Watched the entirety of the second edition of "Loose Change" yesterday, as I am doing an 8+ page research paper on 9/11 conspiracy theories (I am finding that I really wish I had picked a different topic, but, well, it was due nearly two weeks ago now, so it's not the best time to change that. For those of you who may be worried: I am 6 pages in and will very possibly finish by the end of Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest unless something goes hideously wrong. And I am informed that I have an A going into this paper, so even substantial lateness will not kill me too badly.).
I can sum up the experience in three words. Utter infuriating horseshit. That there are some oddities and inexplicable occurrences surrounding 9/11 I can buy. The government has certainly been annoyingly secretive and close-to-the-chest with information surrounding the whole thing, but then, that's par for the course with Bush and I wouldn't be especially surprised if they'd done something a) stupid or b) corrupt and assholish that they're trying to keep secret. But none of the many claims I've seen presented in the movie, on SG, and elsewhere represent the simplest explanation. Many of them are tangential even when true. Astounding leaps of logic are made. A lot of vaguely suspicious evidence is presented (poorly sourced almost invariably, throughout the movie, although the video footage is hard to doubt. It's just that it often doesn't show what the narrator claims it does.), and you're strongly encouraged to infer vile and evilositous conspiracies from it, but none of it represents a case, per se, just vaguely suspicious, very possibly made up "evidence".
Anyway. It's not so much the conclusion they reach that infuriates me. It's bullshit, but you can sort of understand where they're coming from. It's not like Bush & co. have shown themselves to be paragons of light and virtue. It's the way the narrator of the film repeatedly presented vague claims and then claimed to have "proved" something. Like when they decide that Flight 93 didn't crash in Pennsylvania like it's said to have, so... this random other plane in a random airport someplace else across the country must have been it! And it's just assumed and run with that somehow the passengers from all the other flights were loaded onto 93 (because this plane at the airport had approximately similar numbers of passengers being evacuated off it as the passenger numbers for all four of the 9/11 planes) and then offloaded into some empty hangar at this airport...and then never heard from again. Ooooookay. (I wish I were making this up, or misrepresenting the quality of the argument, but no. Perhaps someone, somewhere makes a coherent, logically valid version of this argument, but not the Loose Change folks.)
Fortunately I've also seen three other, significantly better movies recently. Night Watch, the Russian import, dark modern fantasy about a sort of Cold War between the Light Others and the Dark Others, and the police forces that maintain the Truce between them. Some interesting concepts, vivid imagery, a plot that doesn't delve overmuch into the (probably silly) logistics of things, and fun with subtitles. (I don't recommend watching the English dub. Russian original with subs is definitely the way to go.) A Scanner Darkly, the trippy, paranoid, drug-addled animated film based on Philip K. Dick's novel of the same name. Keanu Reeves was actually not utterly terrible. Scary. Neat concepts, interesting layering of animation over live footage. I tend to suspect that it's not a super-strong adaptation of the book, but the book is or was out of print and I have not read it. And Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan's latest. Eh. He's been getting progressively less interesting. Sixth Sense was great, Unbreakable quite good, Signs worked well until the end, The Village was vividly imagined if not very interesting...and Lady in the Water was mostly just silly. Some fun bits with a critic, and occasionally it had bits of life to it, but it's a simplistic fairy tale with gaps in logic and really stupid names for the critters in the story. ('specially since it's supposedly an East Asian fairy tale. Bullshit. You don't get names like "Narf" and "Scrunt" in East Asian fairy tales.)
I can sum up the experience in three words. Utter infuriating horseshit. That there are some oddities and inexplicable occurrences surrounding 9/11 I can buy. The government has certainly been annoyingly secretive and close-to-the-chest with information surrounding the whole thing, but then, that's par for the course with Bush and I wouldn't be especially surprised if they'd done something a) stupid or b) corrupt and assholish that they're trying to keep secret. But none of the many claims I've seen presented in the movie, on SG, and elsewhere represent the simplest explanation. Many of them are tangential even when true. Astounding leaps of logic are made. A lot of vaguely suspicious evidence is presented (poorly sourced almost invariably, throughout the movie, although the video footage is hard to doubt. It's just that it often doesn't show what the narrator claims it does.), and you're strongly encouraged to infer vile and evilositous conspiracies from it, but none of it represents a case, per se, just vaguely suspicious, very possibly made up "evidence".
Anyway. It's not so much the conclusion they reach that infuriates me. It's bullshit, but you can sort of understand where they're coming from. It's not like Bush & co. have shown themselves to be paragons of light and virtue. It's the way the narrator of the film repeatedly presented vague claims and then claimed to have "proved" something. Like when they decide that Flight 93 didn't crash in Pennsylvania like it's said to have, so... this random other plane in a random airport someplace else across the country must have been it! And it's just assumed and run with that somehow the passengers from all the other flights were loaded onto 93 (because this plane at the airport had approximately similar numbers of passengers being evacuated off it as the passenger numbers for all four of the 9/11 planes) and then offloaded into some empty hangar at this airport...and then never heard from again. Ooooookay. (I wish I were making this up, or misrepresenting the quality of the argument, but no. Perhaps someone, somewhere makes a coherent, logically valid version of this argument, but not the Loose Change folks.)
Fortunately I've also seen three other, significantly better movies recently. Night Watch, the Russian import, dark modern fantasy about a sort of Cold War between the Light Others and the Dark Others, and the police forces that maintain the Truce between them. Some interesting concepts, vivid imagery, a plot that doesn't delve overmuch into the (probably silly) logistics of things, and fun with subtitles. (I don't recommend watching the English dub. Russian original with subs is definitely the way to go.) A Scanner Darkly, the trippy, paranoid, drug-addled animated film based on Philip K. Dick's novel of the same name. Keanu Reeves was actually not utterly terrible. Scary. Neat concepts, interesting layering of animation over live footage. I tend to suspect that it's not a super-strong adaptation of the book, but the book is or was out of print and I have not read it. And Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan's latest. Eh. He's been getting progressively less interesting. Sixth Sense was great, Unbreakable quite good, Signs worked well until the end, The Village was vividly imagined if not very interesting...and Lady in the Water was mostly just silly. Some fun bits with a critic, and occasionally it had bits of life to it, but it's a simplistic fairy tale with gaps in logic and really stupid names for the critters in the story. ('specially since it's supposedly an East Asian fairy tale. Bullshit. You don't get names like "Narf" and "Scrunt" in East Asian fairy tales.)
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
wildswan:
Happy happy birthday!! 
nickfaust:
Happy Birthday.