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shadowkatVia 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. In fact I planned to go to the Twin Towers that day to buy tickets to a Peter Gabriel concert that would be playing later in the week. From my bedroom window in Brooklyn, I could even see the Towers, and had often gone to a promenade in my area to look at that portion of the New York City skyline. That day, September 11,2001, I considered going first thing in the morning to the World Trade Center to pick up tickets, but was still somewhat sleepy from staying out late the night before, and decided it would be much easier to go after work. I wore a nice suite and nice shoes that day. Neither clothes I wished to sleep in or walk in. The night before, it rained. I remember, because I was at a church on Broadway, and got soaked on the way to it - it was a special singing mass to wish the Broadway Actors good luck for the coming season. The actors sang during it. And one my friends, a work colleague, was performing in the choir. The evening left us all with a feeling of hope and happiness.
We worried that it would rain that Tuesday as well. But it didn't. Tuesday was mild, with a pristine blue sky, and a crisp but comfortable breeze. The best day imaginable weather wise. Not a cloud in the sky. The air had just that hint of fall in it. A day like today actually. Around 75 degrees. Not too hot and not too cold either, but warm enough to wear a sleeveless sweater under my powder blue silk blazer.
I was feeling chipper that morning on the way to work, a slight skip in my walk. I had a job interview the next week, downtown, since I recently learned two weeks prior that my current boss despised me and the quicker I got out of the company the better. In fact, that week was the first week since I'd discovered that I had the boss from hell, that I actually felt positive about my future.
Then, around 9:00am, one of my work colleagues, the gal who worked closely with me and who, coincidentally told me that I had the boss from hell, called to inform me that a plane had just hit the North Tower of the WTC. She thought, but wasn't certain, that is was a small private jet. Her call was immediately interrupted by another one, this from Wales, a close friend in Brooklyn who wanted to know if I was safe - since we'd discussed the Gabriel concert the night before - she said the South Tower had been hit before she could say more, her call was interrupted by my Aunt in Texas, who told me that the Pentagon had been hit, then back to my friend who was on hold - who added that the South Tower just collasped - I remember hanging up and dashing to the roof deck and watching the smoke billow in the horizon. It was the only cloud in the sky. We were let out of work early that day. But I was trapped in the Bronx. My home was in Brooklyn, across the river from WTC. So I went home with a work acquaintance, two of us did, and made phone calls from her family home and watched the towers crash to the ground. Even though I saw it on the news I could not believe it. It seemed unreal. Around 3pm, the subways were back in service and I made the long journey home. It took close to three hours, normally my commute was an hour. We had frequent stops underground in tunnels, and the trains were packed. People were in tears. My train, the F, went just a few blocks north of the area, underground - so it picked up a high percentage of folks who'd escaped the towers or the blocks within that vicinity. They exchanged stories. And since we didn't have much information - some of the stories were exaggerated - such as a plane hit the White House or a plane hit the Capitol. We didn't know. I was able to give them some information from the news accounts I saw on TV, but these were mostly from the broadcast networks - which had been on at my work colleagues home. My parents were unreachable - they'd gone to Greece for a ten-day cruise. I did reach my grandmother and my brother.
I remember at one stop on the train that had decided to go express, people hammering at the windows to get on, but the train wouldn't open its doors and just kept going. We were then stuck under the East River for approximately 30 minutes. It felt longer. At Bergen, a stop before my usual one, I leapt off the train, and walked the last ten-fifteen blocks home, a shorter walk than most people - who simply went over the bridges. On the way, I looked up at the sky which was brown. The pristine blue covered with a reddish brown soot spattered with white, the white turned out to be paper - all the paper from the offices in the Towers. The cars and streets were covered with a thin layer of the stuff. When I finally made it to my small apartment and looked out my bedroom window - I saw that the towers were no more, just smoke in the sky.
