Journal
of American Studies of Turkey
14 (2001) : 97-104
‘After 9/11’: 25th Hour
Paul Gordon
In a now-famous short essay included in his
weighty tome on Negative Dialectics Theodor Adorno argues that a new
epoch of world history began “After Auschwitz”:
After
Auschwitz, our feelings resist any claim of the positivity of existence as
sanctimonious, as wronging the victims; they balk at squeezing any kind of
sense, however bleached, out of the victims’ fate . . . If thought is not
measured by the extremity that eludes the concept, it is from the outset in the nature of the musical accompaniment
with which the SS liked to drown out the screams of its victims. [1]
It is not my intention to enter into the
debate over Adorno’s redefinition of history in which the harmony of classical
music, the closure of classical narrative, the idealism of positive (versus the
aforementioned “negative”) truths, etc. effectively ended after the new era of
meaninglessness which began after the world learned about the Holocaust.[2]
My intention is to use Adorno’s new notation to introduce a similar refiguring
of historical time which may prove less debatable if only because it is less
global and far-reaching—less “idealistic,” as it were. While it may or may not
be the case that the world has changed “After Auschwitz” (I agree with Adorno
that it has), it does indeed seem to be the case that, here in America and
probably elsewhere, such a historical re-configuration has indeed occurred
“After 9/11.”
I am not referring to the notion resembling this idea made popular by an increasingly shallow, media-driven culture which regularly transforms sound bytes into truths. Indeed, I do not think that a genuinely philosophical redefinition of time such as that suggested by Adorno lies within the realm of our media’s “thinking,” if one can even use that term to refer to what the media does. I have not, in fact, heard much in the popular press or television about how America is now to be redefined as a post-9/11 America, although there are certainly numerous, almost daily specific references to how this or that has changed after 9/11. (Significantly, the more philosophical version of this idea is made by Spike Lee in his own commentary on the film we will be discussing shortly.) It is the quantity, and not the quality, of such references which support the point I am making here. Speaking as a citizen of the U.S.A. and as a literary theorist—a philosopher of sorts, —not as one who is overtly interested in contemporary political issues or so-called “cultural studies,” I would simply assert as a matter of incontestable truth, and without yet entering into the debate over the significance of this truth, that beyond the current presidential term or terms, beyond the so-called “war on terrorism” (which has mercifully supplanted the previous pseudo-war “on drugs”), beyond all such passing crises, America has indeed profoundly and fundamentally changed after the event of 9/11.
Beyond the mere fact of a new epoch having
begun in America (and perhaps elsewhere) ‘after 9/11’, it is necessary to
examine what this means for our current way of thinking and acting, which is
thus a new way of thinking and acting. As a literary theorist it is my function
to serve as the intermediary for works of art whose interpretation is to be
carefully extracted from their essentially ambiguous meanings. (It is worth
recalling here that “hermeneutics,” the art of interpretation, is derived from
the role which the god Hermes performed in translating the language of the gods
for human comprehension.) Although there has not yet been, nor should one
expect there to be, much in the way of serious art concerning 9/11, there has
appeared, in the last year, the first major American non-documentary film which
deals at once directly and indirectly with the event: Spike Lee’s 25th Hour.
25th
Hour, which appeared in theaters last year (12/2002)
and DVD last month and was adapted from a novel by David Benioff, concerns a
young New Yorker whose chic Manhattan life-style is funded by drug-dealing.
Monty Brogan, played by the brilliant young actor Edward Norton, had been
busted months before the “real time” of the film (the scene is shown in one of
its many flashback sequences) after the DEA burst into his apartment operating
on a tip from someone and found Monty‘s supply of money and drugs. It is now the
last day before Monty is to begin serving his seven-year sentence; the title 25th Hour refers, then, to
the sentence which is to begin at the movie’s end. Or, more precisely, it
refers to the twenty-four hours which have been spent in a sort of limbo saying
good-bye to family and friends and a dog (a major figure both in the novel and
the film) whom Monty had earlier rescued, in one of the aforementioned
flashbacks, from near-death.
The film as just described, then, has
nothing to do with the event of 9/11. In fact, the novel on which the film is
closely based was written before the terrorist attack, and so obviously
contains no reference to the attack whatsoever. The film’s references to
“ground zero” (versus, significantly, to the attack itself) were all added to
the film version at the insistence of the Director. But, are those really just
“references”? Or, more precisely, what is one referring to when one calls the
role played by ground zero in 25th
Hour “references”? To begin with, the stunning opening credits of the film
appear over a steady, unmoving shot of the beacon tribute to ground zero which
began on the 6-month anniversary of the attack (March 11 2002) and lasted for
about a month, until April 13th:
Second, Monty’s father, whose role, given the considerable acting prowess of Brian Cox, is substantially expanded in the film, is a retired Irish NYC fireman (like the NYC police department, many of New York’s firemen are Irish) whose bar contains a shrine to some of the fallen heroes of the FDNY who died on 9/11. But, again, during the scene in which Monty meets his father for dinner at this bar, there is no discussion of 9/11.
