WILTZ
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POPULAR CULTURE IN THE AFTERMATH OF SEPT.
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Popular Culture in the Aftermath of Sept.
Is a Chorus without a Hook, a Movie
without an Ending
Tnnpse
11
Wlnrz
Tereso Wiltz is o stoff writer for the Woshington Post. This essoy oppeored in the
Woshington
Post
on November 19, 2001.
$ n the first fewweeks following that day, once we'd stopped reeling from the
,."€,"initial shock, there was a collective throat-clearing, and then came tumbling forth the pronouncements: Vanity has taken a hit. Irony, so beloved by
smarty-pants, was on life support. Comedy would be careful.
Such declarations are the punditocracy equivalent
Bowl
three seasons in advance.
of calling the Super
Popular
culture, that which shapes how we see ourselves and how others see
us, is in a state of flux. A change is gonna come. Or will it?
It is true, of course, that a certain earnestness has crept into the national zeitour normal, unique brand of optimistic
geist,l blotting out
for now, at least
cynicism. In her latest video, blue-eyed soul singer Pink urges us all to "Get This
Party Started" as she dances against the backdrop of a giant flag. Celebs attending
the Emmy Awards earlier this month were asked to tone down the sartorial glitz.
And just a week ago Sunday, in a much-publicized gathering, movie execs met
again
to suss out just what Hollywood could do
with White House officials
for the war-on-terrorism effort.
But amid the earnestness, there is contradiction. A couple of weeks ago, the
No. I CD in the nation was a "God Bless America" compilation. New Agey popster Enya's feel-good CD,'A Day without Rain," ranked No. 2. The following
week, both CDs were nudged out by gansta rapper DMX's downtrodden CD
"The Great Depression." And last weeliMichael Jackson's latest CD, "Invincible,"
1[x1 is until midweek, when
reigned, followed by Enrique Iglesias's "Escape"
Britney Spears wiggled her way to the top of the charts.
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So what does it say that we go from blessing America to wallowing in the
great depression to feeling invincible but desperately in need of escape?
That we're fickle, sure. But more importantly: Even a national tragedy of cataclysmic proportions can alter our cultural DNA by only so much. Popular culture is, as one observer put it, a daily Rorschach test, a peek into the American id
it flips and flops about. It's also a business, a huge one, arguably our biggest
international export. And as with any business, it is the consumer who has the
as
ultimate
say.
of media and culture at Syracuse University and past president of the International Popular Culture Association: "We may
be surprised at how capable American popular culture is of dissolving even the
most horrible of historical events."
And now, in the wake of an unprecedented home front attack, peddlers of
pop are grappling for ways to appear relevant. To strike just the right notes:
empathetic yet resolved;patriotic but not profiteering.
If they've found the answers, they're not telling. Entertainers and execs contacted by The Washington Post were, for the most part, zipping lips. When asked
about how their work would be affected by Sept. 11, most of them, from Steven
Spielberg to Dr. Dre, decided to pass on the question. Some pleaded busy schedules; others, like Conan O'Brien, frankly admitted that they weren't stepping anywhere near that date.
Says Robert Thompson, professor
10
Then there's Jack Valenti, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of
America, who's more than happyto offer up his take on the future of popular culture. Which is to say, he doesn't see it changing much: As long as there's a great
story to tell, he doesn't see a problem if somewhere along the way a building or
two is blown up. Forget about forecasting trends in entertainment. The public's
desire to be entertained is a constant.
Valenti does see, however, among the American public a strong yearning for
escape, a desire reflected by the impressive box office figures ($tS6.Z
million) of
Disney's Monsters,Inc.,an animated flick about facing one's worst fears.
"It's spiritually beautiful," says Valenti, fresh from his meeting with studio
and White House officials. "That box officqtake is spiritually beautiful."
and the
As Valenti sees it, box office takes will continue to be beautiful
opening weekend totals for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (a record-setting
million) indicate likewise.
"In times of peril, in times of uncertainty, people don't want to be in
$93.5
a con-
stant state of perpetual anxiety," he says. "People want to enjoy storytelling, which
for a couple of hours at least will transport them away)'
Even so, storytellers, like the rest of us, are faced with how to interpret the
recent life-chdfiging turn of events.
"It's affected me personally," says mystery writer Walter Mosley, who recently
published Futureland, a"pre-apocalyptic" collection of sci-fi stories with echoes
ofSept.1l.
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WILTZ
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POPULAR CULTURE IN THE AFTERMATH OF SEPT. 1
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"It happened right outside mywindow; I watched it happen.I don't even yet
know what that means. On the other hand, my work has kind of gone on the way
it has before.
"I don't know what will happen next," he says. "But what's happened so far, as
terrible as it is, is not enough to change the nature of the course of the nation. . . .