My parents weren't able to get ahold of me until the following Friday. They had gotten a hold of my brother who told them I was alright, and me that they were alright. The next day I went to work - we all had to go to work or risk a vacation day. And while I almost broke down once or twice on the subway platforms, I was fine until that following Friday, when I broke down and could not stop crying. I remember calling the Employment Assistance Hotline and getting permission to get a psychologist. They told me I was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress, seemed odd to me - since I wasn't in the Towers at the time. I was in the Bronx. I remember feeling cut off from the world. Terrified. Alone. And ashamed. Guilty. Talking to other people - it appeared that everyone had a cousin or a friend of a cousin that died in the Towers. Almost became a joke. Gallows humor reigned. We'd joke about how we jumped everytime a plane flew too close or we saw one overhead - which was quite a bit, since they were flying all the time over my apartment and where I worked. Or about the delays on the subways. I also remember not being able to read or look at a newspaper, ripping the cover off the TV Guide (because it had the Towers on fire on the cover), and not being able to watch portions of the News until they stopped showing it, over and over.
Know this, if it weren't for 9/11, I seriously doubt I'd have ever come online, written essays, or kept a live journal. It was one of the reasons I got obsessed with Season 6 BTVS and it is one of the reasons I ended up writing online. I craved a sense of connection, an exchange of information, that I suddenly realized I lacked.
Two years later - I found myself working at not one, but two companies that had actually been in the World Trade Center at the time. The first was an international bank, which had lost a number of documents in the disaster. The second was a health-care insurance company, who had lost twelve people. My boss at the second company had devoted a wall in her office to the events of 9/11. Meanwhile my kidbrother designed a web site that archived all the 911 calls collected that day for the American Red Cross.
I remember four days after 9/11, a work colleague stating that we could split time between pre and post 9/11. That the world had changed on that day. It was watershed day. And I often wonder to this day what my life would be like if it had not happened.
It changed me. And I can't forget it. I live in New York City. I've gone to interviews in a building that overlooks Ground Zero.
Do I feel safe? No. I have not felt safe since 9/11. And have recently decided that safety is an illusion. I don't live in fear either. I go on. And try hard not to think about it. Except for one small thing - I do not go into Manhattan on 9/11. I stay home. This year my outplacement services counselor tried to get me to meet with him in the Chryslar building, the 15th floor, on that day. But I refused. I saw no reason why it was necessary.
I've learned the past few years that we cannot understand how others perceive a traumatic event until we ourselves have experienced one. And even then, it may be impossible. Since everyone deals with it differently. And we all experience it to different degrees. I was lucky that day. I was in the Bronx.
No where near the Towers. Yet close enough to be effected. I'm not sure anyone who was outside of New York City, really gets it. Anymore than you can really get what it was like to be in New Oreleans when Katrina struck or Okaholma City when the federal buildings were bombed, or Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed the port. Until 9/11, I did not understand that. I do now.
I think the above is the reason that dramatizations of 9/11 annoy me and the ABC miniseries angers me. Yes, I'm against censorship and for freedom of speech. But not when the speech creates division and pain and suffering. Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" and "United 93" are films I've avoided, even though they are, from what I've read, honest and uplifting accounts of what happened. Both have received good reviews and both focus on the heroism of ordinary working folks. And I applaud them for that. I avoided them because it is still too raw, I can't look at it yet. It is like ripping off a scab. I barely made it through a graphic adaptation of the commission report yesterday and sobbed through most of it. The Path to 9/11 is a different kettle of fish. It is not an honest and uplifting account, but propagandized misrepresentation of a report that needs to be discussed and understood, if we are to ever feel safe or at peace again.
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. In fact I planned to go to the Twin Towers that day to buy tickets to a Peter Gabriel concert that would be playing later in the week. From my bedroom window in Brooklyn, I could even see the Towers, and had often gone to a promenade in my area to look at that portion of the New York City skyline. That day, September 11,2001, I considered going first thing in the morning to the World Trade Center to pick up tickets, but was still somewhat sleepy from staying out late the night before, and decided it would be much easier to go after work. I wore a nice suite and nice shoes that day. Neither clothes I wished to sleep in or walk in. The night before, it rained. I remember, because I was at a church on Broadway, and got soaked on the way to it - it was a special singing mass to wish the Broadway Actors good luck for the coming season. The actors sang during it. And one my friends, a work colleague, was performing in the choir. The evening left us all with a feeling of hope and happiness.
