Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 4 Number 3, December 2003

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Artists of Denial and Avoidance after September 11th, 2001

(A Very Unorthodox View from the U.S.)

 

By

 

 Harry Youtt

 

Art, against its enemies, justifies itself by proving precisely that it is no one’s enemy. Albert Camus

 

Introduction

          In the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, I tried to find a relevant artistic response in the United States that went beyond the poetry of grief – common to all tragedy – and the polemic of rage.  I tried in vain, and I wondered why.  This paper reports the results of my search and seeks to answer that question.

This paper shall discuss three aspects of the limited or possibly counter-artistic reaction – three shadows of art, because the shadows, as they hover in the direction of an artistic response, may perhaps help to define the shapes and the colors of an art that is to come.  And the shadows, viewed back in the direction of the depths from which they originate, may help to reveal the dimensions of the presence that tries to retard, with its hulking presence, a U.S. artistic response that one day will emerge.

The first shadow is the censorship of popular media and music that occurred almost instantly after the tragic events.  The second shadow is the pattern of computer game- and motion picture image revisions, in which any semblance of the former World Trade Center has been erased from the game software and feature motion pictures released since last September 11th.  These counter-artistic actually remove art from the culture, but they are significant because of their reflection upon the state of an art relevant to September 11th, 2001..

The third shadow of an artistic response is the only one that begins to provide positive glimmers of truth, wisdom and insight; this is the shadow of satire, irony, and parody – the oblique arts.

 

REASONS WHY THE ARTISTIC RESPONSE HAS BEEN LIMITED

The Yankee Myth of Geographic Invulnerability

United States culture remains in deep shock over the destruction of The Yankee Myth.  From the very beginning, people in the U.S. have been unable to look directly or even indirectly into the flames of September 11th in search of wisdom.  Most people continue to look away.  Of course, in part,  this is due to the magnitude of the event.   In what I call the Yankee Myth of Geographic Invulnerability, U.S. citizens remain safe and secure as long as they remain at home.  In the context of this Yankee Myth, even when they venture forth to foreign dangers, the Yankee Myth maintains that their loved ones remain safe at home, reading letters from the soldiers and awaiting their triumphant return. 

September 11th obliterated that myth, and now U.S. citizens have nowhere to turn.  Certainly, within the group-mind of the U.S. this has been no time for an artistic response.   The attacks have left U.S. citizens bitter and confused.  And the obliteration of the Yankee Myth has left them vulnerable – undeniably vulnerable and exposed to insecurities they have never experienced throughout the entire Twentieth Century period of modern warfare. The Yankee Myth has enabled the U.S. culture to maintain its almost instinctive evasion of the complexities of world RealPolitik, because those complexities, indeed any complexities of real truth, threaten the frail equilibrium of its simplistic ideologies.

The War Response

          After the shock of the Myth’s shattering, a true artistic response needs the passage of time for reflection and contemplation.   That time never came.  Almost immediately, the U.S. commenced its war response and its zealous pursuit of internal security.  All of this deflected the energy and opportunity which might have produced an artistic response in U.S. culture.

Markets and Merchandise

          Consumer markets cannot afford the interruption and disruption that a full artistic response might have provoked.  As will be seen, the impulse among marketers has been to encourage our culture to ‘snap out of it’ after a perfunctory period of mourning, and get back to activities that stimulate the economy.

 

THE SHADOWS OF ART

First Shadow: Media Censorship

          In the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, U.S. culture consciously determined not to face the reality of what had happened, except as it was necessary to fuel the fires of war.  In its edition for Sunday, September 16, 2001, The New York Times published this disclaimer on its front page: "The Times regrets that some references to events are outdated, and that the tone of some articles and advertising is inconsistent with the gravity of the news."  I don’t challenge the effort to muffle the drumbeat of commerce and life-in-the-so-called-fast-lane during the immediate aftermath, but this tone was to become a mantra of our media.

Indeed, on the often-disgraceful weekly “satire” television show in the U.S., Saturday Night, Live, the words "terrorism," "Twin Towers," and "World Trade Center" were blocked from the skits, and jokes about the President, who had been the principal (and in many respects, deserving) butt of the show’s jokes, were also forbidden.

This was just the beginning. The ultimate depths of the U.S. pattern of censorship were reached when the company that owns and operates over 12 hundred radio stations in the U.S., servicing 10 million listeners, issued its list of 150 songs that contained “questionable lyrics” that should not be played in the aftermath of the tragedy.  These included such songs as: The Beatles’ Obla Di Obla Da ,  Elton John’s Daniel, Petula Clark’s A Sign of the Times,  Led Zeppelin’s  Stairway to Heaven, Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World, Peter, Paul and Mary’s rendition of the Bob Dylan song: Blowin’ in the Wind, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters, and Cat Stevens’ Peace Train as well as Morning Has Broken.   

