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September 11, 2008
Stripping away the last seven years
With the passage of time, it is understandable that the horrifying events of Sept. 11, 2001 have been contained, exploited and even sentimentalized in the manner of any other historic event.
Enough time has passed for Hollywood filmmakers and major novelists to weigh in on 9/11 and for politicians to exploit the terrorist attack in nearly countless ways (an unpopular mayor became a hero and a potential presidential candidate, and a president who had just stolen an election a few months earlier would gain the clout to win a second term in office).
Tonight at 9 p.m. The History Channel is unveiling “102 Minutes That Changed America,” a documentary that blends amateur and professional videos shot in downtown Manhattan during that terrifying period between the first plane hitting the north tower and the collapse of the two buildings.
The documentary has an immediacy that was not possible in the moment-by-moment coverage of the major television networks - it took the producers of the special two years to sift through videos shot by residents and visitors who were on the scene.
The live coverage that most of us saw that morning was certainly as shocking as anything we’ve ever witnessed on TV - the feeling of chaos descending on New York City and the nation was overpowering - but most of the images were made from a slight distance and the networks self-censored a lot of the horror that was visible to the people who happened to be in the streets near the WTC.
“102 Minutes That Changed America” personalizes what happened to dozens of anonymous New Yorkers with video cameras that morning - two female roommates who scream in terror at what they are seeing outside their window (a few blocks from the WTC) and who feel they are in imminent danger on the 33rd floor of a skyscraper; little children who don’t understand what’s happening or how a huge building could “disappear”; firemen who are desperately herding WTC evacuees from the carnage inside and around the WTC; weeping people in a restaurant attempting to call loved ones on their cells and staring in shock at a television; tourists in Times Square trying to figure out what those live pictures on the ABC jumbotron mean.
I understand that there will be many people who will not want to watch a “You Are There” account of the darkest day in modern American life, but this is a valuable document that will enable future generations to see what happened in New York before “history” took over 9/11.
(The History Channel will air “102 Minutes That Changed America” tonight at 9 p.m, without commercial interruption.)
Posted by Joe on September 11, 2008 12:26 PM