We worried that it would rain that Tuesday as well. But it didn't. Tuesday was mild, with a pristine blue sky, and a crisp but comfortable breeze. The best day imaginable weather wise. Not a cloud in the sky. The air had just that hint of fall in it. A day like today actually. Around 75 degrees. Not too hot and not too cold either, but warm enough to wear a sleeveless sweater under my powder blue silk blazer.
I was feeling chipper that morning on the way to work, a slight skip in my walk. I had a job interview the next week, downtown, since I recently learned two weeks prior that my current boss despised me and the quicker I got out of the company the better. In fact, that week was the first week since I'd discovered that I had the boss from hell, that I actually felt positive about my future.
Then, around 9:00am, one of my work colleagues, the gal who worked closely with me and who, coincidentally told me that I had the boss from hell, called to inform me that a plane had just hit the North Tower of the WTC. She thought, but wasn't certain, that is was a small private jet. Her call was immediately interrupted by another one, this from Wales, a close friend in Brooklyn who wanted to know if I was safe - since we'd discussed the Gabriel concert the night before - she said the South Tower had been hit before she could say more, her call was interrupted by my Aunt in Texas, who told me that the Pentagon had been hit, then back to my friend who was on hold - who added that the South Tower just collasped - I remember hanging up and dashing to the roof deck and watching the smoke billow in the horizon. It was the only cloud in the sky. We were let out of work early that day. But I was trapped in the Bronx. My home was in Brooklyn, across the river from WTC. So I went home with a work acquaintance, two of us did, and made phone calls from her family home and watched the towers crash to the ground. Even though I saw it on the news I could not believe it. It seemed unreal. Around 3pm, the subways were back in service and I made the long journey home. It took close to three hours, normally my commute was an hour. We had frequent stops underground in tunnels, and the trains were packed. People were in tears. My train, the F, went just a few blocks north of the area, underground - so it picked up a high percentage of folks who'd escaped the towers or the blocks within that vicinity. They exchanged stories. And since we didn't have much information - some of the stories were exaggerated - such as a plane hit the White House or a plane hit the Capitol. We didn't know. I was able to give them some information from the news accounts I saw on TV, but these were mostly from the broadcast networks - which had been on at my work colleagues home. My parents were unreachable - they'd gone to Greece for a ten-day cruise. I did reach my grandmother and my brother.
I remember at one stop on the train that had decided to go express, people hammering at the windows to get on, but the train wouldn't open its doors and just kept going. We were then stuck under the East River for approximately 30 minutes. It felt longer. At Bergen, a stop before my usual one, I leapt off the train, and walked the last ten-fifteen blocks home, a shorter walk than most people - who simply went over the bridges. On the way, I looked up at the sky which was brown. The pristine blue covered with a reddish brown soot spattered with white, the white turned out to be paper - all the paper from the offices in the Towers. The cars and streets were covered with a thin layer of the stuff. When I finally made it to my small apartment and looked out my bedroom window - I saw that the towers were no more, just smoke in the sky.
My parents weren't able to get ahold of me until the following Friday. They had gotten a hold of my brother who told them I was alright, and me that they were alright. The next day I went to work - we all had to go to work or risk a vacation day. And while I almost broke down once or twice on the subway platforms, I was fine until that following Friday, when I broke down and could not stop crying. I remember calling the Employment Assistance Hotline and getting permission to get a psychologist. They told me I was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress, seemed odd to me - since I wasn't in the Towers at the time. I was in the Bronx. I remember feeling cut off from the world. Terrified. Alone. And ashamed. Guilty. Talking to other people - it appeared that everyone had a cousin or a friend of a cousin that died in the Towers. Almost became a joke. Gallows humor reigned. We'd joke about how we jumped everytime a plane flew too close or we saw one overhead - which was quite a bit, since they were flying all the time over my apartment and where I worked. Or about the delays on the subways. I also remember not being able to read or look at a newspaper, ripping the cover off the TV Guide (because it had the Towers on fire on the cover), and not being able to watch portions of the News until they stopped showing it, over and over.