The one exception to this silent tribute to
9/11 running throughout 25th
Hour (the popularity of such “moments of silence” in the USA owes
something, no doubt, to its Protestant origins) occurs when two of Monty’s
friends, Jake (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his stockbroker friend Frank (Barry
Pepper), meet up at one of their apartments before joining Monty to “celebrate”
his last night of freedom. The apartment in question, which belongs to Monty’s
childhood friend Frank, whose seeming indifference to his friend’s fate (“he
got what he deserved”) is later unmasked as really anguish over his friend’s
“death sentence,” is adjacent to Ground Zero, and a long conversation Jake and
Frank have about their friend occurs while the two stand before a window
overlooking Ground Zero where, at night, large bulldozers are still at work
sifting through the remains of what is now a gaping hole in NYC’s otherwise
crowded skyline.
Significantly, the camera does not move
throughout the long scene overlooking Ground Zero which the Studio pleaded with
Lee to shorten, and again the discussion is conspicuously lacking in any
discussion about 9/11. The only reference to Ground Zero at all which is made
during this scene occurs before the two friends begin their heated conversation
about Monty, when Jake asks Frank about the wisdom of continuing to live where
he does because of the contaminated air around Ground Zero. In other words,
there is again, even here, in the film’s most explicit “reference” to Ground
Zero, significant silence on the subject of 9/11, something which is to a
certain extent reflected in this essay on Lee’s 25th Hour, although my silence, like the proverbial
“moment of silence,” is devoted to the very subject which is not being
discussed. Finally, I would add that, included in the just-released DVD, with
its now customary list of “bonus features,” there exists an extraordinary “Tribute
to Ground Zero” in which the camera, again, remains motionless as bulldozers,
moving about like some colossal anxious dinosaurs awaiting their extinction,
move silently about the rubble.
Beyond the mere fact that Spike Lee has
included such moving, conspicuously inconspicuous “references” to 9/11 in 25th Hour (again, the first
such referencing in any major American film), how is one to interpret the
significance of such references? Can we learn something from this film about
the significance of 9/11 that will justify our contention that life in America
has been forever altered after the event of 9/11? Before turning to the more
obvious question of how the storyline of the film relates to 9/11, it is worth
returning to the beginning of the film in which the beacon tribute to Ground
Zero is used as a background for the film’s opening credits.
As all film students and aficionados know,
such title-sequences are an art in themselves; e.g. Saul Bass’ work on
Hitchcock’s films such as Psycho and Vertigo. But this opening scene
(actually, like many title-scenes it begins after an introductory scene in
which the abused dog is rescued) is, in itself, evidence of my claim that 9/11
is no mere “reference” in the film but, rather, the film itself. For in this sequence,
one in which the Director and crew took considerable pride, Ground Zero is used
to illustrate the essence, as it were, of the film itself, i.e. the names of
all the people, from the most significant to the least involved in the film
itself. The image of the lights themselves has a number of other meanings which
deepen our understanding of the connection between 9/11 and 25th Hour. The image of
beacons shining up into the sky must remind us of the earlier use of such
beacons as emblematic of Hollywood, often still occurring at the beginning of
films and at award ceremonies such as that of the Oscars. The image is thus a
synecdoche of film, an acknowledgment of the importance of light shining in the
darkness without which, both in its production as well as its exhibition, film
would not exist. The image thus connects the medium of film with the reality of
9/11, much as Spike Lee is connecting them in this particular film, itself a
commercial, “Hollywood” film. The cinematic representation of 9/11, then, is
connected to the reality of 9/11—the beacon tribute—in a way which suggests an
identity rather than just a representation, a close relationship which one
could ascribe to the way 9/11 has imposed itself onto a film which is in many
ways unrelated to it. The opening scene is thus evidence of my contention that,
after 9/11, life in America has profoundly changed, for it has even taken over
a film which should be separate from it. This, I would argue, is all the more
powerful as a tribute to 9/11, more powerful even than a more direct
representation of 9/11 would be, for it has reenacted the reality of 9/11 in
taking over a culture by surprise, a culture which is supposedly safe and
protected from it.
