Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Flight 93 movie

I have a number of friends who won't go see the Flight 93 movie because they feel that Hollywood is capitalizing on a tragedy. Also, no one really knows what happened on the flight, and they don't like the fact that much of the movie is therefore fiction or conjecture.

And there is some reason to believe that the "official version" of the story is purposefully different from reality. It is odd, for example, that the cockpit tapes from the flight were withheld for years, and then coincidentally released right before the movie. But that is a whole different discussion.

The thing I did want to mention is that the Flight 93 movie is just one step on the path to completely trivializing 9/11. How trivial will it get? For a perspective, you can look at a recent museum exhibit that came to Raleigh, NC. It dealt with the Titanic.

In the Titanic tradgedy, 1,517 people died. In other words, the number is comparable to the number of lives lost in 9/11. At the time, the loss of the Titanic and that many lives truly was a tragedy. But today it is a marketing event, as you could see when you walked through the required gift shop at the end of the exhibit. There you could buy Titanic lolipops, Titanic coal (from the boilers), Titanic stemware, and even a Titanic game. Yes, both a board game and a computer game are available based on the tragedy.

One day, you will be able to go to a local museum and experience the 9/11 traveling exhibit. It will let you see a recreation of a typical cube farm in one of the towers, stand on a recreated observation deck and look at still photos of the skyline, and probably get into an authentic recreation of one of the WTC elevators. At the end will be a gift shop complete with 9/11 lolipops.

Perhaps this is all part of the healing process after a tragedy like this. But if so, why not speed up the process? Flight 93 has opened the tragedy to commerce. Who can be first to market with the 9/11 board game?

Comments:
This kind of says it all:

Titanic in 30 seconds

How long before "9/11 in 30 seconds"?
 
This is what Roger Ebert has to say about United 93, and after having seen the film, I agree with him.

"It is not too soon for 'United 93,' because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11. The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims."

The film may or may not contribute to a trivializing of 9/11. Who can predict the future? Differences as well as similarities abound when comparing the two events that could lead to different historical perspectives.

Money may be made from the film. So? Movies at their best are art forms as well as business ventures. And this movie succeeds as an artistic tribute and truly moving experience.

I would encourage anyone who likes movies to check out the film and decide for themselves what they think about it.
 
Titanic wasn't the spark for a war.
The entire purpose of the Titanic was for show.

The difference is obvious.

But on the note of trivialization, was it southpark that said things can be joked about 20 years later? I think the topic was making jokes about AIDS. I laughed at them :)
 
Kauf und Verkauf von Gold in den thomas sabo Goldmarkt hat viel an Popularität gewonnen,
 
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