 Coping
with the 9.11.01 Aftermath
Playing in the Shadows
Popular Culture in the Aftermath of Sept. 11 Is a Chorus
Without a Hook, a Movie Without an Ending
In the first few weeks following that day, once we'd stopped reeling
from the initial shock, there was a collective throat-clearing, and then came
tumbling forth the pronouncements: Vanity had taken a hit. Irony, so beloved by
smarty-pants, was on life support. Comedy would be careful.
Such declarations are the punditocracy equivalent of calling the Super Bowl
-- three seasons in advance.
Popular culture, that which shapes how we see ourselves and how others see
us, is in a state of flux. A change is gonna come. Or will it?
It is true, of course, that a certain earnestness has crept into the national
zeitgeist, blotting out -- for now, at least -- our normal, unique brand of
optimistic cynicism. In her latest video, blue-eyed soul singer Pink urges us
all to "Get This Party Started" as she dances against the backdrop of a giant
flag. Celebs attending the Emmy Awards earlier this month were asked to tone
down the sartorial glitz. And just a week ago Sunday, in a much-publicized
gathering, movie execs met with White House officials -- again -- to suss out
just what Hollywood could do for the war-on-terrorism effort.
But amid the earnestness, there is contradiction. A couple of weeks ago, the
No. 1 CD in the nation was a "God Bless America" compilation. New Agey popster
Enya's feel-good CD, "A Day Without Rain," ranked No. 2. The following week,
both CDs were nudged out by gangsta rapper DMX's downtrodden CD "The Great
Depression." And last week Michael Jackson's latest CD, "Invincible," reigned,
followed by Enrique Iglesias's "Escape" -- that is until midweek, when Britney
Spears wiggled her way to the top of the charts.
So what does it say that we go from blessing America to wallowing in the
great depression to feeling invincible but desperately in need of escape?
That we're fickle, sure. But more importantly: Even a national tragedy of
cataclysmic proportions can alter our cultural DNA by only so much. Popular
culture is, as one observer put it, a daily Rorschach test, a peek into the
American id as it flips and flops about. It's also a business, a huge one,
arguably our biggest international export. And as with any business, it is the
consumer who has the ultimate say.
Says Robert Thompson, professor of media and culture at Syracuse University
and past president of the International Popular Culture Association: "We may be
surprised at how capable American popular culture is of dissolving even the most
horrible of historical events."
And now, in the wake of an unprecedented home front attack, peddlers of pop
are grappling for ways to appear relevant. To strike just the right notes:
empathetic yet resolved; patriotic but not profiteering.
If they've found the answers, they're not telling. Entertainers and execs
contacted by The Washington Post were, for the most part, zipping lips. When
asked about how their work would be affected by Sept. 11, most of them, from
Steven Spielberg to Dr. Dre, decided to pass on the question. Some pleaded busy
schedules; others, like Conan O'Brien, frankly admitted that they weren't
stepping anywhere near that date.
Then there's Jack Valenti, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of
America, who's more than happy to offer up his take on the future of popular
culture. Which is to say, he doesn't see it changing much: As long as there's a
great story to tell, he doesn't see a problem if somewhere along the way a
building or two is blown up. Forget about forecasting trends in entertainment.
The public's desire to be entertained is a constant.
Valenti does see, however, among the American public a strong yearning for
escape, a desire reflected by the impressive box office figures ($156.7 million)
of Disney's "Monsters, Inc.," an animatedflick about facing one's worst fears.
"It's spiritually beautiful," says Valenti, fresh from his meeting with
studio and White House officials. "That box office take is spiritually
beautiful."
As Valenti sees it, box office takes will continue to be beautiful -- and the
opening weekend totals for "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (a
record-setting $93.5 million) indicate likewise.
"In times of peril, in times of uncertainty, people don't want to be in a
constant state of perpetual anxiety," he says. "People want to enjoy
storytelling, which for a couple of hours at least will transport them away."
Even so, storytellers, like the rest of us, are faced with how to interpret
the recent life-changing turn of events.
"It's affected me personally," says mystery writer Walter Mosley, who
recently published "Futureland," a "pre-apocalyptic" collection of sci-fi
stories with echoes of Sept. 11.
"It happened right outside my window; I watched it happen. I don't even yet
know what that means. On the other hand, my work has kind of gone on the way it
has before.
"I don't know what will happen next," he says. "But what's happened so far,
as terrible as it is, is not enough to change the nature of the course of the
nation. . . . Our concept of how the world works hasn't really been altered as
of yet. We're still thinking people should be going out spending money and
making capitalism function. There's a great desire, among the people and among
our leaders, that life go back to normal. Whatever that is."
