Mood: Good...now.
Music: Dream On, Aerosmith (Live)
Game: World of Warcraft, COD2, Dungeons and Dragons Online (Khyber Server), Oblivion
Book: Odalisque, Neal Stephenson
Weather: 55, clear.
Jobs applied to today: 0.
So I went to a movie last night, Lucky Number Slevin. Entertaining...holes you could drive a truck through, and altogether too "neat" to be a great film, but the casting was very, very good, and the acting was excellent. I loved Lucy Liu's character...even if people like that don't exist in New York City.
Here's the part I want to write about, however. Last night, before the movie, was a trailer for Flight 93. Now, if you don't know anything about this film, you could probably infer from the title that it's a movie about Flight 93 on 9/11, the flight that the passengers supposedly fought the terrorists in the plane, and eventually crashed it rather than become a flying bomb.
I'll say this...I've never been that close to walking out of a movie theatre in my life.
I was there to see a light-hearted black comedy. What I did NOT expect to see was snippets of 9/11, including the moment an aircraft flew directly into the World Trade Center. As dumb as it sounds, I cannot look at that footage, or see a photo of that without choking up and clenching my teeth so hard, my jaw is in danger of breaking.
I do not begrudge someone making a film about the passengers of flight 93. It is their right to do so, and if I choose not to go see it, that is my right. What I do NOT expect is to be subjected to something like that without warning, in an environment when I least expect it.
I can't call what I am as offended. I'm not offended. I'm shocked. I'm hurt. And I'm pissed. Of course, those emotions may very well be the heart of being offended, so maybe I am. I acknowledge that not everyone will have the visceral reaction to such an event...but I did. And I'm angry that a perfectly nice night out with my fiancee came to a screeching halt while I reigned in my emotions and tried to nail that little door in the back of my head closed again.
I am an ardent advocate of free speech and freedom of expression. What I am NOT an advocate of is tricking someone into hearing or watching something that they did not choose to hear or watch. If I buy a copy of Cinderella for my nephew, and someone replaced the middle hour of the film with some porn film, I assure you, I would not be amused in the slightest. Freedom of speech does not entail mandatory listeners.
In any case, I am writing a letter to the studio, and the theatre in which I saw it, and I am telling them that I applaud their courage for making a film on this topic this close to the event...but if I ever see anything like that again, I will personally enact a class-action lawsuit for harrassment. Actually, I'm surprised that there isn't that much of an uproar...although, I wonder what would happen if they went and showed this trailer in New York, say at the Battery Park cinema? Is that freedom of speech? Or incitement to riot?
I could have done without that.
Posted by Glenn at April 9, 2006 10:48 PM