9/11. 5.

It's fitting that this show will be running on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. I think Andy would have thought the attacks an obvious thing to do. The assault on symbols, the way they combined death and disaster - what could have been more Warholian? In his era, it would have been the Empire State Building. He would have understood the symbolism; he would have seen that much more than buildings were being attacked. The images of people jumping out of the buildings - he had already done paintings like that. It was a bizarre prophecy. He was very prophetic and accurate in his understanding of America, of commercialism, of capitalism, of its flaws and strengths.

As for United 93 and World Trade Center, "the political message of the two films resides in their abstention from delivering a direct political message." In a consideration of how the world's changed in the last five years, Slavoj Zizek, also in the Guardian, begins where he so often begins - at the movies.

Updated.

"When it comes to frivolity, escapism and a lack of moral gravity, we haven't lost a step, have we?" asks Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times.

Also in the LAT, Tom Rutten: "Surveying the smoking ruin that is ABC's reputation after the The Path to 9/11 debacle, it's hard to know whether you're looking at the consequence of unadulterated folly or of a calculated strategy that turned out to be too clever by half." That, as well as Tom Shales's skewering of the docudrama in the Washington Post, via Joe Leydon.

"The papers face the daunting task of marking September 11 by saying something that hasn't already been said over the past week, to say nothing of the past five years," begins Joshua Kucera in Slate, though he does find at least two significant pieces: Deborah Sontag epic story of what has not come to pass at Ground Zero in the New York Times and Ahmed Rashid's "Losing the War on Terror" in the Washington Post.

Updates: "In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the news was peppered with comments about, thoughts about and references to films," writes Tom Engelhardt in a cover story for the Nation, "9/11 in a Movie-Made America": "In our guts, we had always known it was coming."

Online viewing tip. 7 Days in September, via Anthony Kaufman at the Daily Reel.

Eugene Hernandez remembers that morning and points to indieWIRE dispatches from 9/12, 9/14 and columns by Ray Pride and Anthony Kaufman.

Nick Rombes.

Edward Copeland: "United 93 revisits a horrifying day and presents it with respect and serves as a celluloid monument to that plane's heroic passengers and crew."

The House Next Door.

Posted by dwhudson at September 11, 2006 3:59 AM