It’s been 7 years and I still remember exactly where I was, what I was doing and what exactly I was feeling. I was living in Saskatoon Saskatchewan in 2001 and on the morning of September 11th I was running around frantically trying to get all my stuff together and head to the airport. I was flying back to Ontario that morning to attend the funeral of a family member.
You have to understand that I hate flying… I have a fear of heights, so I was already feeling nervous and a bit panicked (as I always do when I fly). I turned on the TV just to hear the news as I was getting ready… and I heard it. There had been an “ACCIDENT” in New York. A plane had crashed into one of he World Trade Center buildings. Not news a person who has a fear of heights wants to hear when heading to the airport.
But oh well, nothing I could do so I continued getting ready. I left a few minutes later for the airport listening to a CD in the car. When I walked into the airport I saw EVERYONE crowded around various TV monitors watching the news. That’s when I heard another plane had hit the other tower. No one was using the word “ACCIDENT” anymore. It was an attack. Over the next little while as I sat in that airport word came that other planes had gone down as well, including one hitting the pentagon. I was sitting in the middle of history and I knew it. A moment I knew I’d never forget, and I was flooded with thoughts wondering what the world would look like tomorrow once the fires die and the smoke clears.
Obviously I never got on my plane that morning. All flights in North America were grounded and I eventually just drove back home a bit dazed and confused thinking about what else might come later that day or week or month or year. It’s September 11th, and I find myself thinking about it all again.
As a species, we are story tellers. We have been ever since we had the ability to communicate and the oldest drawings sketched on cave walls we know of do that very thing… tell stories. Storytelling to us as a people is more than just relaying information or communicating facts of a time, a person, a place or an event. It is the passing on of an experience. When we tell stories, we share experiences be they fictional or real. We communicate human drama encapsulated in the various human experiences and modes we all share. Even in the boys locker room in high school, you can’t just say “I had sex with Julie last night”. That’s not enough. The other guys quickly gather around and say “Tell us what happened”.
They already know what happened. You had sex with Julie. But that only communicated the facts. It didn’t share the experience. It didn’t encapsulate the conditions, the emotions, the sensations of the event in such a way that it shares it with those who listen. And we do listen, and when we listen we want that event shared so that we, in a way, can share in the experience of the story with the teller.
In that way, storytelling isn’t just entertainment or something we do to pass the time. It is an important part of who and what we are.
With this in mind, I knew it wouldn’t be long before movies or concepts for movies started popping up revolving around 9-11. Yes, much of the motivation behind those movies would be money and profit (as are EVERY SINGLE MOVIE EVER PRODUCED AND MADE), and I knew that there would be those angry at the notion of some people trying to “capitalize” on the tragedy. But at the same time, underneath the business of Hollywood, there was a need to have this story told, and told by different people with different points of view.
9-11 was an event that I would go so far as to say demanded stories be told about it, what happened, how it effected various people in different ways and told from those people’s unique and perhaps even contradictory points of view.
Oliver Stone’s “The World Trade Center” may not have been the best movie ever made, but it told a magnificent story of hope and courage, of personal bravery and loss. A story of fear and darkness and heroes in its midst. Was it a great movie? No. But it is a story that I nonetheless am richer for hearing. The simple act of hearing a story helped me in a small and personal way recover from 9-11 (all of us in one way or another and to one degree or another were effected by the events of that day). Storytelling is that powerful.
United 93 was another movie that I actually didn’t think was all that great, but the story it told was one I’m glad I heard even if most of the events were fabricated to fill in the gaps. Even contextualized fiction (or pure fiction) passes on the tellers vision, point of view, experience, the way the see the world as it is or even as it could be.
Thus, on the anniversary of 9-11 I actually find myself a little sad that we haven’t seen more 9-11 based films yet. From the left or from the right. Based on real events or works of fiction around the real events of that day. Stories and our telling of them are so vital to who we are, and an event like 9-11 holds more potential to bring out our fears and hopes, our weaknesses and our strengths, our good and our bad than just about any other event in modern history (with some exceptions).
So I’m glad we have movies about (or based around) 9-11, and today, I find myself hoping we see more in the future… I’m pretty positive we will.
