By FRANCES GRANT
That a "demonic face" should be seen by some in the smoke billowing from the World Trade Center building is hardly surprising for a culture trained to see Armageddon as a series of Hollywood special effects.
The entertainment industry in the US could certainly adopt it as a spooky
self-image for a business which has thrived on images of violence, disaster, war, terror and blowing up stuff.
Hollywood, the music biz, video and computer game-makers and television are all now taking bewildered stock of an event which countless overwhelmed commentators have had to resort to describing as "like a movie".
Predictable reactions abound in an industry which is the chief vehicle for export of American ideology: movies about terrorism canned, games and comics featuring the iconic Twin Towers all scrubbed ...
In the madness of the newfound hypersensitivity a set of ideas on an e-mail note somehow became an official list of songs banned by dominant music radio network in the US.
Can it only be a couple of weeks ago that the biggest story in entertainment news, the untimely death of young R'n'B singer Aaliyah in a plane crash, was front-page news?
While the entertainment industry reels with its sudden relegation to utter triviality, the ironies abound.
Television, which has resorted to ever more aggressive "reality formats" to boost ratings, has since delivered in its 24-hour news coverage and current affairs shows the biggest reality show on Earth.
The entertainment industry has suffered its own collision: that of real, unspeakable horror with media in which such events are the things of games, cheap thrills and chills, and rebel song lyrics of the disaffected.
The world now knows what it really looks like when a commercial jet crashes into a skyscraper. Because this havoc was wreaked on America, rather than an enemy state, we have seen something of what "collateral damage" — sanitised out of the highly stage-managed news events such as the Gulf War — looks like.
And we know what survivors look like: bloodied and stunned people fleeing the debris, covered in concrete dust like bizarre chadors of ashes.
Survivors do not look like Lycra-clad gym bunnies who have missed out showers and proper meals during a few weeks on a tropical island or in the Australian Outback.
Here is a culture which invests resources into making entertainment out of 24/7 electronic surveillance of a group of people indulging in extraordinarily trivial behaviour, yet doesn't seem to have the intelligence to pick up on a complex terrorist act, years in the planning, designed to create unforgettably searing media footage.
How entertaining will reality shows such as Boot Camp seem now when the globe's dominant nation is now on a war footing?
Yet in the confusion, the show must go on. In the American version of Big Brother 2, the no-contact rules were put aside for one of the contestants who had a relative in the World Trade Center. Her reaction was filmed, then set to poignant music.
While all such entertainment seems unthinkably trivial or obscene, the CNN news, slickly packaged with American flags and in those first few days playing that horrifying footage on seemingly endless repeat, still couldn't completely escape the feel of entertainment.
President Bush's promises of vengeance and retaliation sound like scenes from yet another shoot-'em-up revenge movie, starring some indestructible, terrorist-crunching He-man like Schwarzenegger or Willis.
It remains to be seen what the fallout for the entertainment industry will be when the smoke, complete with its demonic face of the Apocalyse, clears from shocked minds and imaginations.
Can the confusing jumble of news footage and collapsed Hollywood images of terror and vengeance ever be sorted into separate components in media which have always shaped reality for entertainment?
Full coverage: Terror in America
Pictures: Day 1 | Day 2 | Brooklyn Bridge live webcam
Video
The fatal flights
Emergency telephone numbers:
United Airlines: 0168 1800 932 8555
American Airlines: 0168 1800 245 0999
NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade: 0800 872 111
US Embassy in Wellington (recorded info): 04 472 2068
Victims and survivors
How to donate to firefighters' fund
Full coverage: America responds
By FRANCES GRANT
That a "demonic face" should be seen by some in the smoke billowing from the World Trade Center building is hardly surprising for a culture trained to see Armageddon as a series of Hollywood special effects.
The entertainment industry in the US could certainly adopt it as a spooky
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.