Welcome Aboard United 93
“Powerful, very powerful…,” were my immediate thoughts as the hijacked plane plunged in to Shanksville, Pennsylvania during the last seconds of the feature film. That moment of silence at the end of the movie before the credits and epilogue gave me an eerie shiver. I could feel it run down my spine, I could feel it take control of my body, it made me vicariously live the events of that tragedy and of that morning of September 11th 2001.
The movie took on a pseudo-documentary style as in fact many of the characters were themselves. It attempted to bring to the screens director Paul Greengrass’ depiction of what he thought happened based on the evidence and facts available to the public. I walked away from the theatre thinking to myself, “the movie was incredibly accurate, in fact it was ‘dangerously accurate.’”
Obviously, the audience (including myself) had a tabula rasa with regards to United 93 and the unfolding of its events per se. All that the majority of people could remember of 9/11 were CNN’s live video capture of the hijacked planes crashing in to the World Trade Center Towers. But still, something was telling me that the movie was surrealistically real and these were the ‘exact actual events.’
As I had mentioned above, this is dangerous.
Why?
Nobody truly knows the exact events of United 93 or any of the other hijacked flights and based on the available evidence (i.e. control tower recordings and communication, blackbox etc.), many people have attempted to reconstruct a chronological, logical set of occurrences including Greengrass. In essence, the majority of such attempts were meant to counterfactually examine ‘what would have happened?’ ‘what went wrong?’ ‘how could we have prevented XYZ or ABC?’
This is the two-fold danger:
1) There is no doubt in any person’s rational mind that the events of 9/11 were heinous and a complete emotional catastrophe to humanity. The calamity of the event and its worldwide repercussions had to be revisited. The perpetrators, Muslim extremists from al-Qaeda were fully responsible for the loss of almost 3,000 innocent lives – no doubt. However, human nature points to stereotyping and categorical perception as powerful tools in analyzing and forming one’s opinions. If alive, the perpetrators would deserve the most just yet harshest sentence possible (as seen with Zacarias Moussaoui’s recent trial), however the uninformed audience needs to read between the lines and realize that it is foolish and irresponsible to pigeon hole Islam as violent and evil. However, it is important to realize that extremism (whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim) produces outcasts and complete heretics; here the perpetrators represent the antithesis of Islam – that of peace, love, piousness and respect.
Naturally, the movie fuels hatred towards Muslims as it depicts the lowest, most vile breed of what Islam has offered the world. The movie is profuse with Koranic verse recitals juxtaposed (with incredible cinematography) with violence, terrorism and absolute animosity. This is where the danger falls.
2) Hollywood has proven to the world that it has an impeccable political and manipulating power over its viewers. There is no doubt that citizens of the world should revisit the events of 9/11, grieve and share the pain and suffering of those who lost their loved ones’ lives however ENSURE that they hold an objective, unbiased opinion of Islam. It is absolutely imperative that they understand that what is portrayed is a dark facet of Islam which misrepresents the religion.
United 93 is a chef d’oeuvre, an emotionally packed, thriller-full movie which will keep viewers in the edge of their seats. It is absolutely disheartening to see the last moments of many peoples’ lives and saddening to see how extremists have completely misrepresented Islam and destroyed its true essence. Viewers should watch the movie with an open heart and an open mind, grieve the victims and channel their anger but also understand that fanaticism breeds extremism which could be breed terrorism – in any religion – this is an important caveat viewers should be aware of.
The movie took on a pseudo-documentary style as in fact many of the characters were themselves. It attempted to bring to the screens director Paul Greengrass’ depiction of what he thought happened based on the evidence and facts available to the public. I walked away from the theatre thinking to myself, “the movie was incredibly accurate, in fact it was ‘dangerously accurate.’”
Obviously, the audience (including myself) had a tabula rasa with regards to United 93 and the unfolding of its events per se. All that the majority of people could remember of 9/11 were CNN’s live video capture of the hijacked planes crashing in to the World Trade Center Towers. But still, something was telling me that the movie was surrealistically real and these were the ‘exact actual events.’
As I had mentioned above, this is dangerous.
Why?
Nobody truly knows the exact events of United 93 or any of the other hijacked flights and based on the available evidence (i.e. control tower recordings and communication, blackbox etc.), many people have attempted to reconstruct a chronological, logical set of occurrences including Greengrass. In essence, the majority of such attempts were meant to counterfactually examine ‘what would have happened?’ ‘what went wrong?’ ‘how could we have prevented XYZ or ABC?’
This is the two-fold danger:
1) There is no doubt in any person’s rational mind that the events of 9/11 were heinous and a complete emotional catastrophe to humanity. The calamity of the event and its worldwide repercussions had to be revisited. The perpetrators, Muslim extremists from al-Qaeda were fully responsible for the loss of almost 3,000 innocent lives – no doubt. However, human nature points to stereotyping and categorical perception as powerful tools in analyzing and forming one’s opinions. If alive, the perpetrators would deserve the most just yet harshest sentence possible (as seen with Zacarias Moussaoui’s recent trial), however the uninformed audience needs to read between the lines and realize that it is foolish and irresponsible to pigeon hole Islam as violent and evil. However, it is important to realize that extremism (whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim) produces outcasts and complete heretics; here the perpetrators represent the antithesis of Islam – that of peace, love, piousness and respect.
Naturally, the movie fuels hatred towards Muslims as it depicts the lowest, most vile breed of what Islam has offered the world. The movie is profuse with Koranic verse recitals juxtaposed (with incredible cinematography) with violence, terrorism and absolute animosity. This is where the danger falls.
2) Hollywood has proven to the world that it has an impeccable political and manipulating power over its viewers. There is no doubt that citizens of the world should revisit the events of 9/11, grieve and share the pain and suffering of those who lost their loved ones’ lives however ENSURE that they hold an objective, unbiased opinion of Islam. It is absolutely imperative that they understand that what is portrayed is a dark facet of Islam which misrepresents the religion.
United 93 is a chef d’oeuvre, an emotionally packed, thriller-full movie which will keep viewers in the edge of their seats. It is absolutely disheartening to see the last moments of many peoples’ lives and saddening to see how extremists have completely misrepresented Islam and destroyed its true essence. Viewers should watch the movie with an open heart and an open mind, grieve the victims and channel their anger but also understand that fanaticism breeds extremism which could be breed terrorism – in any religion – this is an important caveat viewers should be aware of.
posted by The Egyptian Observer at 9:42 AM
3 Comments:
While I sincerely hope that the movie doesn't encourage any more hatred of muslims, I think most of the damage has already been done. From 9/11 to the Cartoon riots, the perception of Islam has been consistently sinking, reaching the point where almost half of the american population holds negative view of it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802221.html
It is a completely sad reality and the stereotyping, categorization and xenophobia which I had constantly discussed in my posts are exemplified perfectly in this article.
more bad news I'm afraid:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=30134&name=Germans+negative+on+Islam%2C+poll+shows
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