At the film festival last Sunday, before each screening played a god-awful commemorative short film about the 10th anniversary of 9/11. There is a brooding piano score film professionals talk about what went down in Toronto that day, about considering halting the festival. Notice that the voiceover continues as the film cuts to the speaker, silent, looking away from the camera into the darkened background. With all due respect (and I love the festival and respect the people running it), quite a film-mistep this 6-minute doc is. And consider that the people who mis-stepped are our country’s movie tastemakers. One guy says, about hearing the news, that it felt like he was “falling backwards and you were going to hit the ground and somebody caught you.” Um, you know who felt like he was falling? This guy:
And some lady (yeah, you guessed it, she’s white) says that, “people were definitely looking to The Festival for guidance.”
This is the problem with art about trauma. Sometimes you just can’t go all totally sad and shadowy or it can come off indulgent or maudlin. And this shit is definitely that. I’m personally interested in the German works of art that try to deal with WWII and the Holocaust. Hanneke’s White Ribbon had a really spooky tone regarding the distressed morals passed from one generation to the next. Not straight sappy, here.
That’s why people freak at this photo. It’s a strange image of a bunch of young white people (maybe the TIFF people, ten years younger) apparently laughing as the towers burn across the river from them. Apparently, the photographer held on to the photo until making it public in 2006, 5 years after 9/11. Frankly, it would have been impossible, on him and on the kids in the pic, for the picture to have been released right after it was taken. The kids would have been vilified and the photo’s meaning would have been single (asshole hipsters with perverted irony). But after first 5 years, then 10, it’s a very interesting photo. The first thing I’d say is (as I learned in grief training for this volunteer thing I do) never judge another person’s expression of grief. A bowed head of one guy is not necessarily of more value than a giggle from a teenage girl. Second thing is that I agree with The Guardian writer when he writes of the odd substance of grief, of how it’s not immersing forever, or even continuous for that long a time. The closer you are, the rarer the little cracks, the moments of happiness and laughter. And the farther you get, the less-harsh and less-immediate the trauma feels. Even a minute after, because of grief and regular being-in-the-world, some kids were laughing. More real feeling for them, I have, then for the TIFF people who took an entire decade to make a crappy movie.
we project emotions onto photos all the time that aren't there.
you can't tell me that all of us acted 'acceptably' for the entire time immediately after 9/11. i'm sure we all could have looked stupid/idiotic/insensitive at certain times while watching the coverage on tv.
having said that, this movie was really, really bad. i was @ a 9 am screening last sunday, so the first group to have watched the film. afterwards there was an eerie silence of people who didn't know what to say or do- that Peter Howell part was especially cringe inducing.
Watching it on TV and being a few miles away from it are two different things. If I had been in New York, I would have been concerned with people I know possibly being in the vicinity. I doubt I would have been lounging with some friends like nothing was going on.
colin, well you're missing the point about the unpredictability of the expression of human grief and shock. there's nothing more wrong about feeling a need to 'lounge' than to charge into the ruins.
It's unfortunate there's not a whole of info about the people in the photo. I assume they have no family relation or friends in New York. Because I think most people's gut reaction would have been to find the nearest phone at least.
wow, colin. way to reduce human experience to cliche.
in fact, you're right. i wish this photo had clear explanations of who these people are, what their names are, and the single emotion (because you're only allowed 1, i think it will be called 'sad') that they felt then. also, im sure they didnt call anyone before or after that single second.
You're not the least bit troubled at why they'd just be sitting there like that?
some people, when they have cancer, get really angry and punch people in their vicinity. other people laugh. some people pray. whatever their steez is.
Fair enough.
"Me, lager. Finchy, Lager. Gareth, lager sometimes cider, so different drinks for different... needs"
i have a feeling if something like that happened (and we knew our own personal friends/relatives were okay) we'd be closer to the group above than we'd like.
Are these kids really expressing grief though? It seems like they're just sitting there as if nothing happened. If I didn't know better, I'd say the shot was photoshopped.