PARTY LIKE IT'S 9/11!

Less than a week after the one-two punch of September 11th, 2001, Ain't It Cool News editor Drew MacWeeny polled people in the film community about their reactions and the modulated public view of what constituted "terrorism."  Here are DJS' comments, reprinted courtesy of AICN:

First off, in light of the events that took place in New York, what do you feel your primary duty is as a writer serving an audience in a Post-WTC America?

Primary duty = Not to write in fear.  Not to coddle or massage the hypocritical concept of a bogus “sensitivity” in media that time-out from the horrific WTC news images to sell easy armchair patriotism and SUVs called the “Liberty.”  Less than a week after the terrorist attack, news coverage focused primarily on how brave TV anchorpeople were “suffering;” these glory hogs being spelled only by an endless parade of religious nitwits braying on about their god’s plan.  From my non-partisan religious viewpoint, it looks to me like Allah kicked “God”’s ass, this time out.  Gunshy sheep are always quick to make the entertainment industry take it on the chin any time extremists do public damage.  Americans have for decades denied the reality of terrorist acts on US soil, always qualifying each new outrage with a convenient disclaimer:  “It was a lone nut.”  “It wasn’t really terrorism.”  But Hollywood has been warning audiences about terrorism in our own backyard for just as many decades.  It’s time people stopped averting their eyes; maybe they’ll learn something, or at least put their anger and fear in a more deserving receptacle than movies or books or TV – like, for instance, culling all their do-nothing politicians.

As a writer, you've dealt in stark, even brutal imagery in your work.  Is there anything that you now feel awkward about in light of recent  events?

I’m sure The Coup were embarrassed by the bad timing of their album cover.  But where do you draw the line?  At Black Sunday?  At Die Hard? At Independence Day?  At Godzilla?  At anything featuring a building collapsing, or jet hijacking, or a big cloud of smoke?  Do we prohibit Air Force One or blacklist Tom Clancy?  “Potentially upsetting” imagery is fundamental to most kinds of drama, period.  If the WTC doesn’t definitively demonstrate the difference between movies – that is, fiction – and reality, let me spell it out for you:  In the movies, we’re usually victorious over the hijackers, the bombers, the terrorists, as in Executive Decision.  In real life, Americans don’t always “win” just because we’re the coolest.

The Coup's unfortunately-timed album cover, and the cover that replaced it.

 Features a great song titled "5 Million Ways To Kill A C.E.O."

If you were asked to alter past material to somehow reflect the current tragedy, would you feel that was appropriate?

It’s cowardly and dishonest to alter original material according to what the news tells us to shun this week.  It works no perceivable good.  But you have to acknowledge that many such decisions are made anyway, by higher-ups in the corporate food chain – witness the rush to judgement on the Spiderman poster, cable networks dropping or shuffling action series or movies as “inappropriate,” and Clear Channel’s totally ridiculous hit list of songs prohibited from airplay – everything from “Hey Joe” to “Stairway to Heaven” … just because they’re terrified that their fourth-quarter earnings will dip half a percentage point if they don’t pretend to be “sensitive.”

Or do you stand behind the work you've created, even if someone finds unfortunate echoes in it?

If we dope out this theory to its logical conclusion, we’d better start burning Bibles by the truckload, because of all the grief that book has fomented throughout history; it’s the all-time record holder for unfortunate echoes.  Nobody curtailed the Catholic High Mass just because it supposedly influenced Peter Kurten to murder people, and I expect the same courtesy in regard to my writing.  No one is forcing people to read or look at so-called “inappropriate” material, and again, who gets to decide what is or isn’t appropriate?  The worst possible scenario is panic, and the imposition of self-censorship motivated by guilt or a desire to seem “correct.”  Panic gives you the Us-Vs.-Them brand of all-purpose “enemy,” dating all the way back to the World War II scenarios the Reagan administration was so fond of evoking. 

There are currently censorship groups forming around the country to try and get rid of 'inappropriate films' with 'insensitive content' from not only video stores, but cable and network outlets as well.  As a filmmaker and performer, how do you feel films with similar content to tragic circumstances should be viewed ... and how do you think they benefit or harm society?

I’d like to maintain the gentle fantasy that most people are not sponges – passive absorbers of whatever is broadcast or published.  I’d like to believe that people can exercise choice according to their own tastes, and have the common respect not to foist their choices on others, particularly in a militant way.  Zealots are fanatics, whether they’re crazed enough to destroy buildings or crazed enough to mandate what everyone else should be looking at or reading.  Thomas Jefferson was outraged by this very idea.  He said, “Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books shall be sold and what we may buy?”  If we do, this isn’t America anymore.  The censorship groups you cite have always been lying in wait, and should be ashamed of using the WTC tragedy to grandstand their narrow and picayune agendas.