Our concept of how the world works hasn't really been altered as of yet. We're still
thinking people should be going out spending money and making capitalism
function. There's a great desire, among the people and among our leaders, that
life go back to normal. Whatever that is."
Indeed, "normal" is a murky concept for a nation with the attention span of a
gnat, where race, class and religion often form a combustible mix, where box
office numbers are "spiritual" and Madison Avenue pledges to "keep America
rolling." With zero -p ercent financing, of course.
Comfort in Continuity
Great, swe<iping cultural changes happen in waves, one incremental change lapping over another microscopic blip, gradually building in intensity. It's only afterward that we look back andrcalize that we've been hit by a tsunami. After all, the
'60s
or what we like to think of as happening in the '60s
didn't occur all at
once: First there was the civil rights movement, then the assassinations, Vietnam
and eventually Watergate. Somewhere in all that came the pill, women's lib and a
revolution in pop music. By the time the '60s were in fulIforce, it was, well, 1975.
"September 11 is what I'd call a'second order change,"'says futurist and psychological anthropologist Doug Raybeck, who describes the gradual changes of
the '60s as "first order changes." "It took us to a place we'd never been before.
We've lost our innocence,lost our invulnerability, and we're in the process of losing our naivete."
So, what happens to a culture when irrevocable change happens in an
instant?
Most of what we've seen post-Sept. 11 is quick and reactive.
Television was first to weigh in and, for the most part, came off looking
heavy-handed: NBC'sThirdWatch cobbled together a two-part episode about the
World Trade Center attacks; WestWingcreator Aaron Sorkin whipped out a quick
treatise on terrorism.
Pop singers and rappers, from U2's Bono to Alicia Keys to Ja Rule, crammed
into the studio to produce a remake of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." (Proceeds originally were planned to benefit AIDS patients, but the WTC and Pentagon surviv.grs and relatives were quickly added to the list of beneficiaries.) Movie
studios pudhed back the release dates or postponed the production of a few films
deemed too violent or involving acts of terrorism.
But many folks found comfort in continuity, the succor found in cultural
chicken soup. The sitcom Friends has been extended for another season in the
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PoPULARcULTURE
wake of its overwhelming popularity since the attacks. And those predictions
that violent films would be offensive were wiped out by the success of movies like
13 Ghosts, From HelI, Training Day and The Heist, all of which feature no small
amount of bloodshed.
Perhaps it's the American way, to channel anger and grief through a weird
mix of violence and humor.
Soon came the e-mails passed from office cubicle to office cubicle, jokes
about Miss Cleo predicting that Osama bin Laden would die on a national holiday ('Any day you die gwan be an American holiday") and the animated miniflick depicting a cartoon bin Laden being sexually assaulted by the Gimp from
"Pulp Fiction."
There are also dozens of interactive games on the Internet, like the graphic
"Nuke Bin Laden," where you can use a revolver, baseball bat, nuclear bomb or
box cutter to pulverrze"the evil one." Or the pictures of bin Laden posing with his
"family"
a trio of pigs.
- the corporate arena of the nation's networks, Sept. 1l-related humor
But in
seemed almosf verboten at first. Late-night hosts David Letterman andlay Leno
stayed off the air the first week after the attacks. Now Thliban jokes are a steady
including dancing bin Ladens, much like the dancing |udge
part of their patter
Itos from O. f. Simpson days. Saturday Night Live took a pointed jab at the government's handling of D.C.'s anthrax cases: In a mock news conference, Chris
Kattan, playing the National Institutes of Health's Anthony Fauci, proclaimed,
"We cleaned the State Department, the White House, the Supreme Court and the
Capitol building with state-of-the-art decontamination equipment. . ." As for
decontaminating post offices, "Fauci" says, "We've given each post office some
babywipes and a DustBuster."
So fat smart-aleck humor prevails, as on the'America's Mad as Hell Humor
Page," which offers to provide "humor in a time of grief."
But there are few voices like the darkly sardonic Internet comic strip "Get
Your War On," where cynics ponder which is worse, bin Laden as president or
anthrax, and depressives wonder, "Maybe I should write a poem about my feelings since September 11; that might help!.What rhymes with alcohol-saturated
dread?"
Lockdown ond Lock Step?
"How can we have popular culture if everyone is afraid to say anything but'God
Bless Americ3'?" observes Kevin )ones, a former studio executive who produced
the Gwyneth.Paltrow film Duets.
Still, not eVeryone is singing that tune.
One recent Saturday night at the Birchmere, the mood was mellow even
somber. Buppies and bohos sat clustered at tables, ordering fried chicken nuggets
and sipping on Coronas. Onstage, D.C. native Meshell Ndegeocello, an alterna-
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soul singer-musician, served up humor, pathos, politics and a thumping bass line
with scathing anti-war commentary.
"Express yourself," Ndegeocello said. "Soon we won't be able to. We'll all be
on lockdown."
