This needs to be read by more people

[mousme]

I rarely post links in my LJ apart from the occasional amusing picture. Even more rarely do I say anything at all about 9/11. That topic has been discussed until no one knows what's truth and fiction anymore.

wolflady26 linked to this post, and I'm very glad I read it. It's nothing we don't know already, and while it's about 9/11 and war in general and the U.S., it's not a political post. It's a post about the meaning and the importance of truth.

Like wolflady26 I'm finding it difficult to explain exactly why it's important that people should read it. Let's just say that it's more than worthwhile to click the link and read. It'll take ten minutes at most if you're a really slow reader, and even if you don't agree with a single word, it's still worth it.

Comments

[curtana.livejournal.com]

It's not that I don't agree with it, per se. But it does seem to me like it's painting with an awfully broad brush. Carried to the logical outcome, it seems like she's saying we shouldn't make movies or write novels about any historical events because we can never really get all the facts right and these things are real and important to someone somewhere. Well, historians writing actual history books and making documentaries don't get all the facts right either - you never can, that's the thing about history, there's not necessarily just one "true" story to be told. We edit and select and interpret events based on our biases and the story we're trying to tell, whether that story is overtly fictionalized or not.

And some people can understand something more immediately through the lens of fiction or docu-drama or whatever you want to call it. It's a way of getting through to people who don't read history. And even if it makes mistakes or takes liberties for dramatic effect, that doesn't mean it's entirely worthless, because it could help someone stand in another person's shoes for an hour or two, and maybe it will inspire someone to look into the subject more deeply.

Taking deliberate liberties for political gain is another matter entirely, of course, and one I don't coutenance, but I don't know if that's what's happening in this movie - I believe it hasn't even aired yet, so people are judging based on the reports of a few people who've had a chance to preview it, or comments from goverment officials and actors... buzz, basically. It seems suspicious to me that this film is being promoted as super historically-accurate, sure, but I won't go casting blame until I've actually seen it myself, or at the very least heard a hell of a lot more about it from people who have.

[elanya.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Julie, that's pretty much exctly what I was thinking.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I had more things I wanted to say about it, but I'm trying to prepare for my game and I don't have time to write it all down right now. Like, a story from one eye-witness 50 years after the fact isn't necessarily 'the truth' either, although I'm sure it was very interesting and moving. And, people always try to fit the events of their lives into some kind of story, and that's not necessarily a horrible thing - it's a way of processing what's happened and coming to grips with it. And, also, these docudramas will be useful sources for historians in fifty years who are trying to understand what people now thought about recent events, and if we place a moratorium on movies and books about historical events until after some certain amount of time has passed, we lose the immediacy of the aftermath, etc.

Maybe I'll write a post about it this evening, if I'm not too wiped :)

[elanya.livejournal.com]

Yes.... It is interesting to see how people react to and (re)present these events, and how people react to that, and why they do so, etc, etc. You can learn a lot about people from watchig how they react to propaganda.

One of the folklorists here at A&M studies the development of spontaneous shrines, and I think she did some work on the ones that develloped in New York right after the attacks. I always thought that was interesting

One or two movies are not the be all and end all of people's exposure or experience of an event like 911. I suspect that the movie is going to freshen the memories of how they dealt witrh that for a lot of people. It was only five years ago.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

One or two movies are not the be all and end all of people's exposure or experience of an event like 911. I suspect that the movie is going to freshen the memories of how they dealt witrh that for a lot of people. It was only five years ago.

Exactly. In fact, because it's still fresh in people's minds, I'd hope they're more likely to question whether what they're watching is accurate or not, because they can compare it with their own memories about the events in question.