9/11, a quarter century on

It was an awful event at the time, and it has become clear since that 9/11 acts as some kind of dividing line between one era and the next. It's 25 years later and it feels like it's as hard as ever to navigate the aftermath.

I have been blogging long enough that my first post about 9/11 was 20 years ago, on the 5 year anniversary. I visited Ground Zero in 2007. And in 2009 I blogged about the conspiracy theories that had grown about it. 

A few nights ago I was talking politics with a friend and we reminisced about how optimistic things seemed in the late 90s when "New Labour" were elected. The stale Conservative government was swept away in a landslide led by Tony Blair. A few months prior to 9/11 and Labour had been re-elected for a new term in government. 

9/11 derailed that optimism. It blew the lid off New Labour when, a year later, the UK joined in the invasion of Iraq. That was followed by joining in the military operation in Afghanistan. It all got very messy and it feels like the ultimate outcome hasn't helped make the world much safer.

I'm now so old, I can read posts on Reddit from grown adults asking what it was like to see the Twin Towers fall, in the same way I would ask my parents about Martin Luther King or Beatlemania. Anything that happened before you were born lives in the realm of myth and make believe. But it's a small shock when you realise your own history is now pre-history for a great wodge of the population. 

The sad thing about those posts, and the replies that they elicit, is the sense of what we have lost. A feeling of hopeful change and progress got buried in the rubble of the World Trade Centre. Our governments defaulted to war mode. Culturally we embraced a threat mindset, which we are seeing now in extremis in rhetoric about being invaded. Conspiracism has thrived and mistrust is common currency.

That fear burden is one of the legacies of 9/11; the impact of terrorism is to spread terror. And it has been very effective. So many people seem perma-scared now, often of things that, rationally, have zero impact on them. 

Somehow, we need to find a way to mourn the losses of 9/11, without letting terror dominate our lives. 

Is the villain of the Guardians of the Galaxy film a cipher for Islamists?

This post has spoilers

In case you didn’t read my review of 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy was my favourite film for loads of reasons. I liked the characters. The story was fast-paced. It used retro-tastic songs to soundtrack action sequences. There were jokes.

But there is something that has niggled me slightly about it, and that’s the villain of the piece, Ronan the Accuser.

We first meet Ronan undertaking an arcane rite that is sacred to his people. He expands on this when he exposits in front of a captive, who he then kills. He is quickly described as a fanatic who won’t listen to the (presumably democratically elected) leaders of his race, the Kree, and has embarked on a personal mission to wipe out those who do not follow the ancient ways and traditions he has committed himself to.

He is basically a murderer with ambitions of genocide, setting out on a jihad.

Pertinent to that is the way he wear a head-dress that looks like the type traditionally worn in the Middle East.

I'm beginning to suspect that Ronan is a cipher for Islamist jihadis. Fanatics are the new villains in Hollywood – people motivated not by base human emotions like greed or vengeance, or compelled by their political creed to commit atrocities, but people who interpret their religion or tradition as mandating their terrible deeds.

Note that Ronan is not seen as typical member of the Kree. He is not under the control of the Kree government, which is both unable and unwilling to oppose him. This parallels our time where the fundamentalists have struck out on their own terror-strewn path - their interpretation of what 'true faith' looks like - that governments struggle to deal with because arguing over truth in religion is pretty much impossible.

Ronan’s religiously-inspired ruthlessness leads him to issue an order to execute every inhabitant of a prison that he invades with his followers. His aim is to wipe out all the life on Xandar, the home planet of the galactic police force, the Nova Corps. The Xandarians are heretics and blasphemers and must be wiped out.

While Guardians of the Galaxy was written and filmed a while before it was released in the summer, it does seem prescient in the way it parallels the rise of Islamic State, which is basically a rogue warlord engaging in genocide against different ethnic and religious groups. Both IS and Ronan have a scorched earth policy when it comes to destroying the infidel.