What’s even more ominous is that CNN is currently running a poll on their website, which asks, “Would you accept more government involvement in your life if it meant more security against terrorism?”  That’s really an are-you-still-beating-your-wife kind of pseudo-question, since whether you answer Yes or No doesn’t matter – it stinks either way.  It is, in its own way, a kind of terrorist question.  (Everybody stop now and go look up “terrorism” in the dictionary.  Don’t accept what media tools say; just go look it up for yourself.  We’ll wait.)  What it doesn’t address is the bald reality that “security from terrorism” is impossible, due to the nature of terrorist acts.  “Security from terrorism” is practically an oxymoron.  Security is a comforting illusion, not an absolute.  But if you answer No to the CNN question, the perception is that one “supports terrorism.”  The Spanish Inquisition couldn’t have twisted language any better.

Is there catharsis in images of Americans triumphing over crisis right now, or are these images too much in light of recent reality?

If you’re asking “is it possibly beneficial for Americans to watch Commando or True Lies right now?” I’d say it probably couldn’t hurt.  It’s certainly more cathartic than waiting around for some phantom enemy to declare itself, or persecuting a whole group of people based on the thin ice of a likely suspect.  Right now the country is a lynch mob with no one to hang, so the people are looking around for some substitute in which to invest their outrage, and as Jack Valenti says, the movies have always provided a juicy target, particularly for politicians … and most politicians are far more corrupt than most movies.  Maybe that’s why they go after the movie industry with such fervor – to detour responsibility away from their own fat little taxpayer-supported sinecures.

Drama – fiction – is necessarily exaggerated for point-making purposes.  Sometimes these exaggerations, in the name of realism, cause people to confuse realism with actual reality, and the buck-passing of blame begins.  If hot-button images upset you, don’t look at them – but don’t restrict anyone else’s right to look at them, because every single person has a completely different ceiling and floor for what’s terrible, or what’s funny, or what’s uplifting.

Americans seem all too willing, right now, to give up their freedoms in the name of flag-waving and ass-kicking.  Mob thinking won’t work.  Hindbrain responses won’t work.  This isn’t a football game.  The only freedom worth losing, as Klaatu says in The Day the Earth Stood Still, is “the freedom to act irresponsibly.”

Where do you draw the line with this sort of thing?  Should absolute freedom be protected?  Should there be times of temporary censorship, or do people need access to all types of art at all times?

There is no such thing as “temporary censorship.”  That’s a schmooze way of seducing people out of their rights.  Any such “temporary,” oh-so-sensitive censorship always turns out to be a foothold for more censorship, until artists become so restricted that there’s a backlash, at least as long as there are people who enjoy or consume art who don’t want to eat pabulum all the time.  Do we shut down rollercoasters because some nebulous rider might have a heart attack?  Do we herd clowns into detention camps for the duration, since laughter has recently been deemed “inappropriate” by some?  Again, where do you draw the line?

Of course, I wrote a Chainsaw Massacre movie, so everything I say is automatically suspect.  But I also screenwrote The Crow, a very violent movie which nonetheless has a moral center, a heart, if you will.  Some of the best and most lasting entertainments deftly balance both.  Art has to be no less than honest, and sometimes that’s uplifting, sometimes it’s sobering, and sometimes it’s horrifying.  Checklists of do’s and don’ts only force artistic expression into a narrower box, and pretty soon we’re all buried alive.

I am not trying to sound harsh or unfeeling.  I was as stunned as most others seemed to be by the magnitude of this tragedy, and I know a lot of people in New York City.  Fortunately, the internet was solid gold when it came to making fast contact, especially when every phone in the state seemed to crap out, even cellulars.  The social impact of WTC will be reflected in many movies, books, and TV shows to come.  Right now, Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden is being rushed into print in a mass-market edition.  The book was written by CNN producer Peter Bergen.  HarperCollins has fast-tracked a book of essays on the WTC attack.  Is this social conscience, or just another company sniffing a ready market?  At the same time, agents are shying away from marketing books not only invoking terrorist elements, but (per Variety, 9/19/2001) “all violent books.”  Art of any sort – even lowbrow art – is a response to our culture, and one can’t just globally delete art’s inevitably darker side, be it crass exploitation or junkfood pop.  To creatively hobble artists is to bury one’s head in the sand, and haven’t we all had enough of that by now?

No one seems ready to stand up as a media voice to advocate for the curative powers of art.

I don’t know about “curative;” I don’t feel the need for a cure; perhaps I’m not infected with anything.  What I do need is creative freedom and access to all varieties of art, unlumbered by the self-serving agendas of politicians or the stormtrooper tactics of those who would police morals.  Movies and books are my religion, and we all know what happens when you mess with people’s religion …

(To read Part One of the article for which there was never a Part Two, go here )