She pulled out a picture, her newly acquired "Bling-Bling Iesus," a glittery picture of Christ that she bought in sardonic obedience to what she sees as President
Bush's entreaties: "God Bless America. Keep shopping; we are open for business."
For Ndegeocello, patriotism is a complicated affair. There is the pressure she
believes artists feel to make another "We Are the World" record, to spend their
own cash in expensive studio time and then forward the proceeds to charity.
"It's hard to love where you come from when the truth is buried so deepj'she
said "You can be gung-ho patriotic. . . . But understand, people are struggling
every day.
"I pray for Brother Bush, I really do. When he says Osama bin Laden wasn't
elected. Well [expletive], neither were you."
Her words were met with laughter
and a standing ovation.
Ndegeocello's work is outside the mainstream; dissent is a part of her oeuvre.
-
But others who make a living fighting the powers that be have been strangely
silent. Rage Against the Machine declined to be interviewed for this article, as did
rapper Mos Def and alternative folkie Ani DiFranco.
"In the public eye at this point, /ou better show some sort of sympathy or
love for America or it will be construed wrong," says hip-hop journalist and Bay
Area radio personality Dave "Davey D" Cook. "For artists, every gesture is scrutinized. The messages, whether intentional or not, have been delivered hard and
fast to people. Line up, get in lock step and God help you if you aren't.
"I see a few songs that are on the whole'Wave the flag, I love America'tip,"
Cook says. "The big question is: Is this the record company trying to capitalize on
people's emotions? Or are the artists really feeling that way? Time will tell."
There is an intolerance of those who do speak up, and an attempt to control
the images we see: Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher was criticizedfor following up
on neoconservative Dinesh D'Souza's assertion that the terrorists behind the
Sept. 11 attacks were not cowards. Ma\er had added: "We have been the cowards,
lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away)' (Maher declined to be interviewed for this article.)
Then there's "Boondocks" comic strip creator Aaron McGruder, who found
his work pulled from the New York Daily News and Long Island Newsday after his
strip questioned the CIAs role in funding the Taliban.
And.radio giant Clear Channel suggested, in the days after Sept. 11, that its
1,170 stations refrain from playing a list of potentially offensive songs, among
them Johil'Lennon's "Imagine" and the entire catalogue of Rage Against the
Machine. Then there's Davey D, who for years hosted a public affairs show on
KMEL-FM, own by Clear Channel in San Francisco, until being fired soon after
the attacks. The station manager said that Cook was let go because of "extreme
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financial pressure" and that nine others were also fired. Cook's supporters, in an
e-mail campaign, see no coincidence in the fact that his show was canceled after
he interviewed Rep. BarbaraLee (D.-Calif.), the only member of Congress to vote
against authorizing the use of force against anyone associated with the terrorist
attacks.
"When you have a national project, which any war is, that tends not to be the
healthiest environment for a huge, diverse conversation of varying ideasi' says
Syracuse's Thompson. "The diversity of voices is going to recede a bit."
Hollprood, Reporting for Duty
One impulse has definitely been at work since Sept. 11: The urge to compare this
war to previous ones, to put things into some sort of context by claiming, for
example, that the attacks were this generation's Pearl Harbor.
Comparisons are at once instructive and useless. There is an ocean of difference between where we were then and where we are now. In World War II, the
enemy was clearly defined, not some amorphous concept.
The day after the |apanese attacked Pearl Harbot Franklin Delano Roosevelt
told Congress, in passionate tones,'We will not only defend ourselves to the
utmost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again."
Then, radio was the primary means of communication; in many ways, programming quickly returned to normal after the attacks. (The development of television, which had begun in the '30s, was postponed by the war. The technology
was seen as too expensive in times of sacrifice.)
"One can listen to the radio programs of mid-December 1941 and often be
unaware that the nation had just entered a world war," says Thompson.
Hollywood, on the other hand, jumped on the war effort, working with the
government to produce propaganda films as a part of a campaign to thwart Nazi
influence in South America, according to Toby Miller, professor of cultural stud-
ies at New York University. Orson Welles, working with Carmen Miranda,
directed lt's AII True, an anti-racism film.distributed in Brazil. Walt Disney, a
reported anti-Semite who was struggling to resuscitate his failing company, created Saludos Amigos and The.Three Caballeros, cartoons featuring Donald Duck.
(The government reportedly paid for part of Disney's production costs and distributed the films for free.)
Disney's collaboration with the government didn't end there: The company
produced military training films, and Army troops actually moved into the studios for eight months, camping on the floors and setting up their own mess
kitchen on th€ premises. (Immediately after Sept. 11, Disney postponed the
release of Big Trouble and Bad Company because of the films' violent content.)
