I'm annoyed at Oliver Stone's World Trade Center movie. Not because it's too soon, or because I think it's manipulative; no, right now it sums up what annoys me about people in general and Americans in specific. No, I'm not some sort of commie America hater. I love my country and what is has and could stand for again. What I despise is our miracle/lotto winner mentality.
America loves a winner. What we love even more, though, is someone who got lucky. We play the lotto at a stupid rate, for funds that essentially, after taxes, amount to what we should expect out of a normal job per year. We highlight the lucky souls who pooled their office money together or the old lady, just getting by on Social Security, who used her last dollar on a lotto ticket. We love the hard luck story. We vote against the Estate tax (you body-snatched, new school Republicans may know it as the incorrectly and stupidly titled Death tax), even though not a single one of us will ever be taxed by it. We think that hard work can make you a millionaire.
News flash: it's harder to climb from your economic bracket now than it was during the Great Depression. News Flash 2: A million dollars increasingly doesn't mean jack crap. If you would have invested wisely since you were a teen, gone to college, and worked a normal workweek your whole life, you could be a millionaire by something like your early 40s. At the latest.
But we don't. We play the lottery, jump on new consumer goods like a guy from Boston jumps on the last beer, and spend too much money on internet poker and porn. Credit card debt is through the roof.
The second part of this is the miracle factor. Everybody loves the story of the baby in the well or the one in a million cancer recovery. We sat glued to our screen as trapped miners were declared miraculously alive, and were crushed when it was discovered they were dead. We trot out the handicapped or the crime victim provided their story was one of triumph over adversity, or it was miraculous they somehow survived. We, of course, do not care about anything other than that 5 minutes we saw of their life.
The woman that talked the criminal out of being killed by preaching the word of God.
A man survived in a raft at sea for 133 days back in the 40s.
20 people were pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Was that a miracle? Who knows, but it was what was concentrated on. What a big budget Hollywood movie was made about. Because we need to see the miracles.
Did you know that 10 times that amount jumped from windows? I'm sure you knew a some sort of nebulous number of people were forced to jump from windows to escape fire? Well, the facts are 200 people, and they jumped to escape heat and smoke, not fire so much, and they were conscious when they fell, and they died instantly, and there was nothing recognizable left (as they where traveling about 150 miles per hour) and the cause of death listed on their certificate is homicide.
There, we've talked about it. I've lured you into learning some disturbing facts about an event that is slowly being replaced with fable, miracles, and PR. And you might be pissed; and if you are, it's probably at me; but if you're angry at me, it's misdirected; what you should be asking yourself is why didn't I know this before? What did the media think was the difference between knowing that 200 people fell to their very quick, very horrifically messy deaths; and knowing that 3,000 people were killed by a horrific wave of burning wreckage, airline fuel, or collapsing concrete? Because they made that decision for us and most of us just averted our eyes and concentrated on blurring the details as much as possible.
Like when we walk past homeless. Or think we're helping someone in a wheelchair when we hold open a door or offer to push them. Or continue to assume the larger the media coverage, the more legitimate the story is. And it's not even that we assume what we're being told is the truth: we go back a step further and assume that's all there is to be told on the subject.
A few months back a brilliant film called United 93 was released, covering the 90 or so minutes of the flight that crashed in PA. It was called "too soon" it was labeled as "propaganda" and despite nearly unanimous positive reviews and the fact it was neither too soon, nor propaganda, it was not well-received at the box office. People didn't want to watch a survival story in which no one survives.
I'm making my cynical prediction that World Trade Center will do much better. No matter how average the filmmaking is (something pointed out by nearly all its reviews), we love to take the death of over 3,000 people, focus on the 20 luckiest survivors, then distil that down to the 2 with the most heroic jobs.
Did you know that a couple of falling beams ended up resembling a cross? That cross was, despite the Lord's commandment regarding false idols, seen as a sign, worshipped at, and is currently being relocated at a Catholic church near ground zero (for those cynics out there, yes, the towers were built with prefabricated metal cross beams, but don't harsh my buzz).
Maybe this sounds like I'm a completely cynical bastard, or an atheist, or that I simply don't like Oliver Stone. None of these are true. I am, perhaps, a little too sharply pointed realist. I do believe, mostly, that facts should be presented without the glitter of whose God stepped in to influence events. I do think Flight 93 is a better film and I do get annoyed when bad work packaged as artistically important, does better or is seen by more people.
I definitely think our credit based, lotto playing economy is bad. I definitely think it is possible to corrupt youth, make future generations unsympathetic to reality, and that the constant supply of unrealistic expectations is a detriment to the world as a whole. I believe we do owe more to this society and culture and that the individual should take a back seat to the greater whole. And I wish more of us would... not even have to take the step to be involved in our world: I would settle for that we would just start paying attention.