Consciously or not, Hollywood and comic books do tend to reflect and give voice to the wider concerns of our culture. At the moment, Western democracy feels threatened and powerless in the face of Islamist terrorism. Star-Lord speaks for us when he says he isn’t going to stand by and let innocent people perish. However, in real life we can’t distract fundamentalists with a dance-off while our genetically modified raccoon buddy removes their source of power.

It's all a conspiracy...except it's not

Eight years on from 9/11 and how time has flown. What’s interesting for me though is how many conspiracy theories have sprung up in quite a short time.

Just to set out where I’m coming from – I don’t believe any of the conspiracy theories for two reasons. 1) As I see it, a jet plane crashing into a skyscraper is likely to destroy it without the need for thermite charges or the CIA. 2) I don’t believe large groups of people can keep secrets very well.

A lot of people would have to be involved in a conspiracy to bring down the World Trade Center. And human beings are unreliable blabbermouths. Someone would have let slip that there was more to 9/11 than the official view, if there was more to it.

Plus there’s the reasoning (if you can call it that) of the conspiracy theorists. Basically their argument runs like this: If the Government conspired to destroy the WTC, then they would deny it. So the fact that they deny conspiring to destroy the WTC ‘proves’ they did actually conspire to destroy the WTC.

Just about every conspiracy theory I have ever seen has that circular reasoning at the heart of it.

Ultimately conspiracy theories are just people looking for a ‘supernatural’ explanation for something quite mundane. We don’t want to believe that a handful of people with only rudimentary flight experience could cause such carnage, so we invent a conspiracy to make us feel safer – this must have been a huge operation with government complicity and decades of planning and so on. That’s far better than the thought that this was a random act of terror caused by a few people, which could be easily replicated.

As a race we have often created ‘supernatural’ explanations for random, frightening events that we have no control over. Whether it’s sacrificing virgins to appease the volcano gods, or throwing gold coins into rivers to ask the river spirits for safe crossing, it comes down to the same thing. We want to ‘explain’ the randomness as somehow caused by something, because that makes it less scary. We can perhaps do something to propitiate the gods (or the government) so that the danger goes away.

But the thing is, just wishing the world was a safer place doesn’t make it so.

My Ground Zero story

It's hard to believe it's six years since 9/11.

Earlier this year I visited Ground Zero, which has apparently gradually shrunk as parts of it are redeveloped. Opposite the site where the Twin Towers stood is St Paul's Chapel, which I think is the oldest church in New York. The chapel became an emergency room following the terrorist attacks, and then a place to eat and crash out for those working through the debris several storeys underground. In the chapel are a large number of displays about the aftermath of 9/11, photos of the church workers and volunteers who gave up their time to care for the rescue workers who still had to toil on even though there was no hope of rescuing any more survivors.

St Paul's Chapel was where George Washington worshipped on a regular basis - in fact Washington's private pew was kept as a kind of monument to the first president. But with space at a premium, the church leaders decided they'd have to use Washington's pew as if it was any other part of the church.

Because Washington suffered with foot problems in his life, they turned the pew area into a podiatry station. As you can imagine after 12 hour (or more) shifts down in the rubble, workers were footsore. Damp conditions didn't help and there were numerous bits of rubble or metal which could scratch or pierce a worker's foot.

Americans are very aware of their history. It isn't as long a history as most European states, but they celebrate it with far more reverence than we do. So, converting the pew was a big deal. But they managed to turn it into a useful treatment point, which didn't preserve a historical event, but used it as an inspiration to create a further bit of history.

And that's my Ground Zero story.

Simpsons movie

The big-screen debut of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, starts with Homer objecting to pay good money to see a film version of a cartoon (Itchy and Scratchy in their case). Homer ‘stands up’ in front of you, turns to face the paying public and calls them suckers. It’s an attempt at irony which falls flat because after watching this you begin to suspect Matt Groening and his compatriots really do consider their fans to be suckers.