However one may choose to study the list, one will be hard pressed to discover any reasonable method to the madness of trying to squelch a popular musical culture which we share with the world.  What is seen instead, and the pattern will continue in the following section, is a conscious effort to manage grief by silencing introspection about and calm reflection on the event, and an effort to obliterate any memory of the destroyed Yankee Myth of Geographic Invulnerability.  Too much solemn sadness would be counter-productive to the commerce that drives the media’s considerable revenues from advertising sponsors.  What seems to be the slogan of American artistic censorship after September 11th, is: Okay now, it is time to stop being sad. We have to get on with our shopping.

 

Second Shadow: Hollywood’s Skyline Image Annihilation

In the opening of Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2000 computer game, two instructors banter during a training demo.

"You just about crashed into the Empire State Building," says one.

The response: "Hey, that would be cool."

The World Trade Center was the leading landmark in the pilot handbook for the game.          Microsoft immediately issued a downloadable patch to delete the macabre “That would be cool . . .” conversation from then-current versions of the simulator program.  It also promptly removed the Twin Towers from the virtual landscape that simulator pilots encountered on approach to the New York metropolitan area.  Certainly this was not prompted by concern for security.  The Towers were already down.  Nothing could be gained from a terrorist’s after-the-fact use of the simulator program to locate them.  The offending images, and the flight controller dialogue were removed simply to ‘make nice,’ to remove content which to grieving people might seem an unpleasant reminder.

A computer game WTC Defender, that had asked players to defend the World Trade Center from kamikaze pilots was immediately withdrawn.  Players had been invited to score points shooting at kamikaze planes attempting to crash into the towers.  When planes evaded the anti-aircraft fire, they crashed into the towers and caused them to collapse.  This game had been created well in advance of September 11th and is the first in a bizarre series of art-driven premonitions to the tragedy.

A California computer game company, Electronic Arts, allowed retailers to send back copies of the war fantasy game "Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2" for repackaging.  The box featured a plane dropping bombs as it approached the World Trade Center.

Other game producers scurried to excise New York City and Pentagon action scenes from finished products.  An online gaming site deleted images of the fictional hero Duke Nukem battling his way through New York City near the World Trade Center. "We removed that out of respect for the families," said the spokesperson.

Hollywood immediately went into high gear to undo any images or themes that might mimic the attack or that would remind movie-goers of a New York that included the Twin Towers. Posters to promote the then-upcoming Sony Pictures' "Spider Man" movie were withdrawn because they highlighted images of the Twin Towers. Sony also changed the ending of its Men in Black 2, because it depicted a struggle with aliens near the World Trade Center.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie “Collateral Damage,” postponed its October release. In the movie, a Colombian terrorist bombs a Los Angeles high-rise.

Disney's movie: "Big Trouble" (starring Tim Allen), postponed its late September release because its comedy theme involved preventing detonation of a nuclear bomb on an airplane.

And a movie about nuclear terrorists ("The Peacemaker") scheduled to be shown on ABC on the Saturday after September 11th, was cancelled.

          U.S. culture censored itself and altered its images, not because of a fear of dissent, because essentially, there has been no dissent, none that has brought on a measure of any seismic proportions sufficient to cause a rumble of concern within the North American culture.  This time, the censorship, rather than being impelled by a motive to keep the world safe for democracy, was driven by the need of the U.S. market economy to keep the mind calm and focused for continued shopping. 

Commerce has driven the censorship, based upon the fear that if people are able to reflect long enough and intensely enough on the enormity of the events of September 11th, then they will stop going to the Mall; they will stop watching commercial television; they will stop heeding commercials; they will stop traveling, and they will stop spending money for the purpose of having mindless fun.  A reflective person, a pensive person, heaven forbid, a somber, grieving person, will not be a spending person.  Therefore, any possibility that a song, or a picture that might evoke nostalgia rather than rage for war, must be excised as a threat to our economy. 

The motion pictures have been altered, to encourage us to forget unpleasantness; virtual reality games have been withdrawn and hidden from sight; and songs, yes, the songs which might conceivably have caused people to reflect spiritually upon the impact of September 11th upon our own deep spirituality, have been silenced.

          To a large extent, the purging has been successful. Note that U.S culture has not really censored images of the violent attacks themselves – only images of peaceful times when the buildings were intact.  The comprehensiveness of U.S. culture’s efforts to obliterate remembrance of tranquility during the Yankee Myth of Geographic Invulnerability is due to the fact that the Myth has collapsed and is no longer a useful component of propaganda for the U.S. public.

 

Third Shadow: Satire, Parody, Irony

Irony, parody, sarcasm, and satire are the final shadow of art that I shall address.  They achieve by indirection a social commentary, which might not be effective or acceptable as a direct approach.

          Irony is frequently spawned in one form of fear or another -- when we fear our genuine feelings and cannot confront them directly; when we are afraid to say directly the critical things that must be said to get us back on track.  Irony pays highest respect to the essence of humanity that enables communication between the spaces of the words, which are said.  Irony is the nudge in the side that communicates a kindredness even when words are not sufficient.

          Irony is a slight turn in the direction of wisdom, but it is a turn.  Censorship is not.  Suppression of disturbing images is not.  And so, irony is the beginning of hope.