Fear not, I'm not turning into a goddamn hippy; I still think society should be ruled by the iron fist of natural selection at a much greater rate than it is. Unfortunately, I'm currently out of genies, neither one of those wishes are going to come true.
America loves a winner. What we love even more, though, is someone who got lucky. We play the lotto at a stupid rate, for funds that essentially, after taxes, amount to what we should expect out of a normal job per year. We highlight the lucky souls who pooled their office money together or the old lady, just getting by on Social Security, who used her last dollar on a lotto ticket. We love the hard luck story. We vote against the Estate tax (you body-snatched, new school Republicans may know it as the incorrectly and stupidly titled Death tax), even though not a single one of us will ever be taxed by it. We think that hard work can make you a millionaire.
News flash: it's harder to climb from your economic bracket now than it was during the Great Depression. News Flash 2: A million dollars increasingly doesn't mean jack crap. If you would have invested wisely since you were a teen, gone to college, and worked a normal workweek your whole life, you could be a millionaire by something like your early 40s. At the latest.
But we don't. We play the lottery, jump on new consumer goods like a guy from Boston jumps on the last beer, and spend too much money on internet poker and porn. Credit card debt is through the roof.
The second part of this is the miracle factor. Everybody loves the story of the baby in the well or the one in a million cancer recovery. We sat glued to our screen as trapped miners were declared miraculously alive, and were crushed when it was discovered they were dead. We trot out the handicapped or the crime victim provided their story was one of triumph over adversity, or it was miraculous they somehow survived. We, of course, do not care about anything other than that 5 minutes we saw of their life.
The woman that talked the criminal out of being killed by preaching the word of God.
A man survived in a raft at sea for 133 days back in the 40s.
20 people were pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Was that a miracle? Who knows, but it was what was concentrated on. What a big budget Hollywood movie was made about. Because we need to see the miracles.
Did you know that 10 times that amount jumped from windows? I'm sure you knew a some sort of nebulous number of people were forced to jump from windows to escape fire? Well, the facts are 200 people, and they jumped to escape heat and smoke, not fire so much, and they were conscious when they fell, and they died instantly, and there was nothing recognizable left (as they where traveling about 150 miles per hour) and the cause of death listed on their certificate is homicide.
There, we've talked about it. I've lured you into learning some disturbing facts about an event that is slowly being replaced with fable, miracles, and PR. And you might be pissed; and if you are, it's probably at me; but if you're angry at me, it's misdirected; what you should be asking yourself is why didn't I know this before? What did the media think was the difference between knowing that 200 people fell to their very quick, very horrifically messy deaths; and knowing that 3,000 people were killed by a horrific wave of burning wreckage, airline fuel, or collapsing concrete? Because they made that decision for us and most of us just averted our eyes and concentrated on blurring the details as much as possible.
Like when we walk past homeless. Or think we're helping someone in a wheelchair when we hold open a door or offer to push them. Or continue to assume the larger the media coverage, the more legitimate the story is. And it's not even that we assume what we're being told is the truth: we go back a step further and assume that's all there is to be told on the subject.
A few months back a brilliant film called United 93 was released, covering the 90 or so minutes of the flight that crashed in PA. It was called "too soon" it was labeled as "propaganda" and despite nearly unanimous positive reviews and the fact it was neither too soon, nor propaganda, it was not well-received at the box office. People didn't want to watch a survival story in which no one survives.
I'm making my cynical prediction that World Trade Center will do much better. No matter how average the filmmaking is (something pointed out by nearly all its reviews), we love to take the death of over 3,000 people, focus on the 20 luckiest survivors, then distil that down to the 2 with the most heroic jobs.
Did you know that a couple of falling beams ended up resembling a cross? That cross was, despite the Lord's commandment regarding false idols, seen as a sign, worshipped at, and is currently being relocated at a Catholic church near ground zero (for those cynics out there, yes, the towers were built with prefabricated metal cross beams, but don't harsh my buzz).
Maybe this sounds like I'm a completely cynical bastard, or an atheist, or that I simply don't like Oliver Stone. None of these are true. I am, perhaps, a little too sharply pointed realist. I do believe, mostly, that facts should be presented without the glitter of whose God stepped in to influence events. I do think Flight 93 is a better film and I do get annoyed when bad work packaged as artistically important, does better or is seen by more people.
I definitely think our credit based, lotto playing economy is bad. I definitely think it is possible to corrupt youth, make future generations unsympathetic to reality, and that the constant supply of unrealistic expectations is a detriment to the world as a whole. I believe we do owe more to this society and culture and that the individual should take a back seat to the greater whole. And I wish more of us would... not even have to take the step to be involved in our world: I would settle for that we would just start paying attention.
Fear not, I'm not turning into a goddamn hippy; I still think society should be ruled by the iron fist of natural selection at a much greater rate than it is. Unfortunately, I'm currently out of genies, neither one of those wishes are going to come true.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
That's how I end up seeing many hollywood pictures...as family inflicted pseudo-gifts.