THE UNSUNG HERO OF 911:  THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA

By Lloyd Kaufman

With thanks to Jamie Greco and Adam Jahnke

        I have often contemplated writing a tribute to the victims of the 9/11 tragedy, but my conscience would never let my pen spill its sorrow.  After all, the victims of September 11^th and their loved ones wouldn’t care what I, a director whose movies show kids getting their heads crushed and pregnant gynos ^[1]getting fetus' ripped from their bellies, have to say about their loss.

        I hadn’t thought of being so vain as to think that my opinion on the subject mattered until I heard the great Rudolph Giuliani ^[2] speak at the 2002 MTV Music Awards.  There, Rudy praised the celebrity audience for being 9/11 heroes.  Kids who lost their parents in the World Trade Center must have felt a lot safer knowing that the gun-happy Puff Daddy…er…P Diddy did so much good for their dead daddies and mangled mommies and that Justin Timberlake was brave enough to go solo in times of trouble.  While my status as the President of Troma, the last do-do bird independent movie studio around, can't compare to the heroism of JLo and Christina Aguilera, millions of people do read Troma’s website.   Therefore, I think I have the responsibility to say a little something about the real hero of 9/11 – THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA [AMM].

        It would have been easy for our nation's heart to develop a cynical beat after September 11th considering that more than 3,000 innocent civilians were murdered when the terrorists attacked.  Luckily, we have been graced by all sorts of heroes who have preserved America's optimism – cops and firemen who selflessly lost their lives by attempting to rescue people from the Towers, EMS lifesavers, teachers who assuaged the worries of our young ones, psychologists who have counseled the victims, etc.  While all of these magnificent, glorious people should certainly be memorialized, the Troma Team and I believe that the American Mainstream Media [AMM] needs to be honored.  Yes, for the past year, AMM has been brave enough to stand by our side every minute of every day, pumping a positive and patriotic blood into our veins via television, newspapers, magazines, and soon movies! 

         The CIA and FBI may be fucked up, but bravo to the major TV networks that demonstrated unprecedented efficiency just minutes after the first hijacked plane plowed into the World Trade Center.  FOX-TV owner Rupert Murdoch is one of the network heroes who evinced this efficiency.  Thanks to Murdoch, when people turned on their television sets that doomed morning, they saw more than burning Towers.  They saw burning Towers spitting out live people.  I guess Murdoch felt that the best way to pay tribute to the victims of 9/11 was to show them jumping out of 107 story windows.  As a public service, perhaps, beneficent Murdoch’s worldwide TV networks broadcasted these swan dives again and again and again and again. ^[3]   Some of the victims were even holding hands while on their way to Jackson Pollocking the cars and streets below.  Unfortunately, Murdoch’s telephoto lens wasn’t able to zoom in on any footage of bodies being splattered upon landing on the cement below.  Such footage would have been an even greater comfort to the families and friends of the victims.  As it is, they were left with a Perils-of-Pauline-like cliffhanger.  What exactly happened to the jumpers once they plummeted out of camera range?  Thanks to Murdoch's newspapers that published a “point of view” photo depicting what a person who has just plunged head first from the 107^th Floor of Tower #1 actually sees at the debut of his doomsday flight, the victims’ families and, indeed, all of us could feel so much closer to the victims.

        When the Twin Towers eventually crumbled, the mainstream networks demonstrated just how loving and compassionate they could be during a time of national tragedy.  Networks such as ABC-Disney (in the true Disney family-friendly fashion) immediately realized that replaying the tragic September 11^th footage over and over and over again might have become boring without an ominous musical score.  Like a Hollywood disaster film, it just wouldn’t be the same without music to accompany the action.  Honorably, the networks went a step further and invented a catchy title with even more punch than The Sum of All Fears.  “America Fights Back” was now instantly super- imposed over the never ending re-broadcasts of the now musically scored scenes of World Trade Center oblivion.  Presto, we at home were afforded an instant new disaster movie with all the Hollywood fixings…free of charge and with no fucking tacked on love story.  As if AMM’s great homage to humanity wasn’t enough, thanks to AMM’s new TV disaster movie, we subsequently also got to see lots more of Hillary Clinton, lots more well-fed elected officials in $2,000 suits and a bunch of beef-jerky-faced aging rock stars on our TV sets.  “America:  A Tribute to Heroes” was the first real opportunity for these stars, most of whom live in California and, before 9/11, didn’t even like New York ^[4] ,  to pitch in.  Particular kudos go out to Irish mavericks U2, who understood that even in a time of crisis, moody cinematography is vital and broadcast their “Tribute to Heroes” in noir-ish black and white while everybody else settled for plain old color.

        The media reflected a concern that must have sprung into all of our minds as soon as the Towers gave way:  What should be done about images of the pre-9/11 World Trade Center that appear in movies and television?  While most network’s news programs aired playback upon playback of the obscene terrorism footage, AMM seemed to be against the idea of the pre-September 11th Towers appearing in any television or movie program.  After all, seeing the Twin Towers crumble one hundred times a day on CNN was much healthier for anxious and paranoid children than seeing the Towers stand tall and proud on a fictional program.  Someone in Hollywood cartel-land made an Emmy award-winning move when he decided to remove the images of the Towers from re-runs of the hit show, Friends. ^[5]   That person(s) diligently took into consideration that Friend's 20-million viewers might not be smart enough to realize that the World Trade Center no longer exists if they saw the buildings the way they used to look.  After all, most of us don't have the intelligences of the media elites. ^[6]

         Soon, a pissed off American public began to disapprove of the AMM monopolies erasing the Twin Towers.  They felt that removing the Towers was like destroying them all over again.  Being the considerate do-gooders that they are, the television media elites decided that they had to safeguard America's feelings as well as their station's ratings.  Therefore, they stopped editing the Towers out of television programs so as not to further upset the public. 