Most significantly, the primary coin of irony is respect by the creator of the irony for the perceiver.  Creator and perceiver honor each other’s rudimentary humanity by extending and applying the unwritten assumptions about communication, which drive all of irony.

Here is the very first irony that comes out of the September 11th attacks.  We in the U.S. refer to the event as simply: Nine One One. We could have called it September 11th.  If we had the calendar-sensibilities of Europeans, we might have called it “119.”  We could have called it Twin Towers, or Trade Center.  We could have called it the Cataclysm.  In fact, government and media have come to refer to it as The Attack on America. But the first reference, and the continuing common reference is simply Nine One One

911 in the U.S. is the universal emergency telephone number: the numeric synonym for rescue in the U.S.  Referring to the tragedy as “911” might imply the cynical judgment that there is no rescue for a tragedy as monumental as this.  It might imply that it is silly to think of any kind of rescue.  On the other hand, a positive implication might invoke a tacit prayer.  911: please rescue me911: We must rescue each other.  All or any of these additional meanings are possible, but the power of irony is that for whatever complex combination of inferences may be involved in the selection, the name has embedded itself into our fabric.  And in the unstated implications, there is the first gestation of an artistic response.

          Professor Wendy Doniger has written a compelling article on the subject of the satiric response to the tragedy: “Terror and Gallows Humor: After Sept. 11?,” by U. Chicago Prof. Wendy Doniger, available on the internet at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/News/911doniger.html (exerpted from her December 14th, 2001 Huisinga lecture at the University of Leiden).  In it she explores the question of when it becomes “safe to joke” about a tragic event.  After September 11th,  the appearance of satire, both tasteful and untasteful, was prompt.  Humor magazines, such as The Onion and The Modern Humorist focused their attention on the event, and their online readership increased exponentially.

 “Guidelines for Comedy and for Action Motion Picture Production,” from The Modern Humorist  provided a sarcastic comment on the tendency of our culture in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, to bend over backwards to avoid anything violent or disruptive.  They directly parody the Clear Channel suggested list of music titles not to be played on air.  And the humor comes from the ridicule, so that people can laugh at their culture’s foibles without appearing unpatriotic.  The wisdom comes from identifying and commenting upon the absurdity of our efforts to cleanse the unpleasantness.

          The message in a satirical press conference that also appeared in The Modern Humorist, in which God sees fit to remind the world of the simplicity of his Do not Kill commandment and then becomes visibly frustrated in trying to get his point across, is self-evident.

          A cartoon strip in which a Beverly Hills denizen refuses to cancel her September 11th appointment to have her nails polished, thereby foiling the terrorists’ desire to crush our consumer economy, is an obvious sarcastic comment on U.S. spending habits and on our culture’s shallow failure to come to grips with the true significance of the September 11 event.

          The covers for the Autumn weekly issues of the New Yorker Magazine became our central focus of visual satire.  The For the December 10th issue, in the midst of the Afghan War, the cover contained a “map” of the City of New York, which was a parody of perhaps the most famous cover of the New Yorker that Saul Steinberg had done in 1976.  Indeed the earlier, Steinberg cover was itself an ironic comment on the narrow geographic egocentrism of New Yorkers.  Your handout contains comparative images of both covers.

This later one, by Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz,  crudely Islamicized  (if this is not a disrespectful word) the city of New York, identifying regions such as Central ParkistanTaxistan, Bad, Veryverybad, Notsobad, and Psychobabylon.  The humor plays upon the weakness of American xenophobia and it gains its energy from the egocentric anti-geographicism, which prevails in the U.S.

          But irony in these forms, can also be used for good ends, to bond us at our higher levels of functioning, to spotlight the absurdities that abound around us and to use this spotlight to point the way perhaps to enlightened wisdom.

 

Conclusion

It would be easy for me to conclude this paper by declaring that it is premature in the U.S. to expect a fully sensitive artistic response to September 11th.  It is too soon. The shattering of the Yankee Myth of Domestic Safety was too culturally traumatic. The country still wants to turn its face away, and the drums of war have drowned the soft reeds of calm reflection.

Sallie Nichols, in her 1986 book "Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey" analyzes the “Tower Card,” which depicts an ancient tower struck, in it upper floors by lightning, severely damaged and toppling from the top, with people and bits of what looks like paper tumbling from it, in an uncanny anticipation of the September 11th calamity.  The Tower, she says, symbolizes a supreme egocentrism that imprisons us.  This primes us for a fall. Destruction of the Tower – the lightning and the fire – indicates cosmic consciousness trying to break through our prison of perception. The destruction overthrows our old ways of thinking, and creates space for new enlightenment. The people falling from the tower have lost the security of their ideologies.  The Tower Card, should, according to the author, trigger these questions:

--What attitudes or ideas have we crowned as king?

--In what ways do we use political, religious, and social systems to elevate ourselves above others?

--Where are we in danger of psychic imprisonment by our ideas and ideologies?

--How do our beliefs restrict our freedom?

Perhaps we shall have a true artistic response to September 11th when the culture of the United States feels safe enough about itself to begin to tolerate artistic responses to these essential questions.  We have only just begun.