Even just after the attacks, the mourning in America took on a typically mega-sized aspect. It might just be my aesthetic preference, but I would have preferred a week of moments of silence over bad tribute ballads, or simple black posters over corny images of doves, clouds, and rainbows. Granted, for a time in late 2001 it really felt like the world was ending. But I know I wasn't the only person who felt queasy at the way the endless tributes and commemorations were turning the tragedy into an almost religious event.
Now, with September 11th coming up (or maybe we have to say, "With the 'first anniversary of September 11th coming up"), America is once again deluged by stories about the attacks, 24-hour news channel analysis of the ramifications, calls from politicians to support one military initiative or another - and by that endless replay of the sickening air-crash footage, over and over. The media's obsession with 9/11 seems to outdo that of most ordinary Americans. I was heartbroken after the attacks the same as everyone else, but there's a limit to the amount that this one event should occupy our minds. It was the media's frenzy over terrorism and death last year that caused many perfectly ordinary people to become constantly, uselessly afraid for their lives while going about their daily business. (Now, reports of how people are constantly and uselessly afraid are themselves the big media story.)
To take just one example of this obsession: Bruce Springsteen's recent album, The Rising, debuted at the top of the Billboard charts with more than 500,000 copies sold. Around the time of the album's release, Springsteen appeared on the covers of TIME and Rolling Stone, among others, and also made unprecedented (for him) appearances on TV, with performances on the Today show and Late Night with David Letterman. Why all the hubbub? Well, of course Bruce Springsteen is one of America's most-loved artists. And of course Springsteen's reunion with the E Street Band on The Rising would garner more media attention than Springsteen's previous album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, which was a solo and mostly acoustic album. And the album is very good. But The Rising is also part of big media's 9/11 machine: Springsteen is signed to a major label that is part of a major media conglomerate. And nearly every story and interview about The Rising dwelt heavily on the album's September 11th-related subject matter (perhaps a welcome break from Tom Joad's unblinking look at social and economic hardship in America). Hyperbole flowed like wine: Springsteen will heal the nation! A year later, our pain will finally ebb thanks to the heartfelt songs about firefighters! All of which served to ignore one of the most important things about the album that was supposedly the topic of coverage: that Springsteen never actually mentions September 11th explicitly on the album, allowing it to serve as a set of songs that could relate to any sort of tragedy or loss whatsoever.
What is frightening, rather than merely distasteful, about the media's uniform obsession with 9/11 is that the media's perspective tends to become pervasive in our own lives when we consume too much of it. Americans became vulnerable to political persuasion and manipulation last year as the Bush administration and various cynical corporations tried to use the tragedy for their own ends. One wonders to what end the current spectacles of mass mourning and reflection will be put, only two months before an important congressional election. Manufactured sentiment about 9/11 can lead to manufactured consent about what to do about it.
This year, as the anniversary memorials take over the airwaves, I plan to mourn in my own way; paying the event its proper respect, and take a couple hours out of my day to think about my country and my people - and then I think I'll go outside and do something else.
|
|
The most evil and deceitful administration in American history
August, 2002
America's shallow globalization strategy
July, 2002
Avoiding the obvious Jewish responses to the mideast crisis: a response
to Jay Michaelson
June, 2002
It's a lonely world when you're both an anti-globalization leftist and a
Zionist.
May, 2002
The rich are ripping us off! What are you gonna do about it?
April, 2002
A WEF Protester Tells You Why He Bothers
March, 2002
Zeek interviews the man behind generations of world despots
February, 2002
The best guarantor of democracy is a vibrant, oppositional counterculture.
January, 2002
Channel your rage at the people responsible for September 11 -- and I
don't mean the cavemen in Afghanistan.
December, 2001
film politics music jay's head poetry art josh ring saddies about archive