Indeed, "normal" is a murky concept for a nation with the attention span of a
gnat, where race, class and religion often form a combustible mix, where box
office numbers are "spiritual" and Madison Avenue pledges to "keep America
rolling." With zero-percent financing, of course.
Comfort in
Continuity
Great, sweeping cultural changes happen in waves, one incremental change lapping
over another microscopic blip, gradually building in intensity. It's only
afterward that we look back and realize that we've been hit by a tsunami. After
all, the '60s -- or what we like to think of as happening in the '60s -- didn't
occur all at once: First there was the civil rights movement, then the
assassinations, Vietnam and eventually Watergate. Somewhere in all that came the
pill, women's lib and a revolution in pop music. By the time the '60s were in
full force, it was, well, 1975.
"September 11 is what I'd call a 'second order change,' " says futurist and
psychological anthropologist Doug Raybeck, who describes the gradual changes of
the '60s as "first order changes." "It took us to a place we'd never been
before. We've lost our innocence, lost our invulnerability, and we're in the
process of losing our naivete."
So, what happens to a culture when irrevocable change happens in an instant?
Most of what we've seen post-Sept. 11 is quick and reactive.
Television was first to weigh in and, for the most part, came off looking
heavy-handed: NBC's "Third Watch" cobbled together a two-part episode about the
World Trade Center attacks; "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin whipped out a quick
treatise on terrorism.
Pop singers and rappers, from U2's Bono to Alicia Keys to Ja Rule, crammed
into the studio to produce a remake of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On."
(Proceeds originally were planned to benefit AIDS patients, but the WTC and
Pentagon survivors and relatives were quickly added to the list of
beneficiaries.) Movie studios pushed back the release dates or postponed the
production of a few films deemed too violent or involving acts of terrorism.
But many folks found comfort in continuity, the succor found in cultural
chicken soup. The sitcom "Friends" has been extended for another season in the
wake of its overwhelming popularity since the attacks. And those predictions
that violent films would be offensive were wiped out by the success of movies
like "13 Ghosts, " "From Hell," "Training Day" and "The Heist," all of which
feature no small amount of bloodshed.
Perhaps it's the American way, to channel anger and grief through a weird mix
of violence and humor.
Soon came the e-mails passed from office cubicle to office cubicle, jokes
about Miss Cleo predicting that Osama bin Laden would die on a national holiday
("Any day you die gwan be an American holiday") and the animated mini-flick
depicting a cartoon bin Laden being sexually assaulted by the Gimp from "Pulp
Fiction."
There are also dozens of interactive games on the Internet, like the graphic
"Nuke-Bin Laden," where you can use a revolver, baseball bat, nuclear bomb or
box cutter to pulverize "the evil one." Or the pictures of bin Laden posing with
his "family" -- a trio of pigs.
But in the corporate arena of the nation's networks, Sept. 11-related humor
seemed almost verboten at first. Late-night hosts David Letterman and Jay Leno
stayed off the air the first week after the attacks. Now Taliban jokes are a
steady part of their patter -- including dancing bin Ladens, much like the
dancing Judge Itos from O.J. Simpson days. "Saturday Night Live" took a pointed
jab at the government's handling of D.C.'s anthrax cases: In a mock news
conference, Chris Kattan, playing the National Institutes of Health's Anthony
Fauci, proclaimed, "We cleaned the State Department, the White House, the
Supreme Court and the Capitol building with state-of-the-art decontamination
equipment . . ." As for decontaminating post offices, "Fauci" says, "We've given
each post office some baby wipes and a DustBuster."
So far, smart-aleck humor prevails, as on the "America's Mad as Hell Humor
Page," which offers to provide "humor in a time of grief."
But there are few voices like the darkly sardonic Internet comic strip "Get
Your War On," where cynics ponder which is worse, bin Laden as president or
anthrax, and depressives wonder, "Maybe I should write a poem about my feelings
since September 11; that might help! What rhymes with alcohol-saturated dread?"
Lockdown and Lock
Step?
"How can we have popular culture if everyone is afraid to say anything but 'God
Bless America'?" observes Kevin Jones, a former studio executive who produced
the Gwyneth Paltrow film "Duets."
Still, not everyone is singing that tune.
One recent Saturday night at the Birchmere, the mood was mellow, even somber.
