Flight 93: Somebody SAW it like I hoped he would.

In a comment to a post in BAGnewsNotes: "Flight 93 Crashes In ... New York?", somebody who calls him (or her) self "black dog barking", says the thing, I hoped the movie would inspire:

" Saw the film last night. It's about people, not institutions or ideologies. It's about people we don't know suddenly confronted with problems for which there is no solution and no way out. No heroes, no martyrs. People.

I walked out with a much better picture of what might have happened. Looking at the inside of real flight decks, real air traffic control centers, looking at real people doing the same things to start that morning they did every other morning is illuminating, quietly and effectively. Good use of the tools of film-making.

[..]

The film's violence is organic, not exploitive. This film is *not* entertaining. It looks into shadows.

The excellent "Bagnews Notes" blog, maintained by Michael Shaw, is "a progressive blog, dedicated to the discussion and analysis of news images". The main post criticises the excessive use of WTC-images in the publicity and the trailer for the movie. In this, it is absolutely right: See the trailer at the movie company site (you need QuickTime). The hiding of the Pentagon impact and the monumentless Pennsylvania plain, has much to do with spinning, I believe. The commenter sees the New York images as shadowy symbols, but is more impressed by what the movie shows on the doings of the men and women who happened to be on that flight. The miracle, that people like you and me made a community and acted. More efficiently than every Homeland Security moloch ever could imagine.

Flight "United 93" sparks disunion

The Sunday, April 30 New York Times ("Films of Infamy") has a Hollywood movie expert, David Thomson, looking into Paul Greengrass' film "United 93" ("The Flight that fought Back", see previous post here). The movie was released this week in the US. We in Europe should wait a little longer.
Resuming roughly his point of view: The movie is not to be compared to flat one-sided celebrations of heroism like "Pearl Harbour" (2001). It is more like movies that opened a better balanced view on shocking historical events, like "Schindler's List" or "Munich".
Underlying question is: Is America ready for such a balanced regard? Showing violence and destruction in the media, omitting the consequences, cannot be the problem, Thomson says:

"Indeed, if you wish to understand how America is now perceived in the rest of the world, then you have to see the paradox (there are other words) in selling mass destruction and then wondering whether the American public is "ready" for "United 93"."

Understanding the other side, the enemy, the terrorist: That is still a very massive taboo, when it comes to "9/11". Those who did (slightly), and do not tune in with Bush, are "blaming America", a deadly sin.
So it happens, that the "Blamerica!"-comments are to be expected gulping in now.
That is a pity.
It is at least not the debate I hoped for.
For, to be forgotten soon, there is also in Thomson's comment this observation, that should provoke some afterthoughts about better ways to deal with insecurity and terrorism:

"This is a picture about American courage and enterprise. It need not be a training film, but it is about the way we all might hope to behave. It is a rousing affirmation of a war effort, not very different from, say, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" (1944), which reveled in the Doolittle "gotcha" after Pearl Harbor. Similarly, the big American movie on the Holocaust waited on our discovery of Oskar Schindler — our way of making films requires heroes, even if sometimes a hero is like poison in the muddied water."

Like I said in the previous post, this is the true revelation within the "Flight 93" story: The self-defense- and the self-management capacities of communities, even temporary ones like this group of passengers and crew. What happened, is what any group or community (an American, for sure, but also any non-American) is capable of:

"it is about the way we all might hope to behave" [...] "even if sometimes a hero is like poison in the muddied water."

Indeed, what "93" is about, is a non-official way of every-day heroism, maybe nasty, maybe considered as "poisonous" for quiet and obedient citizenship.
But not so by me.

Budapest: L'Éternel Retour 30.4.06 [FR]

Huibs' UrbLogL'équipe Regenera à Budapest a parcouru l'ancien ghetto de la ville, dont les habitants d'origine ont disparus à la façon qu'on connaît. Ils ont été remplacés par des Tziganes, des Roma, venus d'autres quartiers de la ville, de la campagne et, dernièrement, immigrés de la Roumanie, de la Slovaquie, de l'Ukraine et de la Bulgarie. Sur les populations Roma de l'Europe de l'Est, nous reviendrons bientôt ailleurs.

Mais l'émancipation de la nombreuse population juive de Budapest avait, avant 1944, projeté leur majorité dans d'autres quartiers de la ville, où l'on vivait, pêle-mêle, en tant qu'ouvrier, commerçant, scientifique ou artiste. Les juifs se comprenaient comme membres d'une vaste communauté culturelle allemande. Goethe était pour eux, ce que Shakespeare est pour Philip Roth. L'éveil, depuis la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, d'un nationalisme culturel hongrois (la "magyarisation") les avait amenés, en grand nombre à adopter des noms de famille hongrois, c'est vrai, mais néanmoins ils ont continué à se voir comme appartenant à une plus vaste communauté culturelle et intellectuelle, dont l'Hongrie constituait une des sub-entités.

