Winds of Change.NET: United 93: Mars and Venus

April 29, 2006

United 93: Mars and Venus

by Yehudit at April 29, 2006 9:21 AM

(All United 93 entries on Kesher Talk here.)

Last week on my blog I posted some examples of the wildly varying reactions to United 93. I had predicted that the fault line would be one's understanding of the terrorist threat: People who believe we need to counter this threat aggressively, with war if necessary, are using the film to strengthen their resolve. Those who think war is a wrongheaded response understand the role the film plays for "warmongers," and want to undermine its power by finding fault with its fidelity to facts and its treatment of heroism.

One could call these the Mars and Venus approaches to United 93.

Ron Rosenbaum and Lee Siegal take the Venus approach. This is not to disparage all you girly-girls out there (of whatever gender). Venus brings valuable insights to the table. But Venus thinks courage and heroism and stoicism and fighting are dumb, and mess up her makeup too. Venus thinks the story arc is too simplistic, too linear. Typical boy stuff.

Redemptive uplift: It's the official religion of the media, anyway. There must be a silver lining; it's always darkest before the dawn; the human spirit will triumph over evil; there must be a pony.
That's always been the subtextual spiritual narrative of media catastrophe coverage: terrible human tragedy, but something good always can be found in it to affirm faith and hope and make us feel better. Plucky, ordinary human beings find a way to rise above the disaster. Man must prevail. The human spirit is resilient, unconquerable. Did I mention there must be a pony?
9/11 is no different. Flight 93 has become 9/11's pony.

Boys like explosions and car chases. Girls like complicated movies about relationships, which proves they are sophisticated. And if you actually get off on all this heroism stuff, then you are just a dumb jock.

Yes, it appears from the cockpit recordings recently released that something noble — a passenger uprising that disrupted the hijackers' plans — happened on that flight. But is it possible to separate it out from the other events of the day? In three out of four cases savage mass murderers prevailed. A "war on terror" has ensued; a war in Iraq followed. In neither case is it clear that the outcome is going to be favorable. The story of 9/11 as a whole increasingly seems a portent that Flight 93 was an aberration, and that those intent on suicidal martyrdom may well prevail over those who value human life over holy books. This possibility is something no one likes to dwell on, and in that sense the "triumphant" fable of Flight 93, genuinely heroic as it is, represents a comforting diversion. There must be a pony.

Of course it's not clear that the outcome is going to be favorable. Of course we dwell on the possibility of failure. A 5 minute tour of the warblogs will make it clear that we obsess over the possibility of failure. Examples of genuine heroism are precious and needed because failure is very possible and the outcome will be influenced by how we handle this. But that's the kind of thing soldiers and police and firefighters and EMTs and other Mars types understand.

I do think Rosenbaum knows this, and he just does not want to be put in the position of having to choose whether to rise to the occasion. If he can invalidate the idea of rising to the occasion, if he can do an end run around the conflict and pronounce that we are all doomed anyway, he can avoid not only being tested, but the possibility of being tested. If enough of us believe him, then we will all join him in avoiding this challenge and he won't be shown up.

Lee Siegal expresses a similar discomfort with the challenge the film presents:

I believe that they tried to wrest back control of the plane because they were trying to save themselves, not because they intended to sacrifice their lives to save the lives of people in Washington. That doesn't make them selfish. That doesn't diminish their bravery. That makes them attached to life. It is obscene to remember them only on the condition that they acted in a way that flatters our imaginations. We live in a society in which self-interest and selfishness so often go hand in hand that when we encounter a healthy and profound instance of the former, we want to cover it up under a lie about human nature, perhaps out of guilt over our own relentless selfishness.

