signal to noise
The kids at my job are always surprised when I tell them I don't watch television. To them, it's sort of the unthinkable omission -- even telling them I play video games doesn't make up for the weirdness of my lack of TV habits (or perhaps augments it, when it comes to the teenage boys). I mean, I do watch television shows, as evidenced by how peripheralsight was just over here with her Supernatural DVDs (omg the gag reel). But the cable dangles from the ceiling in the same place it was when we moved into this apartment, and we may or may not get inadvertantly free cable (as our next-door neighbour suggests), I don't know, we've yet to get around to hooking it up.
As such, it's no great sacrifice on my part that I will not be watching ABC/Disney's The Path to 9-11 tonight and tomorrow night -- and not just because it isn't any good. I've refrained from adding my voice to the protest largely because it feels almost disingenous to threaten with boycott a network I don't watch anyway. But I've been watching the furor on the liberal blogs this past week or so, raised over this TV movie that plans to commemorate the five-year anniversary of September 11th with five hours of lies about how it was all Clinton's fault.
My major complaint about this all, truth be told, is the timing. While my tendancy to grow fangs and hiss whenever the DaVinci Code gets mentioned belies any claim I might make not to care about those who make deliberate fiction of history, I can sometimes be persuaded by the merits of dramatic effect and poetic licence even when I don't agree with the agenda(s) behind them. In this case, however, I remain unconvinced. From all I've read, this film attempts to sort out into artificial clarity all the causes of a historical event that is still ongoing, and whose repercussions are still being felt. The people on whose watch this occured are still in power, and whether or not they remain in power relates directly not only to their culpability with regards to the attacks, but to the integrity with which they have managed the response -- both of which are purportedly whitewashed in this docu-drama. Using lies about history for propaganda is its own sin, using them while the common consciousness about the event is still being forged doubly so. After all, which is easier -- reading the entire 9-11 Commission Report, or watching a prime-time, commercial-free movie that purports to tell the OFFICIAL TRUE STORY about those findings?
The question remains as to why anyone would make a drama, docu- or otherwise, about a world-changing event a mere five years out, which brings me back to how part of the reason discussion of September 11th pisses me off is that the people who want to talk about it are usually the same people to whom the event was not a tangible, proximal. I remember making the trip from Massachusetts to South Texas for Thanksgiving 2001, and seeing the latter plastered with GOD BLESS AMERICA signs and American flags and the what-not, shows of nationalism that had been far less conspicuous up here in the Northeast. When my mother and stepfather asked me to take them to Ground Zero, I had to wonder what it was they thought they were going to see.
Not that I think you have to have been in Lower Manhattan/Washington, D.C. that day to have felt its impact, of course. However, it has always seemed to me that there are two kinds of people fascinated with 9-11: those who serve to benefit from its continued exploitation, and those who were far enough away from danger as to regard the entire mess as a very sad thing that could happen again at any time to people who aren't they. This movie reeks of the former's pandering to the latter, to say the least.
When Zhou En-Lai was asked in 1972 what he thought of the French Revolution of 1789, he replied that it was still too soon to tell. A mere five-year anniversary leaves a lot of perspective to be desired.
As such, it's no great sacrifice on my part that I will not be watching ABC/Disney's The Path to 9-11 tonight and tomorrow night -- and not just because it isn't any good. I've refrained from adding my voice to the protest largely because it feels almost disingenous to threaten with boycott a network I don't watch anyway. But I've been watching the furor on the liberal blogs this past week or so, raised over this TV movie that plans to commemorate the five-year anniversary of September 11th with five hours of lies about how it was all Clinton's fault.
My major complaint about this all, truth be told, is the timing. While my tendancy to grow fangs and hiss whenever the DaVinci Code gets mentioned belies any claim I might make not to care about those who make deliberate fiction of history, I can sometimes be persuaded by the merits of dramatic effect and poetic licence even when I don't agree with the agenda(s) behind them. In this case, however, I remain unconvinced. From all I've read, this film attempts to sort out into artificial clarity all the causes of a historical event that is still ongoing, and whose repercussions are still being felt. The people on whose watch this occured are still in power, and whether or not they remain in power relates directly not only to their culpability with regards to the attacks, but to the integrity with which they have managed the response -- both of which are purportedly whitewashed in this docu-drama. Using lies about history for propaganda is its own sin, using them while the common consciousness about the event is still being forged doubly so. After all, which is easier -- reading the entire 9-11 Commission Report, or watching a prime-time, commercial-free movie that purports to tell the OFFICIAL TRUE STORY about those findings?
The question remains as to why anyone would make a drama, docu- or otherwise, about a world-changing event a mere five years out, which brings me back to how part of the reason discussion of September 11th pisses me off is that the people who want to talk about it are usually the same people to whom the event was not a tangible, proximal. I remember making the trip from Massachusetts to South Texas for Thanksgiving 2001, and seeing the latter plastered with GOD BLESS AMERICA signs and American flags and the what-not, shows of nationalism that had been far less conspicuous up here in the Northeast. When my mother and stepfather asked me to take them to Ground Zero, I had to wonder what it was they thought they were going to see.
Not that I think you have to have been in Lower Manhattan/Washington, D.C. that day to have felt its impact, of course. However, it has always seemed to me that there are two kinds of people fascinated with 9-11: those who serve to benefit from its continued exploitation, and those who were far enough away from danger as to regard the entire mess as a very sad thing that could happen again at any time to people who aren't they. This movie reeks of the former's pandering to the latter, to say the least.
When Zhou En-Lai was asked in 1972 what he thought of the French Revolution of 1789, he replied that it was still too soon to tell. A mere five-year anniversary leaves a lot of perspective to be desired.