Saturday, April 22, 2006

It's Always Good to Reflect

That's why I love celluloid.

I really appreciated and enjoyed this post by political pundit Hugh Hewitt on Flight 93 (also called United 93), the new film about one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. [Correction: post was on Hewitt's blog, but was posted by Mary Katharine Ham.]

Hewitt relates something most telling:

I know the movie has a lot of people talking about whether it's appropriate to make money off the story of 9/11, if we're being exploited emotionally, if we're ready for a movie like this. [But] I didn't feel like the movie was exploitative.

It makes one wonder what's so different about films made about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, or WWII and Nazi-occupied Germany.

I just finished watching a film last night, Intellectual Property, set during the Cold War. (I will post a follow-up entry on I.P.) [Follow posted here.] For a little history check, the Cold War was so called because no direct fighting occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union. Rather, there were arms races, embargos, espionage, etc., all a brace or show of muscle, power, dominance. (Incidentally, the terms "third world" refer to countries uninvolved, for the most part, in such arms races.)

But now we fight.

Its important that we compare the Cold War era and our age of Terrorism. For one, I think we sometimes forget the crackpot theories and outright suspicion and paranoia that prevailed all the way up to the days of those infamous words, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" (I still remember the exhilarating feeling I had turning on the television two years later to see that wall crumbling away.) Some of this paranoia still exists, and its even been turned and converted into new angst regarding terrorism. Again we seem to face outright mania. History repeats itself. We fight.

Director Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004)) comments on the film:

The terrible dilemma those passengers faced is the same we have been struggling with ever since. Do we sit passively and hope this all turns out okay? Or do we fight back and strike at them before they strike at us? And what will be the consequences if we do?

Flight 93 shows us the very instigation of our retaliation against terrorists. I'm anxious to watch it. I wonder that it's not a stark reminder of what is just and right in our struggles. And what is not right.

It's always good to reflect.

posted by Rhapsidiomite @ 11:50 AM
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