Sorry, I think this is a distinction without a difference. As one of the commenters points out, it was unlikely that they could actually wrest the plane from the jihadis and safely pilot it down, and they knew that. But they also knew - because of the miracle of in-flight passenger telecommunications - that the jihadis were planning to crash the plane into something and that they were headed back to the East Coast. In the heat of conflict they did not parse out all these facts and neatly assigned different motives to each one. They were heroic. They were self-interested. The two are not in conflict. (And a soldier who saves his fellows by throwing himself on a grenade is also acting out of self-interest, once removed. Something else that Mars types understand.) Lee wants to separate things that in real life are intertwined. Why? If he can make a case that the heroism is "selfish," he thinks that lessens it. In fact, he - like Ron Rosenbaum - is so uncomfortable with the heroism that he wants to see

a different kind of movie about Flight 93. I would like to see a movie showing a passenger--of whatever gender, race or age--sitting in his seat in anguish and terror, at times weeping for his precious life, sitting in anger and terror over the possibility of never seeing the people he loves again, of not living beyond that moment. That would be the film. It should be as long as Flight 93 lasted. It would not lend itself to heavy lucubrations about heroism or cowardice, or to 9/11 metaphors, or to big symbolic meanings encompassing the rise and fall of civilizations and Conclusions To Be Drawn From The Menace We Face. It would be about fragile, inestimable life, about the bare truth of that, which is beyond any meaning we impose on it. As a society, we need to remember that life is nakedly, ineffably precious before it takes the form of any of the other things it inevitably has to be. Can you do that, my scrivening peers? Can you live without the shelter of adventure-stories and fairy tales you listened to as children? Or have you learned nothing from experience?

Well, what have I learned from experience? I have learned, from the passengers of Flight 93, from soldiers, firefighters, women fighting rapists in the street, slaves escaping their servitude, children standing up to bullies, outnumbered and outgunned partisans making a last stand, and from many other sources, is that human beings often have it in them to become larger than their fears or selfishness. What I learn from those examples - which recognition is part of my experience of human interaction - is that to whatever extent I meditate on those examples, I explore whether I too might be capable of such things.

I would feel empathy for the passenger sitting weeping in his seat, and that might also be me. I wouldn't avoid facing that person for fear of taking on his paralysis. But I would like to think that I wouldn't join him, in fact, I would like to think that I could motivate him to get up and join me in taking action.

What strikes me about both Rosenbaum and Siegal is that they not only want to sit in their seats and weep, they want to denigrate any desire by anyone else to get up out of our seats and do something. They are like the two Jews in a cattle car to Auschwitz, one of whom suggests making a break for it when the cattle car stops at a crossing. The other says "Shush, you might make things worse."

This is not to say that anyone who questions the rightness of meeting terrorism with violence is a coward. A case can be made that other approaches are preferable. I don't agree with that point of view, but one could make a case. What I am saying is that if you so begrudge a re-enactment of a genuine act of heroism (whether or not the passengers actually breached the cockpit), I have to wonder what your motives are, especially when you doth protest too much. You can give the passengers of Flight 93 their due, and still be against the Iraq War. These responses are about something else, something more personal.

And for comparison, here's a seriously Mars review of the film.

And this one, which specifically (although probably unknowingly) answers Rosenbaum and Siegal:

Ambivalence seems to be a painfully inadequate, mewling response to the courage of United 93's passengers who, according to Hemingway's definition of the term, acted not in fearlessness but despite their fear. This is a film that demands a different vocabulary, one that conveys both misgivings about our need for these fetishistic cinematic rituals, and admiration for the discipline and dignity with which an artist has brought the incomprehensible into lucid and uncompromising focus. "United 93" is a great movie, and I hated every minute of it.

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Comments

#1 from David Blue at 5:02 pm on Apr 29, 2006

Lee Siegel wrote 523 words, not including the title, and he says in brackets, as thought it didn't matter too much "(I haven't seen the film..."

I have utter contempt for movie reviewers, left, right or in some political orbit of their own, who haven't seen the film.

I don't so much as give an IMDb rating to movies I haven't watched properly all through, even if the reason I didn't see it all was because I walked out on unendurable garbage. Who knows, maybe the last ten seconds or something in the end titles redeemed it? If you didn't see the whole move, giving it your full attention and every chance to win you over on its terms, you have no right whatever to respect for any opinion you may write on it.

Yet here is Lee Siegel on Culture for the New Republic Online, not writing a "review" but commenting illegitimately in a way that's close enough, not holding himself to such a "demanding" standard. What a twit. What an empty-head. What a nothing.

And how pretentious and superior he is about his utter, disqualifying ignorance!

"Can you do that, my scrivening peers? Can you live without the shelter of adventure-stories and fairy tales you listened to as children? Or have you learned nothing from experience?"

As though pompous ignoramuses from some height of lofty blindness set the tests!

I don't see how our cultural establishment could be more contemptible, less deserving of respect or attention.