          The movie business also showed a change of heart.  The Sum of All Fears had been pulled from the Fall 2001 lineup for dealing with terrorism too early, but the Ben Affleck smash wouldn’t be gone forever. ^[7]   Hollywood ingratitude returned to the scene and people once again started to take life for granted and shit on each other.  For the most part, New York politicians and businessmen were no longer sitting in Washington Square Park, holding hands and singing “Imagine” as they cried for all the poor victims.  Instead, they began to pay further respect to the lost by copywriting “Let’s Roll.”  How wonderful it is to put these last words of the heroes of Flight 93 on T-shirts, posters, 9/11 souvenirs and lots of other crappy stuff whose sales didn’t go to the woman whose husband brought down the terrorists, but into the hands of rich people and the fucking Arabs who sold them at Ground Zero.  In the case of a future terrorist attack, it is important to know that our Hollywood stars will rescue us.  As long as people will pay, the media shall play.  What heartwarming sacrifice!  ^[8]

         It’s now one year later and times have changed.  The 9/11 anniversary will be marked with thousands of hours of memorial services and tributes.  CNN has already begun to pat itself on its collective back by reminding us all how brave their anchors were to stand on a rooftop about a mile away from Ground Zero and provide us with a view of the devastation as it unfurled.  The music industry will not be resting on their laurels, either.  The service at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. hopes to be the clear ratings-winner by having the national anthem sung by the winner’s of Fox’s American Idol competition, a coup that the event’s organizers began to crow about several weeks before the winner had been crowned.  One assumes that Kelly or Justin or whoever the hell it is will not be encouraged to sing the upcoming dreams-can-come-true American Idol single, but never underestimate the power of positive marketing.  The victims’ families have probably heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” a million times in the past year.  Maybe they’d prefer to hear the lucky winner croon, “Some people wait a lifetime, for a moment like this!” ^[9]

        As for the movie industry, while it is too late to give Spiderman back the privilege of climbing up the Twin Towers, the mainstream media is making up for this by being an outlet for stars who want to reach out to the September 11^th cause through their acting and directing.  This is no real surprise because we all know that we need the efforts of Hollywood superstars in order to understand important historical events.  Thanks to them, we know that Tom Hanks stormed the beach at Normandy and Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett tried their damndest to shoot down those pesky Japs at Pearl Harbor.  Goldie Hawn is another modern-day hero.  She and beau Kurt Russell are making a film about 9/11’s Flight 93.  Miss Hawn’s consoling collagen-pumped lips must have been the determining factor in the victims’ families approval of the film.  Then there’s director, Dean Devlin, who feels compelled to make a sequel to Independence Day, based on the September 11^th attacks.  There’s no better way to pay tribute to the victims than including them in a movie with ten-headed aliens. ^[10]   Dean Devlin is a genius with a heart of gold.  There are many other wonderful TV shows and movies about 9/11 in store for us, too!  The producers all deserve to make lots of money for their originality, heroism and great sensitivity at milking the tragedy. 

          Troma does not plan on making a movie dedicated to the September 11^th victims.  Perhaps we should be wise enough to follow in Goldie Hawn’s cellulite ridden footsteps (check out the photos of her ass on the Internet), but we have decided to stick to Poultrygeist – a zombie movie.  We don’t need to make a low budget Troma movie to console devastated Americans.  I can’t say or do anything that will make their lives better.  I wish I could.  I wish I were Rupert Murdoch, but I’m not.  But then again, we all can’t be heroes.  Some of us have to stay unsuccessful, broken-down and insane movie directors so the confused and depressed people in our world can feel better about themselves by looking down on us while they look up to AMM.  

          The most pivotal question raised since terrorists attacked our nation is:  How do we honor the generous heroism of the  media cartel?  If life were fair, AMM would receive the Nobel Peace Prize or the Pulitzer for its noble work.  Unfortunately, these awards are not televised, so the entire world wouldn’t be able to watch AMM give an acceptance speech thanking the 9/11 victims.  Since AMM owns just about everything and has more clout than the Great and Powerful Oz, the group of media conglomerates should create its own awards TV show – “The First Annual World American Mainstream Media Awards” (or WAMM Awards).  They could hand themselves a trophy – A 3-D replica of the Towers; one Tower burning with flaming human meat loaves jumping out of the window and the other collapsed with a pair of legs sticking out from underneath the rubble. Hopefully, Brittney Spears would be so kind as to sing the award show’s theme song – “WAMM!  AMM DID IT AGAIN!” Whore-ay…er…Hooray for Hollywood!

            Yes…Those big conglomerates, they’re really shit heads.  How dare they have the nerve to use the 9/11 tragedy for their own selfish enterprise.  But don’t forget to tune in to the premiere of Showtime’s documentary, Reflections From Ground Zero – As you’ll see by clicking here, this project could only be made possible by somebody as perfect as me is. ^[11]