remembering 9.11

Well, it’s September 11, 2011, or 11-9-11 for our more logical friends overseas. I was waiting for one of our hosts to weigh in, but since the day is almost over here, let me offer a few observations.

My twins were two ten years ago and naturally remember nothing. Like many kids their age across the U.S., they were asked to interview family members about their memories of 9/11/01. Both kids did their bit, but later my son—after first apologizing and making sure that I wouldn’t think he was a terrorist—asked me if there was any video of what happened that day.

I had to stifle a gasp both because (I know) he has searched for things on YouTube that he should be embarrassed about, but apparently he could never bring himself to violate a perceived taboo around 9/11 and because aside from people living in New York, Washington and a few others, everyone in the world experienced 9/11 via media. It was the ultimate horror movie, unfolding before our very eyes that beautiful September morning. Of course there’s video, I told him.

We found some selections on CNN and started poking around. To watch the initial coverage of the tragedy is to relive the moment the first observers (along with most of the rest of us) first learned of the idea that people would do such a thing as commandeer an airplane and deliberately fly it into a building. Yes, the intelligence community had considered it, but the typical early observers literally couldn’t imagine such a thing. What was a plane doing there, they wondered? Did it look like it was suffering mechanical difficulties, one anchor asked an eyewitness? Were the engines on fire at the time of the accident? Even the impact of the second plane doesn’t immediately compute. Like Simons and Chabris’ experiment where a man in a gorilla suit walking through the middle of a group of people dribbling basketballs often goes unnoticed because we’ve been asked to count the basketball passes, the second impact is still so unexpected, so out of context, that the CNN anchor doesn’t realize what’s happened.

I was reminded of a quote from Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson that appears in Melani McAlister’s early meditation on 9/11 (subscription required):

All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives.

We all have our narratives of 9/11—where we were, whom we were with, how we coped (or didn’t)—but we also have our amnesias. We cannot remember what it felt like to have never known that planes could be flown into buildings to kill and terrorize. Our kids will never know that feeling, and that, it strikes me, is a great shame, part of the immeasurable cost of that day.

My second observation involves this video. It’s meant as a 9:00 minute “lowlight” reel of the days events and entitled “Look Back at How September 11 Unfolded.” My son and I started there, but soon noticed something strange. Spoiler alert. If you want to see for yourself, watch the first 90 seconds or so and see if you notice anything odd before reading on.

Did you notice? There’s a soundtrack. It’s not Wagner or Carmina Burana, but some poor sound editor at CNN had to select the music to which the South Tower of the World Trade Center would fall! Talk about a tough day at the office. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, didn’t I just say that we all experienced that day mediated and interpreted by our friends at CNN and elsewhere. Yes, but… Here I was reminded of Alan Megill’s thoughtful Historical Knowledge, Historical Error (Chicago, 2007) where he explores the difference between acts of history and acts of memory. History, according to Megill, challenges our understanding of what happened in the past, while acts of memory tend to reinforce what we already know (or think we know). BTW, I’m not suggesting that we embrace the 9/11 conspiracists, only that when we hear a soundtrack for the ultimate reality TV show, we recognize it as such.