Sunday, September 05, 2010

Comments about the movie about Flight 93

(I originally posted this in April, 2006. This is a repost.)

People are falling all over themselves to discuss the trailers for the movie that have taken unsuspecting people by surprise with footage of the events of 9/11. Imagine you are from the area, like I am, and you go to see a nice, relaxing film, and find yourself confronted with the worst thing you have ever witnessed - and the idea that someone is making a piece of fiction out of it, to entertain, of all things.

My husband worked for Dean Witter Discover in 1993, was there when the first bombing took place and evacuated down 86 floors, through the fire and smoke. He will tell you that after that day, whenever he was there, it was always in the back of his mind that the WTC - and Manhattan - was a target.

He was born in Queens, and up until our marriage, a life-long NYC-er. He would never consider working any where else. We bought our house to be near the train to Manhattan, in fact, because that's where he wants to be.

By 9/11/01, he had left the job at the WTC, for a job as an internet architect in a building at the corner of John and Water Streets. On Monday, 9/10, he spent the day in a training seminar in the South Tower, preparing for meetings the following day at Windows on the World with co-workers for the computer expo that was being held there. He owes his life partly to a decision to get breakfast before going up from his office to the meeting - he and his office mates were crossing back from a bagel store and standing in John Street when the first plane hit, and still standing there, trying to get in touch with the big boss and their families to tell them where they were when the second plane struck.

For most of that morning, until his floor secretary's fiancee got a call out to me that he'd heard from her and my husband, I thought he was at Windows on the World and, after the tower fell, that he was dead.

Living in Bergen County, there is not one day that has gone by that the events of that day are not fresh in my mind and reflected in daily life. To think of someone using the deaths of my neighbors, anyone's neighbors as a means to make money makes me want to throw up. My husband had PTS afterwards, and still can not talk about things that he saw that day as he stupidly nearly got killed when the first tower collapsed and he was walking/running to try to get to the ferry only two blocks away. Only a stranger that pulled him to his feet when he fell over the decorative fence around the little park, and the people at the Battery Park City condo office that opened up their door to people fleeing the falling tower helped him get home - so he was incredibly fortunate that day in many ways. I can not even begin to fathom the pain of the family members of those on both airplanes - and, unfortunately, I know all too well the pain of friends and family members of those that died in the towers; both my husband and I lost neighbors, friends and acquaintances.

I got involved in volunteering in my community as a direct response to 9/11, and have spent much of my free time since fundraising for a memorial to victims of that day and other acts of terrorism in my town. So here I am, asking people to purchase bricks or donate for plantings in memory of people I lived around - and someone is going to make more money for their own pockets in one movie showing than we have raised in five years from the community.

Would I censor the movie, or demand it be pulled, or stop it - no. This is still America, and the rights of idiots to exploit the pain and suffering of others has to be weighed as part of the price we pay for the right to express our own thoughts. Would I spend a penny to see it, or willingly watch it - no. And I will not have kind thoughts for the values of those that do walk into a theatre or pay to own such exploitation. It takes a level of obliviousness and crassness that diminshes us all to do that. Something is definately skewed in priorities in this country if this picture has more than a handful of interest - supporting a work of absolute fiction and imaginary storytelling based upon a horrible tragedy. I would much rather see people take the nine or ten bucks and donate it to a charity or hurricane relief or to someplace where it will make the world a more compassionate place than dwell upon the pain of others for a cheap thrill. That is sick in a way I do not want to think about human beings as being.

I prefer to think about those that engaged in the small acts that made a difference, and those that went up the stairs when others were fleeing down - the countless people that helped others, the ones that sheltered strangers, supported the police and fire in the weeks afterwards, all of those of us that lived 9/11 up close and all of those who felt the pain in their hearts and did whatever they could. That is the story to be told. Not the explotation of death, but the affirmation of lives lived with compassion for others. Not the vicarious thrill of fiction, but the very real best of human nature that saved my husband, extended hands out to strangers, and wrapped all of us touched by this event with a human connection that no terrorist can ever break.

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