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Via a couple of people on my flist, I found this excellent post, entitled "I remember Townsend" and it is about quality reporting, WWII, and 9/11, but it also re-emphasizes a point that I attempted to make a few posts back that when we decide to write fiction or dramatize real events or real people, we should tread very carefully and make it clear what we are doing to our audience.
http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/206303.html
The ABC TV show the Path to 9/11 reminds me of how the news media was portrayed in the film "V for Vendetta" which is disturbing in of itself.
Several years ago, I had two experiences similar to the experience that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liz_marcs remembers in her lj post. The first concerned a former army colonel who had been amongst the first to arrive at the Aushwitz death camps in WWII, the second was my great-uncle who survived The Battle of the Bulge. Neither spoke of their experiences often, in the case of my Uncle - not at all, but something I said, and I can't remember what it was exactly, caused them to relate them to me. Not because I was going to write it down necessarily, but because they needed to tell the story. It had been haunting them and perhaps they'd grown tired of hearing or seeing versions that were not what they remembered.
I remember the former colonel telling me how he entered Aushwitz, how until they saw what was inside they had not believed the reports, thought them exaggerated. They weren't. I remember him telling me that what he saw would never leave him and still haunts his dreams. It changed him. Then he went into detail. My great-uncle, who had been in the Battle of the Bulge, related the account of what it was like to sit in a trench during a firefight in similar detail - again stating how it changed him and how he could not watch films based on the experience, since they were simply not true.
Until 9/11, I did not totally get that. Oh I sympathized with their tales. My heart broke over them. But I did not understand what it is like to experience a traumatic event and how it changes you. How hard it is to watch a fictionalized dramatization of it. Or how it feels when people fabricate portions of what happened to suit their own ends.
I was in New York City during 9/11. ( Read more... )
http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/206303.html
The ABC TV show the Path to 9/11 reminds me of how the news media was portrayed in the film "V for Vendetta" which is disturbing in of itself.
Several years ago, I had two experiences similar to the experience that
liz_marcs remembers in her lj post. The first concerned a former army colonel who had been amongst the first to arrive at the Aushwitz death camps in WWII, the second was my great-uncle who survived The Battle of the Bulge. Neither spoke of their experiences often, in the case of my Uncle - not at all, but something I said, and I can't remember what it was exactly, caused them to relate them to me. Not because I was going to write it down necessarily, but because they needed to tell the story. It had been haunting them and perhaps they'd grown tired of hearing or seeing versions that were not what they remembered.I remember the former colonel telling me how he entered Aushwitz, how until they saw what was inside they had not believed the reports, thought them exaggerated. They weren't. I remember him telling me that what he saw would never leave him and still haunts his dreams. It changed him. Then he went into detail. My great-uncle, who had been in the Battle of the Bulge, related the account of what it was like to sit in a trench during a firefight in similar detail - again stating how it changed him and how he could not watch films based on the experience, since they were simply not true.
Until 9/11, I did not totally get that. Oh I sympathized with their tales. My heart broke over them. But I did not understand what it is like to experience a traumatic event and how it changes you. How hard it is to watch a fictionalized dramatization of it. Or how it feels when people fabricate portions of what happened to suit their own ends.
I was in New York City during 9/11. ( Read more... )