand that death is at the center of any ecological balance, Herzog sees nothing but death. Looking into the eyes of a bear that comes close to Treadwell’s camera, he discerns cruelty and mercilessness rather than hunger. Neither man, it seems, is willing to admit that a bear is a bear is a bear.

Gibson's Passion is a very different film. We all know the story of Jesus of Nazareth, from birth to death and resurrection, so I won't detail it all. It's the standard (anti-Semitic) fare, except that Gibson makes great effort and takes great time to luxuriate in the brutal violence and creative torture put upon its central character. Rick Salutin, The Globe and Mail's arts columnist, captures the essence of this unique depiction:

[T]he film's stress is not on inflicting relentless pain; it is on passive, unresisting endurance of it. That is the sense in which I think the film is also a moment in the life of Mr. Bush's America... Then it happened -- 9/11 -- everything they anticipated and more. It swiftly became The Passion of America. It had meaning. It was not a disaster akin to other disasters that strike humans all the time, and always will. Rather, as the authorities constantly intoned: The world has changed forever. Not just the United States, the world. You could say exactly that about the passion a la Gibson. In his film, one of the few things Jesus says, in contrast to the endless abuse he suffers, is, "I make all things new."

The savior, after enduring trauma, is focused on making new (retribution) rather than making right (redemption) and the critic is so tied into understanding a thing in its thingness that he misses contextual uniqueness. To me, it seems like the chill in European/U.S. relations after September 11th played out pretty clearly in our (popular) independent cinema in 2004/2005.

Popular Reactions to 9/11: Exploitation

There is a renewed conversation happening out there in the blog-o-sphere about exploitation, so it seems zeitgeist-y enough to talk about some examples in 9/11 culture.

The most obvious examples can be found in political propaganda. The above trailer for DC 9/11: Time of Crisis, a bizarrely hyper-real made for tv movie, launched George W. Bush's re-election campaign. On the left, Fahrenheit 9/11 was pretty egregious with its panning shot of missing persons flyers and more. Director David Zucker tried to tip election '08 by resurrecting 9/11 twice in An American Carol, once in the linked scene as "crazy christians" take over a plane cockpit and another time as George Washington leads its Moore-esque main character from the National Cathedral to the ruins of WTC 1 & 2. Again and again, those towers just keep popping up in campaign advertising.

Both commercial and non-commercial advertising regularly mine the death imagery and patriotic fervor associated with Semptember 11th. During Super Bowl '02, Budweiser had its then-spokes-animals bow towards Manhattan. This 2006 ad for Chevy uses a catchy John Cougar Mellencamp song and a photo of the lights erected at "Ground Zero" to firmly place the brand within the bounds of authentic Americana (pay attention for the gratuitous Katrina shots as well). Copyranter has a wonderful collection of exploitative print ads, many produced by non-profit organizations comparing deaths associated with their causes—such as smoking cigarettes or lacking access to clean water—to deaths on 9/11.

My personal favorite exploitations are those in pursuit of cheap emotional pull. I already linked to the incredible ending scene of Remember Me (which may be one of the best examples), but equally exemplary is the entirety of Jonathan Safran Foer novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Retelling the story of 9/11 through the eyes of a nine-year-old who has lost his father in the attack, Foer's story is cloying, manipulative, and shallow (truly it is "heavy boots.") In Julie and Julia (available on Netflix Instant), the audience is expected to feel something for Julie Powell, a WTC Helpline operator charged with commiserating with the families of 9/11 victims, but nothing can overcome this character's essentially preening personality. Sadly, Reign over Me, some Adam Sandler Oscar-bait is just boring. And finally, from the left and the right, Bruce Springsteen's The Rising and Toby Keith's Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue intend to stoke a similar sort of patriotic jingoism.

Popular Reactions to 9/11: A follow-up on conspiracy

As the last word (/image) on 9/11 conspiracy, the above. From an attendee last night, Karly Wildenhaus, some research about lack of control and the willingness to buy into conspiracy theories. She makes the connection to the blurry aesthetics of Taboo 9/11. Those black blobs trailing behind United Airlines Flight 175 can act as a sort of Rorschach fostering undue fears and suspicions.

Popular Reactions to 9/11: 25th Hour

One of last night's attendees, curator Camilla Pietrabissa, is currently conceptualizing her own exhibition about September 11th. We had a brief conversation about Spike Lee's 25th Hour, really the first film to deal with the attacks in a substantive, if allegorical way and one for which we share a mutual affection. The above scene is a favorite of mine because, through the potentialities of its characters, best friends and cultural archetypes (an unscrupulous day trader, an ineffectual and naive teacher, and its soon to be imprisoned main character, a fallen drug trafficker) it bravely confronted its audience with three visions of a post-9/11 world at a moment when confrontations about political reality were essentially forbidden in (*shudders*) the "mainstream media." Hovering above "Ground Zero," the day trader outlines three options for their doomed friend. Like The U.S. at the point reacting to September 11th, the options "running," "death," and "redemption" all required an abandonment of everything they understood to be stable before the trauma. All and all, it is a surprisingly prescient depiction of America after 9/11.