It is thus, I would contend, that Spike Lee has made the most
memorable tribute to date to 9/11 by showing how it has ripped through the
fabric of our culture by imposing itself on a film in which it supposedly has
no business. But I would also argue that the Director is aware of the
connection between the story of 25th
Hour and 9/11, of how 9/11 has also taken over the meaning of lives such as
that of Monty’s. In one of the film’s most memorable and controversial scenes
the main character goes into the Men’s Room of his father’s bar after the two
have been morosely pondering the son’s imminent departure to prison. Looking at
the mirror over the washbasin Monty sees the not infrequent “Fuck You” written
on the latrine wall. Seeing this, Monty explodes into a litany of abuse—of his
own “Fuck You’s”—directed at the various sub-cultures which inhabit New York:
‘Fuck
Me’? Fuck You. Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it . . . Fuck the
Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry
steaming out their pores, stinking up my day, terrorists in fucking training,
SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! . . . Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach, mobster thugs
sitting in cafes sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their
teeth, wheeling and dealing and scheming; go back where you fucking came from.
Fuck the black-hatted Hasidim, strolling up and down 47th St. in
their dirty gabardine with their dandruff, selling South African apartheid
diamonds. Fuck the Wall St. brokers, self-styled masters of the universe,
Michael Douglas Gordon Gecko wannabes. . . send those fucking Enron assholes to
jail for fucking life. You think Bush and Cheney didn’t know about that shit?
Give me a fucking break . . . Fuck the Puerto-Ricans, twenty to a car swelling
up the welfare rolls, worst fucking parade in the city. . . Fuck the
Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits. . .
Fuck the up-town brothers; they never want to pass the ball, they don’t play
defense, they take five steps on every lay-up, and then they want to turn
around blame and everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and
thirty-seven years ago, MOVE THE FUCK ON! And while we’re at it, fuck J.C.: a
day on the cross, a week-end in Hell, and all the Hallelujas of the legioned
angels for eternity, try seven years in fucking Otisville, J. Fuck Osama Bin
Laden, Al-Qaeda and backward cave-dwelling Fundamentalist assholes everywhere.
On the names of innocent thousands murdered I hope you spend the rest of
eternity roasting in a jet-fueled fire in Hell; you towel-headed camel jockeys
can kiss my royal Irish Ass!. . . Fuck my Father, with his endless grief,
sitting behind that bar, sipping on club soda, selling whiskey to Firemen and
cheering the Bronx bombers. . . Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. . .
Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash
and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.
<Pause> No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan, you had it all and you threw it
away, you dumb FUCK!
Gays, Puerto Ricans, Hassid Jews,
African-Americans, Italian-Americans, et al. (I have shortened the sppech
considerably here) are all subjected in turn to Monty’s anger at these
different life-styles, life-styles which anger Monty only because, it seems,
they are different from his own. In reality, Monty is angry with these
minorities only because he is angry in general, something he himself realizes
at the end of his speech when he turns his last “Fuck You” against himself and
the bad decisions he made which are about to land him in jail. In visual terms
the most striking thing about the sequence is the high-contrast photography
Spike Lee uses to film the different groups, a sharp focus which mirrors the
anger of the protagonist whose voice is speaking over them. The scene literally
explodes in the middle of the film, and its power and importance is such that
it returns at the end of the film when the same faces of these representatives
of the different ethnic groups of New York are looking at him quizzically as he
drives to jail to surrender himself and begin his seven-years of incarceration.
Why does Monty vent his wrath in this way,
on groups of people who, in a reality which does not escape the character
played by Norton, have nothing to do with his current predicament? The answer
lies, I believe, in the two close relationships Monty has with members of two
of the groups mentioned: his Russian friend Kostya and Naturelle, the
Puerto-Rican girlfriend whom he had wrongly suspected throughout the film of
being the one who set him up. Indeed, Monty’s suspicions about Naturelle’s
fidelity, in all senses of the word, are the central (but certainly not the
only) concern of Norton’s character as he prepares to begin his sentence. The
trajectory of this sub-plot as just described thus mirrors the way Monty first
rails against, and then relents from, the accusations hurled against the
various minorities—including the Russians and the Puerto-Ricans—who are also
exonerated in the scene at the end of the film when these same figures are
shown looking directly at him as he goes off to jail. Not only are they, and
particularly Naturelle, not deserving of Monty’s “Fuck You,” but also their
role is finally to show how such marginalized groups (including the Arabs and
Muslims also mentioned in the abovementioned harangue) are victims of an anger
which is more rightly directed at ourselves. The reason 9/11 has forever
changed the direction of American life, Spike Lee’s 25th Hour seems to be saying, is that, like Monty, we
have now been sentenced to a world where the hegemony of the straight, white,
middle-class life, a life based on hypocrisies no less self-indulgent and
harmful to others than those of Monty, is the Ground Zero of a world which will
never be the same, despite whatever attempts we make to build over the open
wound which Spike Lee’s film wisely chose to leave uncovered.