La capacité à se sentir chez soi dans plusieurs identités et à plusieurs niveaux (famille, quartier, ville, pays, etc.) est de plus en plus demandée aux citoyens d'un Europe condamné à s'unir à s'ouvrir au monde. Mais c'est mal vu. Avant la guerre, c'était le "cosmopolitisme" juif, ou "intellectuel" qui servait comme signe de Kaïn. Actuellement, c'est plutôt le "multiculturalisme" ou le "relativisme culturel" qui sont bannis du "politiquement correct".

Quoi qu'il en soit, vers 1947-1948 le nouveau pouvoir communiste en Hongrie, reprena ce thème de la condamnation du "cosmopolitisme" pour se débarrasser de ses leaders et de ses membres influents juifs. Ce qui provoqua une nouvelle émigration des juifs qui avaient survécu les déportations nazies de 1944. Pendant le long régime relativement libéral de Janós Kádár après 1956, la situation s'améliorait, mais le changement de régime de 1990 libéra à nouveau l'antisémitisme dormant, surtout, mais pas exclusivement, à droite.

Notre groupe, en sortant du quartier de Magdolna, est passé devant la grande synagogue de style orientalisant, brillamment restaurée: la plus grande de l'Europe centrale. Mais elle n'est pas le lieu accueillant qui animerait le retour des juifs hongrois, éparpillés dans le monde. On a adopté, ou mieux: inséré, intégré, de nouvelles identités dans la collection des anciennes. Un retour définitif reste exceptionnel.

Pourtant, les retours sur l'histoire, les retours qui aident à mieux faire le deuil des "chez-soi" perdus, ces retours-ci sont nombreux. Le compte-rendu, en annexe, du livre "Retours. Journal de Budapest" par Susan Rubin Sulaiman, en témoigne. Il est de la main de Corinne Gere, fille d'émigrés juifs hongrois de 1947, vivant en Belgique.

Ce qui importe pour les professionnels de l'émancipation urbaine, c'est de voir que la ville n'a pas seulement un étendu horizontal, dans l'espace, mais qu'elle a aussi une autre dimension, "verticale", celle de son histoire, de son mélange unique de communautés. Les morts, les émigrés, les bannis y appartiennent autant que les vivants, les immigrés et les jeunes. Le regard des communautés disparues contribue à la façon dont l'émancipation des nouveaux-venus se déroule. Il existent quelques éléments pour un deuil créatif, libérateur.

Ce qui nous ramène aux Roma. Un éternel retour, lui aussi...

Why Flight 93 is to be Remembered

The Washington Post (4/25/06): Lone Lawmaker Blocks Flight 93 Monument in Pa. :

For emotional wallop, there are few rivals to the windswept, grassy field outside of Shanksville, Pa., where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.

But for three years, that field has made do with a makeshift monument while one member of Congress, Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.), has blocked a $10 million request to buy the land for a permanent memorial to the 40 passengers and crew members who overpowered hijackers bent on crashing their jet into the Capitol or the White House.

This remembers me of something I decided to do in October 2001. The Flight 93 passengers did something that I consider the better alternative to all the Homeland bureaucracy, the illegal spying on citizens, the thunder of sophisticated war on innocent people in unrelated countries (Iraq), most of the policy changes that followed Sept. 11, 2001.
"Let's roll!", said one of the passengers, when, 30 minutes after the moment the three hijackers took over the command of the plane, they realized (by calling on mobile phones) that their plane was in the hands of the same kind of terrorists, who had just flown into the WTC towers. What they did (attacking the hijackers and trying to enter the cockpit) was forbidden and punishable at that moment. But they decided to act collectively. From a group of individual passengers, instantly a community was created. They took responsability for themselves and, the voice records of telephone conversations and the cabin-records witness that too, decided to take heavy risks to save the lives of other people, the people at the presumed target of the terrorists.
There was no precedent, no model, for their action. In fact, modern society discourages this kind of acting. And it still does. The main lesson from Flight 93 has not been learned.
That lesson is, that the only way to counter terrorism, and, better still, to prevent it, is to empower citizens. That means: to trust them. Which is the contrary to what happens in these times: secrecy, disarming, strict control, discouragement of community and collectivity and their self-management.

The Pennsylvania site where Flight 93 crashed (Wikipedia)

In my opinion, it is important to note, that the two instances we know of, that an Al Quaeda terrorist attack was prevented or made to fail, are this passengers revolt on Flight 93 on Sept. 11 (which prevented a second disaster in Washington, like the one at the Pentagon, and nearly saved most of the passengers and part of the crew), and another collective action on a plane, some months later, when vigilant passengers discovered the manipulations of the "shoe-bomber".
To me, that is the main reason, why Flight 93 should be remembered appropriately, visibly and with great respect. And that is why I suppose, that, perhaps unconsciously, the Republican Senator for North Carolina, Charles H. Taylor, shuns spending some money to honour people who acted as responsible, independent citizens. Not as sheep in Bush' or Taylor's flock. No, like the Americans, I admire.