Know this, if it weren't for 9/11, I seriously doubt I'd have ever come online, written essays, or kept a live journal. It was one of the reasons I got obsessed with Season 6 BTVS and it is one of the reasons I ended up writing online. I craved a sense of connection, an exchange of information, that I suddenly realized I lacked.
Two years later - I found myself working at not one, but two companies that had actually been in the World Trade Center at the time. The first was an international bank, which had lost a number of documents in the disaster. The second was a health-care insurance company, who had lost twelve people. My boss at the second company had devoted a wall in her office to the events of 9/11. Meanwhile my kidbrother designed a web site that archived all the 911 calls collected that day for the American Red Cross.
I remember four days after 9/11, a work colleague stating that we could split time between pre and post 9/11. That the world had changed on that day. It was watershed day. And I often wonder to this day what my life would be like if it had not happened.
It changed me. And I can't forget it. I live in New York City. I've gone to interviews in a building that overlooks Ground Zero.
Do I feel safe? No. I have not felt safe since 9/11. And have recently decided that safety is an illusion. I don't live in fear either. I go on. And try hard not to think about it. Except for one small thing - I do not go into Manhattan on 9/11. I stay home. This year my outplacement services counselor tried to get me to meet with him in the Chryslar building, the 15th floor, on that day. But I refused. I saw no reason why it was necessary.
I've learned the past few years that we cannot understand how others perceive a traumatic event until we ourselves have experienced one. And even then, it may be impossible. Since everyone deals with it differently. And we all experience it to different degrees. I was lucky that day. I was in the Bronx.
No where near the Towers. Yet close enough to be effected. I'm not sure anyone who was outside of New York City, really gets it. Anymore than you can really get what it was like to be in New Oreleans when Katrina struck or Okaholma City when the federal buildings were bombed, or Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed the port. Until 9/11, I did not understand that. I do now.
I think the above is the reason that dramatizations of 9/11 annoy me and the ABC miniseries angers me. Yes, I'm against censorship and for freedom of speech. But not when the speech creates division and pain and suffering. Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" and "United 93" are films I've avoided, even though they are, from what I've read, honest and uplifting accounts of what happened. Both have received good reviews and both focus on the heroism of ordinary working folks. And I applaud them for that. I avoided them because it is still too raw, I can't look at it yet. It is like ripping off a scab. I barely made it through a graphic adaptation of the commission report yesterday and sobbed through most of it. The Path to 9/11 is a different kettle of fish. It is not an honest and uplifting account, but propagandized misrepresentation of a report that needs to be discussed and understood, if we are to ever feel safe or at peace again.
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Date: 2006-09-11 04:31 am (UTC)I tried to watch a few docs tonight, but it was too painful. So I put in an episode of S4 ATS - "Spin The Bottle" and laughed my head off. There's a scene where Angel races out of the building because he's frightened the people in the building will kill him for being a vampire - only to face something far more frightening - "cars", which he calls "shiny" demons. LOL! I couldn't stop laughing for ten minutes. Then in the commentary, Whedon states that he had troubles filming the scene where Angel races back into the Hotel and informs everyone there are demons outside. He scolds Denisof, whose doing commentary duty with him, for not being able to stop laughing. In fact Denisof and Boreanze could not look at each other after that point without laughing. So would avoid it if at all possible. The others would also crack up looking at them. Whedon asks him why. And Denisof says somewhat matter-of-factly, "Because Joss you had just written a scene with a bunch of teenagers trapped in a house because they are afraid of a bunch of shiny cars racing by outside and Angel has come in and explained it to them." ROFL!!! Just thinking about that scene makes me laugh.
Honestly, if you need to feel happy - go watch Spin The Bottle.