When the movie comes to Australia, I'll see it as much as I can, as a blank. Just sit down, tabula rasa, and let the film take me anywhere it wants to go, ready and eager to be won over on any terms it sets. You've got to be willing to be part of the real audience for that film: one of the people it's trying to reach out to and grab, and give what it has to offer. I think that's how you see a movie.

I think that's not at all how most reviewers see movies, or any other kind of art. Which has a lot to do with their reviews being worthless. Preconceptions, inattentiveness and routine categorisations do not a worthwhile review make, no matter how intensely the reviewer acts out the role of being a received/politically acceptable cultural guru.

#2 from Tom Holsinger at 5:36 pm on Apr 29, 2006

Judith,

Some people are frightened and offended by selflessness and heroism because it reminds them of what they are not. This drives them to denigrate what they fear.

#3 from Pangloss at 5:55 pm on Apr 29, 2006

In the case of United 93, the controversy seems to be whether the events of the day should be told as a:

1. Slice of life with no coherent storyline, in the tradition established by the socialist aesthetes who helmed the New Yorker and other bastions of the Modern Literary movement of the 20th century. In the New Yorker, these sorts of stories always end with leaves swirling on the street in the cold autumn wind. They conclude with meaninglessness, rather than meaning.

2. Story with a traditional form, in the form recorded in all the traditions of storytelling from Homer, the Bible, the Bhagavad Vita, and their descendants. This type of story, much as Myth, has an arc and a message, and teaches us something meaningful. In fact, meaningless is precisely that enemy which must be conquered by the protagonist in a traditional story.

As someone who prefers meaning to its lack, who believes in life more than death, and in the Sacred rather than Nihilism, I have no sympathy for Rosenbaum's or Siegal's position. They are losers who refuse to learn from experience.

#4 from OCSteve at 6:00 pm on Apr 29, 2006

I haven�t decided yet if I will see it. My wife does not want me to. I had a ringside seat across the river in Newark that day. My wife says it changed me, permanently. I guess it has. For one thing, I don�t enjoy a beautiful day with a deep blue cloudless sky the way I once did � those kind of days now make me feel apprehensive, a feeling of foreboding, that something bad is on it�s way.

The main change obvious to her is that I never gave a tinker�s damn about politics before. Now I do, and she thinks I am at times obsessed with it. And I am not interested in politics because I like it or enjoy any aspect of it � I feel now like I have to pay attention. I feel like my previous lackadaisical attitude was irresponsible. Even though I am in my forties, I used to feel like I didn�t have to pay attention, that the grownups were running the world. Sucks to be so wrong.

So I think I have to see it. I think it will be a difficult thing, but a necessary thing. Closure is not the right word, because this is not an event with a finite ending. But I think it will recharge my outrage, my resolve. Enough time has passed that those feelings have kind of been numbed, especially with the media blackout on the topic.

Frankly, I wish the entire country would see it � because as a country it is apparent that we could all use a fresh shot of resolve.

#5 from wastelandlive at 6:22 pm on Apr 29, 2006

For what its worth, I found the film very balanced. It's unfortunate that these psuedocritics have attempted to tar this movie with this particular brush.

There was nothing simplistic or moralistic about this film. It didn't try to make order out of chaos, enoble its protagonists, or find some greater, redemptive meaning in this tragedy.

Mankind has used such narrative devices to integrate our experience of this world since we invented the spoken word. But if you think that this is a sin - if it strays too far from reality - then know that the director of THIS movie did not commit that sin.

There are all kinds of characters in this film, ALL of them plausible. What reigns supreme in this picture is that absolute confusion and disbelief of the people dealing with the tragedy in realtime. They are people plunged into the fog of war, most of them completely unprepared.

Most made awful decisions. Many made sound decisions, but made them too late. Most were totally confused. A critical mass of passengers on flight 93 made the right decision on-time... but they didn't survive execution.

That's probably better than the battlefield average.

#6 from wastelandlive at 8:37 pm on Apr 29, 2006

I thought it useful to mention that most of the mainstream critics actually get it, for once.

A fantastic movie. For those concerned, there is NOTHING exploitive or in bad taste about it. I highly recommend it.

