I have been out of the loop lately, but have been following with interest the debate around "The Path to 9/11." I have a thing for drama, and rewriting history has always been one of the playwright's favorite pastimes. Probably the most well-known example--since he's the playwright that even people who know nothing about drama can always name--is Shakespeare, whose history plays have long survived the political and historical time that initially made them relevant. Nowadays, the group of people who have read or seen Shakespeare's
Richard II, for instance, is much larger than the group of people who remember that in 1601, the Earl of Essex paid Shakespeare's company to produce the play
the day before he launched his unsuccessful rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. It was intended as a recruiting tactic; Queen Elizabeth recognized this, and indeed if you want to learn more about this incident, all you have to do is Google, "I am Richard II, know ye not that?"
You could still probably produce
Richard II as a political attack. After all, Shakespeare's Richard II is a weak king who loses his popularity with the people after years of being manipulated by his flattering, hedonistic male followers and loses his political power because of his involvement in an expensive foreign war. Richard II's defeatist attitude--"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground/ And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings"--would superficially seem at odds with Bush's pugnacious stay-the-courseity, but only superficially; that note of despair is sounding ever more clearly with every pronouncement the gang in charge makes.
My point is that the fact that a major historical event is being tendentiously rewritten and strategically restaged for nakedly political purposes is nothing new. Dramatizing history is always a political act, and as I said, you can't stop people from doing it. There are, however, a few things that make what's about to happen with ABC and "The Path to 9/11," well, a little bit special. Because first of all, the first rule for successfully rewriting a historical event is that you
wait until the witnesses are dead. The second rule, related of course to the first, is that your dramatization has to be
more compelling than any memories people may have of the actual event. ABC, blithely ignoring both rules, has sunk $40 million into what I can tell you right now, without having seen it, is going to be a true piece of crap which will fade into oblivion as quickly as
DC 9/11: Time of Crisis.What, don't tell me you don't remember
DC 9/11: Time of Crisis! Produced in 2003 starring the actor who also played Bush on the short-lived Parker/Stone comedy series
That's My Bush, the film was shot into the air as a propaganda arrow, in the optimistic hope that it would pierce the American heartland and persuade them that Bush's response to 9/11 had actually looked something like the plot they portrayed, summaried here from the film's IMDB entry:
Scheduled to air shortly before the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, DC 9/11 takes an inside look at the Bush Administration, beginning with the day of the attacks, and following the President's journey to Ground Zero, culminating with his now famous national address nine days after the attacks. The film covers the many difficult decisions and tasks faced by the President and his staff as they were challenged by the possibility of the "first war of the 21st Century." Eschewing their own feelings and healing process, the President and his team instead tended to the needs of a wounded country. Based on real life accounts the docudrama will interweave actual footage from these haunting events.Italics mine, pathetic puffery theirs. Note that this film, like "The Path to 9/11," was produced by right-wingers, aired "shortly before" September 11, and clearly intended to create the impression that Bush was a capable, compassionate, commanding leader capable of steering the "wounded country" through its "time of crisis." Note, also, its use of the phrase "based on," and its promise to deliver to the viewer "actual footage from these haunting events." Why "interweave actual footage?" Obviously, one purpose is simply to shore up the film's "reality effect" and confuse viewers about whether what they are watching is fact or fiction. But another less obvious purpose is to boost the emotional power of their feeble re-enactment by infusing it with the jolt of real terror and grief that "actual footage of these haunting events" can be counted on to trigger in any American viewer who remembers being glued to the TV on September 11, 2001.
And therein lies problem that faces not just this collection of right-wing hacks, but any filmmaker who is drawn back to this subject. September 11, 2001 were dramatized for us all as or just after it happened by the broadcast media. We remember seeing this movie when it first came out. It was terrifying, compelling, moving, draining, and horribly, horribly real. Having had the original burned into our brains, none of us have any use for a remake. Seeing this the first time was a world-shattering experience. As long as the generation to whom it happened is alive, no filmmaker will ever really be able to make us see it again.
Oliver Stone's
World Trade Center is out now. Oliver Stone, unlike the "DC 9/11" and "Path to 9/11" hacks, is a master of his craft working with a big-name cast and a studio budget. The film is being promoted with swelling music and inspirational voice-overs as a feel-good story of heroism. Stone, of course, has already done plenty in the dramatizing history department, and perhaps he knows what he's doing; but I am never going to see this film, and I would bet that I am not alone. I heard good things about
United 93, a film by a British director whose similar treatment of Bloody Sunday had also been well-respected in some quarters; still, I knew as soon as I first read about it that I was not going no matter how good anyone told me it was.
I did go to see
Fahrenheit 911, because I had seen Moore's other films and I knew that although the film would be an argument rather than an exposition, he at least would not attempt to re-enact actual events. Unlike all of these other efforts,
Fahrenheit 911 does not "interweave actual footage" with staged re-enactments starring actors pretending to be other people. All the footage in it, from the interviews to the "cast photos" of Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz, etc. in the opening and closing credits, is "actual." Not objectively presented, certainly--nobody understands arrangment-as-argument better than Moore--but not fabricated either.
So. You don't remember
DC 9/11: Time of Crisis? What a pity. All that money spent putting the thing together and getting it aired on Showtime at the most politically and emotionally effective time in the calendar, and nobody even remembers it happened--not even me. I had even forgotten the title (thanks, notmypresident!) and had to look up all the information about it on the IMDB. Why doesn't anyone remember this piece of propaganda? Maybe because that's all it was.
Richard II survived because it has compelling characters, poignant situations, and some beautiful writing.
Richard III survives because even though Shakespeare's Richard III is clearly a hatchet job--undertaken perhaps, just perhaps, because Shakespeare thought it would please his Queen to see the man from whom her grandfather seized the throne portrayed as a monster who never should have had it in the first place--he is also compelling as only a ruthless, chortling, gleefully amoral but brilliant supervillain can be.
Henry V survives because in addition to all the support it provides for any kind of
war of conquest your government feels like waging, it also depicts the danger, fear, and brutality of war with something that approaches honesty.
But I think the real reason--apart from the fact that Chetwynd has probably only ever been compared to Shakespeare here and in his dreams--is that it is far too early to be trying to make Americans unlearn what September 11, 2001 taught them. Nothing these idiots can put together can ever overwrite the harrowing experience of seeing it actually unfold. Nor can it convince us that the five years that followed indicate that George W. Bush is the finest president to ever walk the earth. We were here for all that. We still remember it. We're not buying this bullshit.
Will
The Path to 9/11 fade from public memory as completely as
DC 911: Time of Crisis has? I don't think so; but I think that's actually a good thing.
The Path to 9/11 will not be remembered for its own sake. I haven't, of course, seen it--I'm not a right-wing blogger, and I doubt I could do a good enough impression to wangle a review copy--but you don't have to fall off a cliff to know it hurts, and you don't have to watch this thing to know it's going to be crap. It will be remembered because it finally provoked public outrage about and resistance to this administration's control of the media from an opposition party which is finally starting to show signs of life. It will be remembered because of the protest it caused. And because of that, there will be at least
one way in which this thing approaches the truth of our experience of September 11. All of you all who are part of the protest,
you are now the real show. You are the people who are making this matter. You are the ones who are telling the real story about this horrible time in our country's history. Your story, I think, will survive. As for ABC, they are about to discover that they have wasted $40 million.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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