Reflections On This Day

Perhaps if we didn't have a child, we would have watched more of the memorials to 9/11 this morning. At least I would have. But those images of that day are hard enough to explain to a five year-old on a normal day. But when emotions that come with anniversaries of such events are so raw, it becomes even more challenging. A tearful or shaky delivery would be quite unsettling for a child and might create a vivid memory in them you'd prefer they didn't have.

The day will come when the boy will put two and two together and realize that his father and mother were there. That his mother was only two blocks away. The day will come when he will read the journals that both of us wrote in the days after.

But not this morning.

This morning, the boy asked to watch a "reflection", as he calls episodes of series, from the DVD set of the  first season of Batman, The Animated Series. I was relieved.

It just so happens that what came up in the rotation of reflections was the first part of the origin story of "Two-Face." Admittedly, I was a little worried about him watching these but, so far, the series had handled their plots so subtly and deftly that I figured we'd be okay.

In case you didn't know, the origin story of Two Face, as told by the series, is that District Attorney, Harvey Dent, is a successful and driven politician. He is also a do-gooder through and through who is dedicated to eradicating crime in Gotham. He is also a close personal friend of Bruce Wayne. In this version, Harvey suffers from split personality disorder which is coming to the surface due to several pressures in his life. The disorder is a result of guilt and repression of rage from childhood. At the end of the first part, half of Dent's face is severely disfigured in an explosion during a showdown with the bad guys. Batman rescues the unconscious Harvey and takes him to the hospital. Upon seeing his new appearance, Dent suffers a psychotic break and the villain Two Face is born.

Not exactly the stuff of a childrens cartoon but, as I said, the production team is quite skilled. The psychotic break is something an adult can infer. The child just knows he's angry. And, as opposed to the more realistic disfigurement in the movie, "The Dark Knight", the damaged side of Harvey's face resembles a blue, qrotesque kabuki mask. The boy has seen worse on cartoons geared toward much younger children.

Even so, he was troubled by the cliffhanger and asked if we could watch the next reflection. Even though I knew it wouldn't be a completely happy ending, I knew that Batman would deal with his friend turned foe with compassion.

We watched the second half.

There was a great deal of pressing the pause button as I answered the boy's questions. He couldn't figure out why Harvey didn't trust and was even mad at his girlfriend. I explained that he couldn't believe that she or anybody could love him because of the way he looked and acted. But she did. He kept asking if Harvey was a good guy or a bad guy. I told him he wishes he could be a good guy but he is just so angry that he is having trouble. One second he does something bad, but then I pointed out when he saved his girlfriend and Batman as a moment when he was good. I finally told him that if he was feeling confused, he should understand that Harvey is feeling confused too.

In the end, Batman saves Harvey from himself for the present. As Harvey is being taken away, Batman expresses a hope that his friend will get better, but there are no guarantees.  I was prepared for this. I know the Batman stories even if I didn't know this particular version.

Even though the boy has seen more violent things on television--things he mostly saw by accident--he was particularly concerned by the ending of this show. As soon as the credits were over he quietly asked again, "So is Harvey a good guy or a bad guy?" I told him again that he wants to be a good guy but he might end up being a bad guy. At this point, I was about to decide I really screwed up and that I shouldn't have let him watch these reflections.

Then the boy quietly uttered, "I think he's a good guy." I responded with what felt like the most right thing I said all morning, "Well then that makes you like Batman. He believes Harvey's a good guy too, and he's not going to give up on him."

He thought about this for a moment then smiled huge and raised his hands above his head in triumph.

I am aware that he will learn more about Two Face in time. And some of it will disappoint him. But just like the end of the reflection today, those days will take care of themselves.

I'm rehearsing right now with a director whose process I particularly enjoy. He is very careful to make artistic choices that suggest rather than instruct. In other words, he doesn't beat you over the head with a point or moral. He takes risks, provokes thought and allows the audience to come to their own conclusions without presenting images or interpretations that are too "on the nose."

I didn't know how I would spend the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with my five year-old son. I knew I didn't want to spend it the way I'd spent many of the other anniversaries. Admittedly, I felt guilty about not watching any of the memorials.

I don't feel that way anymore.

On Celebration

I had no idea that I was going to feel the way I felt when I learned that Osama Bin Laden was dead. In the two year-old previous posting I even described how I had dealt with my darkest feelings on the matter.

I was euphoric, inside. Outside, I was composed. But then I'm a 44 year-old man with all the experiences that entails. Not the least of which is a quote I read some years back by Lao Tzu: "Conduct your victories as funerals." The notion being that inasmuch as you have won, consideration must be made for the one who has lost. In other words, Lao Tzu was advocating for empathy.

So it was with that in mind I watched as spontaneous celebrations erupted in Lafayette Park across from the White House and at the site where the Twin Towers once stood. Fairly immediately I remembered the image of Palestinians celebrating on the West Bank after 9/11.  But also fairly immediately a surprised reporter made the comment that this war would have no VE Day or VJ Day. This was pretty much as close as it would get.

These were the two competing thoughts in my mind as I stayed up watching the celebrations on Sunday night. I wished I could be there but I also wished we could come up with a more original expression than chanting "U.S.A.!" I mean, it seemed so fresh and cool during the '80 Olympic Hockey victories. But now, it just seemed dated and played...to me.

The next morning I hear a sports radio show. One of the hosts was complaining about the celebrations on Sunday night. He considered them inappropriate. He mocked the college students. "What were they? Eight when it happened? Ten?"