During World War II, in many instances, there was no attempt to be racially
sensitive: In "Tokio Jokio," the wily Bugs Bunny triumphed over dimwitted, buck-
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toothed, nearsighted fapanese soldiers; in "scrap the lapsj'Popeye declared, "I've
never met a |ap that wasn't yellow."
"To convince a population to go out and shoot people, you had to make [the
enemy] other than human," Thompson says.
After the war, B movies in which the Soviet Union was cast as the evil one
started to proliferate. The'60s brought glamorous spies to both the big and little
screens, from James Bond to the Avengers and the man from U.N.C.L.E. Never
mind that the nation was exploding with its own internal war over Vietnam.
Music, of course, was a different matter. The cultural revolution was fought
through songs like Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'j' and Edwin
Starr's admonitions of "War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" Redemption, the counterculture proposed, could be found through sex, drugs, avoiding
the draft
and of course, rock-and-ro11.
- the president called "Tricky Dick" by detractors, the Pentagon
But with
Papers and Watergate burglars, a new cynicism started creeping into the country's
consciousness.
"The idea of a strong U.S. . . . was really rocked by the revealing of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate revelations," says NewYork University's Miller. TV
shows Iike M*A+S+H, sly and subversivs
nef to mention funny as hell
rejected the gung-ho values of a previous generation. M*A+S*H obliquely criticized governmen! with its wink-wink approach, just who was being criticized
was in the eyes and ears of the beholder.
It wasn't until the late '70s and early '80s that we were ready to deal with films
about Vietnam
The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Coming Home.
It's not likely that we will return to the days following 1941, when Frank
Capramade a series of films dubbed*WhyWe Fight." Sixtyyears later, Hollywood
execs emerge from the meeting with the White House's Karl Rove and announce
that they want to help in any way possible. But it's not producing propaganda.
-
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Woit ond See
Most likely, it will be years before our culture is ready to deconstruct the events of
September.
It is anyone's guess what will be. The war changes daily, events seemingly
tumbling over one another. For now with no new outbreaks of anthrax infections
and last week's advances in Afghanistan, we are sleeping a little easier. For now.
"Trying to predict the endgame right now is the biggest mistake you can
make," says Scott Donaton, editor of Advertising Age. "In New York, for a couple
of days you could cross the street across the traffic and no one beeped. But life
gets back to'normal more quickly than you think. We can't boil it down to earnest
patriotism. That's not what we are."
TV talk show host Ananda Lewis says she already sees signs that some people
are tiring of it all. She was surprised, she says, when television stations outside
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New York and Washington told her they weren't interested in more shows about
Sept.11.
"I really think everybody would be about the healing process right now," says
Lewis. "That seems to be true of only the areas that were affected. Which is sad,
because it trivializes something to just a news event."
It won't be just a news event if things get worse. Or another plane falls from
the sky
and this time it's not an accident. Or smallpox hits Tulsa. Then perhaps
you'll see a society in which no one wants to leave home and people find release
instead through virtual ski trips: A specially rigged treadmill and some goggles
and you're there, on the Alpt. It could happen.
Or maybe last week's advances in Afghanistan will take a turn and tens of
thousands of young men and women will die in a protracted ground war. Maybe
we'll see civil liberties erode in the name of fighting the evildoers, until our rights
are nothing more than a wistful thought. And then, perhaps, we'll see a new
brand of protest music on MTV and BET.
"Remember'Hell no, we won't go'?" asks hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, whose latest endeavor, Def Poetry Jam,was picked up by HBO in the days
after Sept. 11. "I'm hopeful that young people will have something to contribute.
Three rappers are more'important than three heads of states talking."
Muyb. right now there's an aspiring rapper with a turntable in his bedroom
trying to work through his fears. Or maybe next month, three geeks in a storefront will get the corporate backing for their video game "Crush al Qaeda." Or
maybe in 10 years some eager director will be maxing out her credit cards to make
-
an indie flick.
We're shape-shifting.
It's anyone's guess what that final shape will look like.
Just like staking it all on the Redskins three years down the road
Bowl XXXIX, there are no sure bets.
75
in
Super
Exploring the Texl
1. In the second paragraph of Teresa Wiltz's essay, she compares predicting the effects
of September 11 on pop. culture with calling the Super Bowl three years in
advance, yet she and the people she interviews make predictions anyway. How
does she maintain her credibility and the credibility of her sources?
2. Inwhat different ways does Wiltz define popular culture?
3. The tone gf the essay shifts several times. Find the transition points, and consider
whyWiltz might have shifted the tone at each spot.
4. Wiltzcites siiveral experts on the subject of popular culture. What does each offer?
She also
5.
mentions people who declined to be interviewed for the
essay.
What is the
effect of including their names, even without their statements?
In the section "Comfort in Continuity," Wiltz quotes futurist and psychological
anthropologist Doug Raybeck, who classifies change in two categories: first-order