Buppies and bohos sat clustered at tables, ordering fried chicken nuggets and
sipping on Coronas. Onstage, D.C. native Me'shell NdegeOcello, an alterna-soul
singer-musician, served up humor, pathos, politics and a thumping bass line with
scathing anti-war commentary.
"Express yourself," Ndegeocello said. "Soon we won't be able to. We'll all be
on lockdown."
She pulled out a picture, her newly acquired "Bling-Bling Jesus," a glittery
picture of Christ that she bought in sardonic obedience to what she sees as
President Bush's entreaties: "God Bless America. Keep shopping; we are open for
business."
For Ndegeocello, patriotism is a complicated affair. There is the pressure
she believes artists feel to make another "We Are the World" record, to spend
their own cash in expensive studio time and then forward the proceeds to
charity.
"It's hard to love where you come from when the truth is buried so deep," she
said. "You can be gung-ho patriotic. . . . But understand, people are struggling
every day.
"I pray for Brother Bush, I really do. When he says Osama bin Laden wasn't
elected. Well [expletive], neither were you."
Her words were met with laughter -- and a standing ovation.
Ndegeocello's work is outside the mainstream; dissent is a part of her
oeuvre. But others who make a living fighting the powers that be have been
strangely silent. Rage Against the Machine declined to be interviewed for this
article, as did rapper Mos Def and alternative folkie Ani DiFranco.
"In the public eye at this point, you better show some sort of sympathy or
love for America or it will be construed wrong," says hip-hop journalist and Bay
Area radio personality Dave "Davey D" Cook. "For artists, every gesture is
scrutinized. The messages, whether intentional or not, have been delivered hard
and fast to people. Line up, get in lock step and God help you if you aren't.
"I see a few songs that are on the whole 'Wave the flag, I love America'
tip," Cook says. "The big question is: Is this the record company trying to
capitalize on people's emotions? Or are the artists really feeling that way?
Time will tell."
There is an intolerance of those who do speak up, and an attempt to control
the images we see: "Politically Incorrect's" Bill Maher was criticized for
following up on neoconservative Dinesh D'Souza's assertion that the terrorists
behind the Sept. 11 attacks were not cowards. Maher had added: "We have been the
cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away." (Maher declined to be
interviewed for this article.)
Then there's "Boondocks" comic strip creator Aaron McGruder, who found his
work pulled from the New York Daily News and Long Island Newsday after his strip
questioned the CIA's role in funding the Taliban.
And radio giant Clear Channel suggested, in the days after Sept. 11, that its
1,170 stations refrain from playing a list of potentially offensive songs, among
them John Lennon's "Imagine" and the entire catalogue of Rage Against the
Machine. Then there's Davey D, who for years hosted a public affairs show on
KMEL-FM, own by Clear Channel in San Francisco, until being fired soon after the
attacks. The station manager said that Cook was let go because of "extreme
financial pressure" and that nine others were also fired. Cook's supporters, in
an e-mail campaign, see no coincidence in the fact that his show was canceled
after he interviewed Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the only member of Congress to
vote against authorizing the use of force against anyone associated with the
terrorist attacks.
"When you have a national project, which any war is, that tends not to be the
healthiest environment for a huge, diverse conversation of varying ideas," says
Syracuse's Thompson. "The diversity of voices is going to recede a bit."
Hollywood,
Reporting for Duty
One impulse has definitely been at work since Sept. 11: The urge to compare this
war to previous ones, to put things into some sort of context by claiming, for
example, that the attacks were this generation's Pearl Harbor.
Comparisons are at once instructive and useless. There is an ocean of
difference between where we were then and where we are now. In World War II, the
enemy was clearly defined, not some amorphous concept.
The day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
told Congress, in passionate tones, "We will not only defend ourselves to the
utmost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never
endanger us again."
Then, radio was the primary means of communication; in many ways, programming
quickly returned to normal after the attacks. (The development of television,
which had begun in the '30s, was postponed by the war. The technology was seen
as too expensive in times of sacrifice.)
"One can listen to the radio programs of mid-December 1941 and often be
unaware that the nation had just entered a world war," says Thompson.
Hollywood, on the other hand, jumped on the war effort, working with the
government to produce propaganda films as a part of a campaign to thwart Nazi
influence in South America, according to Toby Miller, professor of cultural
studies at New York University. Orson Welles, working with Carmen Miranda,
directed "It's All True," an anti-racism film distributed in Brazil. Walt
Disney, a reported anti-Semite who was struggling to resuscitate his failing
company, created "Saludos Amigos" and "The Three Caballeros," cartoons featuring
Donald Duck. (The government reportedly paid for part of Disney's production
costs and distributed the films for free.)