Later in the day I see the posting for this article: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/05/02/osama_and_chants_of_usa  on a friend's Facebook page. Eight people "liked" it. A few more of my friends had posted one word responses like "agreed", "yeah" and "ditto".

And in the time since, I 've heard and read more and more criticisms of the celebrations that broke out after the news on Sunday, including a pro football player's tweets expressing shame.

The article on my friend's Facebook prompted me to post the following comment:

I don't know...
If I had been in NYC last night, I would have gone to Ground Zero. I would
have preferred to not have all the cheering and chanting. But I would
have loved to see that place where, almost ten years ago, my wife would
have to ...go to work. Where she would see bodies being pulled out of the rubble.
Where there was a constant odor you didn't want to even think about
what it was. That place from where she came home every night so
depressed that I never thought she'd come out of it. I think I would
have liked seeing that place transformed into a place of joy for one
night. I would have been celebrating, but not death. Just closure and
connection.

Aside from my use of the word "closure" for lack of a better one, I feel like this was a concise and accurate description of my feelings. I saw an interview today with the former FDNY Commissioner. He made the comment that this event brings "closure to a compartment." I feel that was more what I meant.

This morning I woke up to this response from my friend who had posted the article:
"I here (sic) you Jack, and I agree.  I think that's the sentiment of the article as well..."

I can certainly see how one can infer that I was sharing the same sentiment with David Sirota from what I posted, but it seems that being concise is not what is called for, because I do not agree with the article.

While it is true that it looks like David Sirota and I had the same personal response to the death of Osama Bin Laden, I do not consider the chanting of "U.S.A." to be "wrong." And the assertion that,..

"This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory: He has changed America’s psyche
from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act
into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed."

...is ridiculous.

For as long as there have been major battle victories in this country, there have been spontaneous celebrations. Now whether we should be celebrating battle victories in such fashion, since many more than one person die in those, is another issue but my point is that Americans were celebrating such victories long before Al Qaeda, so the notion that we have become what we beheld is patently false.

And make no mistake about it, what happened in Abottabad on Sunday night was a battle and a major victory.

The terms of it were completely defined by Bin Laden himself. He set himself up as the symbol for Al Qaeda. He hid himself only to appear on tape as an harbinger for an attack. And he swore that he would not be taken alive.

I would also add that, for all his bravado, he was a cynical coward. He put himself in what he considered a win-win situation. He always surrounded himself with women and children. He always believed Americans didn't have the guts to attack him with ground troops. They would only drop a bomb if they found him.  He would live or the bomb would kill so many innocents that Americans would look like monsters. He could care less about the safety of all those innocents. Coward.

He made himself the prime target of the war and he chose to make his death the objective for victory.

I certainly consider the end of such a man to be cause for celebration.

Secondly, I take issue with that radio host and others who criticized the youth of most of the celebrants.

Yes, probably a great many of them were eight and ten on 9-11-01. For instance, my niece and nephew were that age. And even though they were in North Carolina, they were scared out of their minds with worry over my wife and me, who were in NYC.

I also remember that, as I walked to the 59th street bridge to meet my wife walking home from Ground Zero that day, I passed an elementary school. It was a warm day, so the windows were open and I could hear a principal on an intercom calling many names of students--the list was going on as I approached the school and continued past when I went out of earshot-- and instructing them to report to the office. Some were being picked up by their parents, but many were being picked up by relatives, who at that time weren't sure if their parents had made it out of Lower Manhattan yet.

And I would imagine there were millions more eight and ten year olds watching the horrific images on T.V. And I would also imagine that Bin Laden became an even bigger bogeyman to these children as they grew up than the nameless Soviets who were often the topics of discussion in the lunchrooms and playgrounds of my youth, as we discussed when and why they would drop an "Atom Bomb" on us.

My nephew, niece, the children of that school, the millions more.  Bin Laden gave them all nightmares.

Although I wouldn't have done it, I don't begrudge any of those young people one moment of their chants of "U.S.A." To paraphrase Seinfeld, their choice of text didn't offend my sensibilities as a person, they offended my sensibilities as an artist.

But more than anything else, I don't consider the boisterous nature of the celebrations or the chants as "wrong" because...

The members of Seal Team Six and all the other thousands of intelligence and military personel that made Abottabad happen aren't going to get ticker tape parades or even a public medal ceremony. We'll probably never even know their names. Although I hope we do. What they did was truly amazing. And I'm not just talking run of the mill amazing. We're talking MOON LANDING amazing here.

What Seal Team Six got was to return to their base, turn on a T.V. and see Americans filling the streets and chanting, "U.S.A.!, U.S.A!, U.S.A!" And it is all because of what they accomplished.

To tell you the truth, in that context, I'm no longer offended. I am enriched and invigorated by that image as a person AND as an artist.

I don't think David Sirota is right. The way we celebrated on Sunday is not what perpetuates the cycle of violence between our cultures. People are people and celebrate the way they celebrate. Artfully, inartfully, what have you.  It is more the fact that we give over to our visceral reactions to those celebrations by our opponents before we ask why are they celebrating? Why would they be celebrating something that hurts us so deeply?

In the case of those Palestinians, I never was really that mad at them. I was certainly hurt but not mad. I recognized prettty early that the international game of "Telephone" that goes on between an even in New York and the West Bank is so filled with misinformation that they had no idea what was going on.

As far as Bin Laden is concerned. Richard Engel told the story yesterday of speaking to a middle class well -educated Libyan man who was upset about the strife in his country and critical of the West's involvement. Engel asked if that extended to the death of Bin Laden. The man had been unaware so Engel gave him the story. The man thought for a moment, then said, "Fuck Bin Laden."

J.A.L.