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1809273193

#7 from Yehudit at 12:28 am on Apr 30, 2006

You're right that more mainstream critics got it than I expected. That was a welcome surprise. Maybe the movie will fulfill the worst nightmares of the Rosenbaum/Siegal crowd and galvanize the average liberal Joe to climb out of his/her numbness and address the problem head-on.

#8 from Over and out at 12:58 am on Apr 30, 2006

#2, are you denigrating Republicans?

#9 from Glen Wishard at 1:12 am on Apr 30, 2006

Siegel:

We live in a society in which self-interest and selfishness so often go hand in hand that when we encounter a healthy and profound instance of the former, we want to cover it up under a lie about human nature, perhaps out of guilt over our own relentless selfishness.

Selfishness and self-interest go hand in hand - whoa, that's heavy.

Actually we live in a society where many have morally and intellectually abdicated in the face of evil to the point that they think the murder of innocent people is a rational expression of self-interest (preferably the murder of innocent people other than ourselves, of course). How selfish of us to assert our own interest by trying to survive.

It wasn't so long ago that progressive persons decided that oppressed minorities had a legitimate right to rape white women, and that it was therefore very selfish and bourgeois to object to the practice. If Siegel has advanced an iota beyond that viewpoint, I don't see it.

#10 from StargazerA5 at 2:27 am on Apr 30, 2006

As a society, we need to remember that life is nakedly, ineffably precious before it takes the form of any of the other things it inevitably has to be. Can you do that, my scrivening peers? Can you live without the shelter of adventure-stories and fairy tales you listened to as children? Or have you learned nothing from experience?

If this is the world you live in, then I well and truely pity you, for it is an empty world: dull, drab, and dreary with little meaning and little reason to live.

It is not my world.

StargazerA5

#11 from Paul Milenkovic at 3:43 am on Apr 30, 2006

A school teacher friend recently told me about a recent "must see" exhibit at a local art museum, something to which field trips of high school students were being taken, and said something about the exhibit communicating something about the futility of war, assuming that opposition to the War in Iraq was this broad-based consensus among anyone this person came in contact.

I don't want to go see that exhibit, but I don't think I want to see Flight 93 either, but I wonder if the school district would show Flight 93 to its charges in order to raise their awareness of all of the issues involved.

There are certain actions which need to be taken, for the security of our country, for the protection of our fundamental values, and for the preservation of civilization itself. I don't get to decide these issues, but as a voter, I play my small part and thus have a certain responsibility. I don't want to cast a vote that is in practice a vote for or against the War on Terror or the Iraq War on emotion, whether it is identifying with the passengers of Flight 93 or identifying with the anti-war message at the art museum. I would really like to hear messages based on reason and cast my vote based on reason.

If we venture into the popular culture a little, Mr. Spock on TV's Star Trek represented the repression of all emotion to decide matters on the force of reason, the Vulcan cult of logic. Mr. Spock is of course a character in a television fiction, but his outlook had antecedants in human history. Mr. Spock, following the cult of logic, was quite the pacifist with few exceptions. Those few exceptions were instances where a foe was so malignant that there was no logical alternative but to stand and fight, and under those circumstance, Spock was the most energetic hawk.

What is wrong with following the heart instead of one's head on these matters? Following with the heart after 9-11 would have us all swearing bloody vengeance while following with the heart after 3 years of war in Iraq would have us calling it day and bringing our soldiers home. There is an enemy out there who remains just as malignant as on September 11, and we need reason rather than jolts of emotion to cause us to perservere.

#12 from Robin Roberts at 3:45 am on Apr 30, 2006

We saw United 93 this afternoon. It is a surprisingly subtly done film. The director had a very light touch, almost no score, and carefully toned performances of ordinary people experiencing extraordinary events.

There is no "message" in the film, other than what the audience chooses to take from the depiction of events.

Its stunning.

#13 from David Foster at 5:09 am on Apr 30, 2006

"In neither case is it clear that the outcome is going to be favorable...those intent on suicidal martyrdom may well prevail over those who value human life over holy books"...does Rosenbaum know so little of history that he doesn't understand that outcomes often hang by a thread? Does he think the outcomes of the Civil War and WWII were foreordained? Is he unaware that many politicians and "experts" (including Lindberg and Joe Kennedy) thought Britain had no chance against Nazi Germany?