Disney's collaboration with the government didn't end there: The company
produced military training films, and Army troops actually moved into the
studios for eight months, camping on the floors and setting up their own mess
kitchen on the premises. (Immediately after Sept. 11, Disney postponed the
release of "Big Trouble" and "Bad Company" because of the films' violent
content.)
During World War II, in many instances, there was no attempt to be racially
sensitive: In "Tokio Jokio," the wily Bugs Bunny triumphed over dimwitted,
bucktoothed, nearsighted Japanese soldiers; in "Scrap the Japs," Popeye
declared, "I've never met a Jap that wasn't yellow."
"To convince a population to go out and shoot people, you had to make [the
enemy] other than human," Thompson says.
After the war, B movies in which the Soviet Union was cast as the evil one
started to proliferate. The '60s brought glamorous spies to both the big and
little screens, from James Bond to the Avengers and the man from U.N.C.L.E.
Never mind that the nation was exploding with its own internal war over Vietnam.
Music, of course, was a different matter. The cultural revolution was fought
through songs like Bob Dylan's "The Times They are a-Changin'," and Edwin
Starr's admonitions of "War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"
Redemption, the counterculture proposed, could be found through sex, drugs,
avoiding the draft -- and of course, rock-and-roll.
But with the president called "Tricky Dick" by detractors, the Pentagon
Papers and Watergate burglars, a new cynicism started creeping into the
country's consciousness.
"The idea of a strong U.S. . . . was really rocked by the revealing of the
Pentagon Papers and the Watergate revelations," says New York University's
Miller. TV shows like "M*A*S*H," sly and subversive -- not to mention funny as
hell -- rejected the gung-ho values of a previous generation. "M*A*S*H"
obliquely criticized government; with its wink-wink approach, just who was being
criticized was in the eyes and ears of the beholder.
It wasn't until the late '70s and early '80s that we were ready to deal with
films about Vietnam -- "The Deer Hunter," "Apocalypse Now," "Coming Home."
It's not likely that we will return to the days following 1941, when Frank
Capra made a series of films dubbed "Why We Fight." Sixty years later, Hollywood
execs emerge from the meeting with the White House's Karl Rove and announce that
they want to help in any way possible. But it's not producing propaganda.
Wait and See
Most likely, it will be years before our culture is ready to deconstruct the
events of September.
It is anyone's guess what will be. The war changes daily, events seemingly
tumbling over one another. For now, with no new outbreaks of anthrax infections
and last week's advances in Afghanistan, we are sleeping a little easier. For
now.
"Trying to predict the endgame right now is the biggest mistake you can
make," says Scott Donaton, editor of Advertising Age. "In New York, for a couple
of days you could cross the street across the traffic and no one beeped. But
life gets back to normal more quickly than you think. We can't boil it down to
earnest patriotism. That's not what we are."
TV talk show host Ananda Lewis says she already sees signs that some people
are tiring of it all. She was surprised, she says, when television stations
outside New York and Washington told her they weren't interested in more shows
about Sept. 11.
"I really think everybody would be about the healing process right now," says
Lewis. "That seems to be true of only the areas that were affected. Which is
sad, because it trivializes something to just a news event."
It won't be just a news event if the things get worse. Or another plane falls
from the sky -- and this time it's not an accident. Or smallpox hits Tulsa. Then
perhaps you'll see a society in which no one wants to leave home and people find
release instead through virtual ski trips: A specially rigged treadmill and some
goggles and you're there, on the Alps. It could happen.
Or maybe last week's advances in Afghanistan will take a turn and tens of
thousands of young men and women will die in a protracted ground war. Maybe
we'll see civil liberties erode in the name of fighting the evildoers, until our
rights are nothing more than a wistful thought. And then, perhaps, we'll see a
new brand of protest music on MTV and BET.
"Remember 'Hell no, we won't go'?" asks hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons,
whose latest endeavor, "Def Poetry Jam," was picked up by HBO in the days after
Sept. 11. "I'm hopeful that young people will have something to contribute.
Three rappers are more important than three heads of states talking."
Maybe right now there's an aspiring rapper with a turntable in his bedroom
trying to work through his fears. Or maybe next month, three geeks in a
storefront will get the corporate backing for their video game "Crush al Qaeda."
Or maybe in 10 years some eager director will be maxing out her credit cards to
make an indie flick.
We're shape-shifting.
It's anyone's guess what that final shape will look like.
Just like staking it all on the Redskins three years down the road in Super
Bowl XXXIX, there are no sure bets.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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