The main problem with the movie is that it feels like an overly long TV episode, admittedly with a few bits that might be considered ‘too hot for TV’ (Bart’s naked skateboard ride for example). But this isn’t one of the TV shows from the earlier (good) years of The Simpsons. Yes the jokes are funny, but they’re spread thinly. Most of the minor characters just pop up to say their catchphrases and that’s it. The best laugh is right at the end when Mr Burns tells Smithers that he doesn’t approve of suicide, but he might cheer up watching Smithers attempt it.

Overall, the film's themes have been done before by the Simpsons writers, and done to death at that. The script revolves around toxic waste and pollution, a storyline featured in at least one episode per season. Government intervention is lampooned, but the only new satirical angle is the monitoring of private conversations under the new anti-terrorism laws – a reference which is comical, but parochial. Nobody laughed in our cinema when the scene played out, although it might have killed in America.

And many of the sub-plots were left unresolved. Bart develops a pseudo-parental relationship with Ned Flanders, which you’d expect to end in humiliating rejection for Ned and all his barmy Christian ways. But that never comes. And perhaps that’s what missing from the whole film. The original Simpsons got away with being cruel and made you wince at its satire sometimes. This movie is soft in comparison, and suffers as a result.

Jongudmund’s rating: Not bad, but if you miss it your life won’t be any poorer. 6/10.

Two very contrasting films

United 93
Is it too soon to be making films about 9/11? Some people think so, and certainly this film made me feel a bit uncomfortable. The big question it left me with was 'what would I do, in that sort of situation?'

A couple of points:
1) Technically this film is excellent, with the gimmick of it being filmed in real time actually working for a change. The documentary feel is captured through close-range shots and the emotional impact is heightened as a result. In fact the opening half an hour is so normal that if you didn't know what was going to happen you'd find it tedious.
2) The hijackers are portrayed fairly sympathetically. One is a violent killer, The other three are fanatics, but still human. There is an interesting contrast at one point between the passengers muttering the Lord's Prayer and the hijackers praying or reciting the Koran in Arabic. Whether this juxtaposition of religiosity was planned, or just happened in the spontaneous filming, it is a very interesting part of the film.

Jongudmund's rating: 7/10

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
As a total contrast to United 93, we watched this big-screen version of the cartoon series. I have to admit, I do find SpongeBob entertaining, and this film was as good as the TV show. The song "We are men" that SpongeBob and his best buddy Patrick embark on after being given fake seaweed moustaches was hilarious. And any film that includes the line "I rode the Hasselhoff" should be destined for cult legend status.

Jongudmund's rating 8/10

It's only a film

Today I've learned not to watch films like United 93 the night before I'm due to get on a plane. Especially as everyone on the doomed flight did what I do - ignore the safety instructions. At least one of my travel companions, Ms Marjorie, had seen the film too so we could agree that it wasn't ideal pre-flight viewing.

Five years on from 9/11

It seems weird that we’re already five years on from 9/11. Much has changed in those five years.

I was working back in my Minimum Wage Hell that was the cinema at the time and I remember one of the projectionists coming down from his booth to say that someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Center. 

I assumed he meant it was a stunt in a film he’d been watching, until he said he’d seen it on the news. From then on we took it in turns to watch the news coverage in the staff room. So I saw the second tower fall, live, in a state of numb disbelief.

This really was one of those events that just happened out of the blue. There were rumours, apparently dismissed in the upper echelons of the US government, but nobody really thought a war was going to kick off as a result of those rumours. But it did, and it has, and in many respects it’s going to be a long and dirty war fought on multiple fronts.

I worked in MWH with a number of Somali Muslim lads; all of whom were shocked and horrified by the events of 9/11. How any Muslim could launch such an attack was beyond them.

I imagine there’ll be loads of people blogging about this, talking about it on the radio, replaying the news footage on TV, and so on. Normally I don’t bother to comment on the things everyone else is talking about – what’s the point of adding one more voice to the maelstrom of conspiracy theorists, platitudinal pietists and would-be societal commentators? But, for what it’s worth, this is my story about 11 September 2001.