May 17, 2005
Controlled Doom
After the twinned towers fell a number of artists and writers had difficulty separating the symbolic tragedy from the violent trauma. In a culture whose various economies are almost all symbolic it was somewhat understandable that they would react most strongly to the imagery, as if the attack were part of the greater illusion. And, given that our culture is predicated on the exchange of symbolic force, it is actually very hard to think where exactly, if at all, reality and its signs separate into anything approximating neat categories. Those images of inferno, in particular, had already been rehearsed as spectacle in movies, to name only a couple, like Independence Day, or, going back to 1956, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. How many times has the Eiffel Tower bit the big one? The White House? The Statue of Liberty? Etc. Hollywood loves to visualize Armageddon. For some reason images of our near total, or total destruction have a strange hold over our fantasy. To the filmmaker David Cronenberg our attraction to the imagery of deadly force is about having a sense of control over ones destiny. In the documentary The American Nightmare he talks at length about our morbid preoccupation. According to Cronenberg: “If you don’t think about it you can’t have any control over it whatsoever. If you think about it, you have at least the illusion of control which is a beginning.” Such curiosity about our fears has, of course, spawned numerous industries. Terrorism is perfectly good fodder for action dramas. On TV we see it in shows like 24. On the face of it 24 is, of course, the worst kind of cop propaganda. Like the nearly unwatchable spin-offs of CSI: Los Vegas, 24 is supposed to impress us with the new omnipotence offered law enforcement by science and technology. Big Daddy will protect us, even from microscopic evil, monsters whose patterns can only be recognized by super computers. Nifty gadgets abound. They are the instruments of the dogged Pit-bull authority figures fueled by testosterone rage always one step or more behind the evildoers. But 24 is more than just cop propaganda. It is a rehearsal of the kind of imagery we will, unfortunately, probably come to see more of. Just as the imagery of the White House exploding in Independence Day precedes the near actual event, 24 not only prepares us for the enlargement of the total Police State, but we are already witness to the trauma that most experts believe awaits us.