As George Bernanos wrote in 1940: "Men of England, at this very moment you are writing what public speakers like to describe in their jargon as one of the "greatest pages of history"....At this moment you English are writing one of the greatest pages of history, but I am quite sure that when you started, you meant it as a fairy tale for children. "Once upon a time there was a little island, and in that island there was a people in arms against the world..." Faced with such an opening as that, what old cunning fox of politics or business would not have shrugged his shoulders and closed the book?"

(full quote below: note that blawgspot address will need to be fixed due to spam-catcher)

http://photoncourier.bl*gspot.com/2004_05_01_photoncourier_archive.html#108441414480441469

#14 from Achillea at 6:34 pm on Apr 30, 2006

#10 - I concur totally. A World Without Heroes is no place to live.

#11 - Paul, while I agree that a bit more logical thinking would be useful, it's also easy for Vulcans to indulge in pacifism when Romulans aren't dropping giant hovercraft on ShirKahr.

#15 from Johnmonkey at 5:12 am on May 01, 2006

United 93 sucked, and I want my money back!

The movie opens in a hotel room(s?) of the four Islamofascists. They are troubled and angsty, reading their little god book, praying on their mats, and shaving their torsos. That's as deep a picture of them that we get. No arrogance of self-assuredness, and no night-before strip club. (Remember that?) If they have any motivation, we're not given an indication of that.

There's not much action on United 93 during the first part of the movie, in spite of the fact that there's quite a bit of footage of it. Most of the action takes place in different control rooms. There's a military control room, where the day begins with a planned NORAD exercise. Once the military is interested, the guy in charge yells at one man after another to "light up all the blips" for one suspected airplane after another, while the guy in charge of him tries to get someone to okey-dokey shooting down planes. There are two air traffic control rooms, where the men track planes and wonder why someone doesn't do something about this situation. The guy in charge is played by his real-life self, and (surprise!) is shown doing everything that he should have done.

Once things start on United 93, the (in)action on the ground is forgotten. Of course, the passengers find out by calling the ground that they're not a hijacked plane but a guided missile. They quickly resolve to attack the Islamofascists and take control of the plane. After resolving this, they wait for ten or so minutes, while the people call home and sob and cry and you dear viewer get to watch. This unbelievable drawing things out continues after they start the attack, where they all pause to beat up one of the fascists instead of some doing so while the rest go on to take back the plane -- even though they've thoroughly talked over how very necessary that is.

Having dispatched the first fascist, they rush the second, who holds them off with cart, mace, fire extinguisher, and knife, while the plane plummets and jerks, throwing everyone around and drawing things out even more. After a bit, Number Two is put out of the way. Then there's a long attempt to get through the cabin door. For some reason, the plane is still in the air for this to be achieved, and for everyone to claw at the last two. Finally, everyone is put out of their misery.

I believe I can call this a snuff film because the action on the plane is so unnecessarily and unrealistically prolonged. I didn't actually yell out, "Get on with it!," but I was inspired to a few times.

One of my fellow viewers had to bail out early on because the movie made him sick. Not from the story or the emotions, but because all the cameras film fairly close up and constantly jerk around. You might think, though I wouldn't, that this would be fine when the passengers are rushing the fascists, but it is done all the time, even in a boring staff meeting of traffic controllers. The cinematography works against the movie throughout all of it.

Any inspiration, resolve, respect, patriotism, that I left this film with, I brought into it with me. Sorry, I thought it was crap. Crap on ice.

#16 from Ian Campbell at 5:35 pm on May 01, 2006

Well, I haven't seen this movie, and don't even know whether it's out in the UK yet. From what I've heard, I will probably watch it when possible.

However, for a fairly powerful illustration of what we might be up against, if Iran is able to get its way, see a completely fictional (so far!) movie, The Sum of All Fears.

#17 from Dan Kauffman at 8:45 am on May 02, 2006

Well, what have I learned from experience?

That as we did during the Revolution we have citizen who deserve these words Samuel Adams gave to their ilk in his day.

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude
greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us
in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down
and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon
you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

Of course my reaction MAY be influenced by reading your article while I have Lee Greenwood singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic coming over my headphones.

#18 from Dan Kauffman at 9:04 am on May 02, 2006

Gee too bad they cannot take the City Fathers of Carthage or the Leaders of the Third Reich to see that./