Week Ending 23th September, 2001	Page 1
A Horror Film Running In Overdrive...	posted 18 Sept 2001
Bernie Heidkamp of PopPolitics.com points out an interesting feature of the media coverage of the WTC attack - the continual reference to movies in an attempt to make sense of what was happening... a horror film running in overdrive... like driving through a movie set... life seeming to imitate the special effects of bad movies... According to Heidkamp, images from movies 'have simultaneously prepared us for this type of tragedy and distanced us from feeling and understanding its impact'. He thus worries that this will ultimately lead to desensitised passivity. Your thoughts?
We Have Woken A Sleeping Giant...	posted 18 Sept 2001
It's a wonderful line, and one that seems to have become a stock historical quote for war-mongering commentators in the wake of the WTC attack. WW2 Japanese general Yamamoto is supposed to have uttered these words when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbour... In reality, he never did - the line is straight from the script of Tora, Tora, Tora. It was obviously deemed a far more acceptable subsititute for what he actually said: 'It does not do to slit the throat of a sleeping man.'
Yoga With Nostradamus	posted 18 Sept 2001
If you wanted to shift units on the online video market at this moment in history, this title would do it for you... In the top five on Amazon.com are four videos about Nostradamus (the top one features narration from Orson Welles) and Living Yoga - AM/PM Yoga For Beginners Set... Draw your own conclusions.
No Movie Column This Week...	posted 17 Sept 2001
It is difficult to imagine how movies can help us through this next period of our history... New York based film critic David Edelsten speaks about the futility of Hollywood 'escapism' in the shadow of the World Trade Centre tragedy... For him, the only Hollywood film that does not seem 'cheap' right now is The Siege. Despite its 'glib, liberal pieties', it at least offers 'something other than a vigilante-vengeance scenario' - exploring US complicity in terrorism and the dangers of demonisation based on ethnicity. He ends though, by remarking: 'I am frightened by the idea that we will think back on The Siege as possibly popular culture's last sane response to the end of the world as we know it.'
Entertainment Industry Responds To 9-11...	posted 17 Sept 2001
In the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Centre, Hollywood has been rethinking the release of movies containing scenes of plane hijacking and skyscraper destruction. The producers of Spiderman have decided to pull trailers from cinemas because they show images of bank robbers being caught in a web between the twin towers of the WTC. In a similar vein, TV networks are 'editting' the skylines of TV shows to remove images of the WTC... In addition to all this, live theatre productions have been closed, major sporting events have been cancelled...
... But WWF Just Carries On	posted 17 Sept 2001
But nothing will stop the World Wrestling Federation! Rather than cancel Tuesday's live telecast, they simply rescheduled it to Thursday and promoted it as an attempt to 'help America resume normal life'... And why not? WWF has, after all, long provided a stage where America's enemies were demonised - and the country is clamouring for this more than ever right now!... Maybe it's time to bring back the Iron Sheik, a former Iranian wrestler who during the 1980's became their resident symbol of 'evil' Arabic regimes (despite himself being a refugee from revolutionary Iran)...
'Reality' TV... Apparently, It's About Denying Reality...	posted 17 Sept 2001
While the rest of us have been saturated with images of the WTC's destruction, one group of people has deliberately been kept in the dark about the scope of this catastrophe - contestants in productions of Big Brother... In Belgium, South Africa and Denmark, producers decided not to tell them at all. In the US, they were simply told that 'a plane had hit the WTC, and their families were OK' - this despite the fact that the cousin of one of the contestants is missing, presumed dead... They were told nothing about the buildings being obliterated, or Bush declaring war... After seeing no planes flying overhead for a couple of days, they started to become suspicious....
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