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Seventeen years later, we are in the midst of a war
that some are calling “Bush’s Vietnam.”
While that term is being bandied about to sway favor
away from conservatives in an election year, it is easy
to forget one crucial point: It is our Vietnam, too.
The images and sounds that “made real”
the situation of Vietnam are still two of the classic
cultural touchstones of the 1960s. But if we, too, are
fighting a generation-defining war in some of the most
crucial years in the history of American democracy,
where are our touchstones? Where is our “Guernica”?
Where is our Dylan?
The dearth of meaningful art in response to both Sept.
11 and the war in Iraq is troubling. This deficiency
came into focus on Sept. 11, 2002. New York City was
under pressure to produce a fitting tribute on the first
anniversary of the attacks. The recovery effort had
been completed only months before. A choice was made
for an oratory to both unite and comfort: the Gettysburg
Address.
Classy. Tasteful. Moving. Devastatingly disappointing.
It was a missed opportunity of monumental proportions.
What would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had felt
as inadequate to the task of speaking at Gettysburg
as Gov. George Pataki did speaking at ground zero? It
was a perfect moment to add to the history of oratory.
To mark the moment such that its emotional effects would
reverberate for ages, just as it did when Lincoln gave
that famous address. The audience at Gettysburg was
so moved that, when Lincoln finished, they were silent
with awe. When was the last time you were moved to silence?
The organizers of New York’s memorial went the
safe way. Intimidation in the face of the truly meaningful
is why those still reeling from Sept. 11 and those opposed
to the war in Iraq have to look to the past to find
the artistic release that should be supplied by contemporary
artists. If you can’t rise to the moment and connect
emotionally with a grieving, enraged public, what good
are you as an artist? Have we lost the ability to make
music and art that are both politically and aesthetically
relevant?
Bruce Springsteen is one of the only major artists
to release a mainstream album that was influenced heavily
by Sept. 11. 2002’s “The Rising” is
a brilliant work, evoking all of the human responses
that Sept. 11 induced — some that we celebrate
(the instinctive caring for strangers on “Into
the Fire”) and some that we actively avoid (“Paradise,”
a hauntingly moving song written from the perspective
of a suicide bomber). The possibility of redemption
is throughout, giving the album an enduring quality.
It was an album conceived because of an encounter
Springsteen had while stopped at a red light in New
Jersey after Sept. 11.
“Bruce,” the man called. “We need
you.” This is what artists must aspire to —
not to be admired, but to be needed.
“The Rising” is as close as rock ‘n’
roll comes to gospel. The title song invokes the larger
theme of the album — “rising” as spiritual
ascension and a meditation on what it means to be alive.
“May the living let us in,” he sings, “before
the dead tear us apart.”
But even “The Rising” was pushed into the
margins, losing the best album Grammy to Norah Jones’
escapist, boring “Come Away With Me.” And
although the songs on “The Rising” are haunting
and evocative, it is doubtful that they will stand up
to the relevance of classics like Buffalo Springfield’s
“For What it’s Worth.”
Even America’s most talented writers can’t
seem to cut it. Tim Robbins’ Iraq war satire,
“Embedded,” at New York’s Public Theater,
had the potential to be both a rallying point for a
resurgence of American political theater and a sharp
snapshot of a particular time in our history. Instead,
it devolves into “Tim Robbins Has Something he
Wants to Teach You.” As of May 2004, the play
has been running for three months, and already feels
dated.
Great theater does not instruct, it explores. You do
not have to know the history of World War I to understand
that, in Frank McGuinness’ “Observe the
Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme,” something
irretrievable has been lost on the battlefield. “Embedded”
does not share this graceful humanism, and for that
reason it will never be considered an important work
about war.
There are reasons to remain hopeful, however. One is
the resurgence of quality photojournalism. The New York
Times swept the Pulitzers in 2002 for photojournalism,
mainly due to its coverage of Sept. 11. However, government
censorship of news photographs threatens to curtail
this temporary renaissance — and the news media’s
recent mix-up of photos depicting caskets from Iraq
and caskets from the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster
doesn’t help their credibility.
Artistic displays cropped up throughout New York City
just after Sept. 11. The two finest, cooperative photo
gallery Here Is New York and the Tribute In Light, remain
two of the finest examples of public art in this young
century. Here Is New York invited ordinary people to
submit their photos related to Sept. 11. A Soho gallery
austerely displayed them without captions. The photos
spoke to grief without speaking to politics or divisions.
Nearly three years later, it would be impossible to
reproduce the organic, cathartic quality of this exhibit.
The Tribute In Light was also, in its way, a lovely,
aching homage to the World Trade Center. Two columns
of blue light lifted into the night sky where the towers
had been. Displayed for the first time one month after
the towers fell, it was a wake — a final chance
to look upon what we hadn’t expected to lose.
These two works prove that such moving and rousing expression
is possible, and because of the time that has passed,
it is now possible to create even more political and
hard-hitting works. What are we waiting for?
America cannot simply be a force for destruction. In
addition to using our power in the voting booth to voice
our opposition to the war in Iraq, we need to use the
culture to tap into what is happening to our country.
We must remember to grieve for Sept. 11, and to grieve
for what the promise of America has devolved into. We
must take that grief and channel it into a meaningful,
soul-stirring response. We must be willing to rise to
that challenge, or else it’s all just entertainment.
Ultimately, to find a genuine, cathartic moment of
release, look to U2’s otherworldly performance
of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” from the documentary
“Rattle and Hum.” It is a song about the
1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland, but
the anguish and anger that it conveys are the brand
of universal truths that Americans need to be creating
out of our own distress.
When Bono chants “No more! No more!” it
isn’t the hollow cry of protest rallies, nor does
it allow for moral relativism. It is the hymn of a man
fed up, pushed to the brink of crippling sorrow and
forcing it back upon itself.
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