a sense of joy and then a panic

The Daily Nebraskan is UNL's student newspaper. As you can probably expect out of anything in Nebraska, its sports coverage is decent, but everything else is trash. Today I discovered what is, so far, the worst of the worst: Soldiering On: Columnist Shares His Favorite Films of the Post-9/11 Era (the online version has a different, less profoundly lame title). I'm probably taking this article too seriously, but it annoyed me.

9/11?

So first off, I can believe that there are quintessentially "post-9/11" movies out there (oh, okay, films). It seems like a hefty task for a college movie reviewer, but whatever. And I'm looking at the titles and I'm like, Lord of the Rings is a Post-9/11 Film? What? How? So I scan the blurbs he's written for each of his ten movies and I don't find a whole lot of 9/11 references. I find three, casually thrown in for no reason: "a bleak and dispassionate satire on everything from masculinity to post-9/11 cynicism," "Guillermo del Toro has crafted with 'Pan’s Labyrinth' a post-9/11 'Wizard of Oz'" and "Funny that the movie of the decade – one that best pertains to America’s foreign relations – would be made in France, more than a year before 9/11." Haha, yeah, it is funny that the movie of the decade would be made in France! Oh, wait, that's not surprising at all. The French are really into moviemaking, ya know. But it's definitely funny that the movie of the decade was made in 2000, right? Oh wait, there was a 1 in 10 chance of that being true.

The article is actually just listing his favorite movies of the decade. He just decided to throw in the ol' 9/11 cuz that sounded more intellectual and important, I guess. So he can claim that "cinema soldiers on" - whatever the fuck that means (he doesn't elaborate).

I am of the opinion that using 9/11 as some kind of ~transformative moment~ is really fucking risky, especially when there is no further explanation. The rest of the world certainly did not stop turning on 9/11. Was it a transformative moment in U.S. politics? Possibly, but do not believe for a moment that policy-makers do not know what they are doing when they "evoke 9/11." Pro tip: Not a whole lot changed in U.S. foreign policy. It just got kicked up a notch and paraded in the open. I could be convinced that 9/11 was a transformative moment for America's "psyche," but believe me, that is not what this dumb ass is talking about. This dumb ass is just standing there ringing the 9/11 bell to attract attention. He may as well have brought up Nazis.

Anyway, the logic of using 9/11 instead of "the decade" collapses in on itself in predictable fashion:

This decade will be remembered as the beginning of the post-9/11 artistic world (although its best film was made before 9/11).

That sentence pretty much sums up the idiocy of this article.

Post-Colonial Ranting.

You are perhaps curious about his top movie of the Post-9/11 Era? It is Beau Travail, some movie about the Algerian War. It's probably a good movie, because Claire Denis is a good director, but by crowning this the movie that "best pertains to America's foreign relations," the writer joins the legions of armchair liberals who think they're very clever indeed for discovering The Battle of Algiers after the Pentagon showed it in 2003 and applying it vigorously to the War on Terror, because you know, history matters solely when you can use it to advance your political position. I'm sure Claire Denis was totally giving this movie post-9/11 vibes when she made it in 2000. Hell, I'm sure she couldn't have been making it for any reason other than to provide commentary on U.S. foreign relations! That's why the rest of the world exists, right? To serve as anecdotes that America can learn from? God loves America, indeed.

Bad Language.

His prose, however, is what really screws the piece over. It's a great example of pompous, meaningless, pseudo-academic bullshit writing. You want to scream at him show don't tell! and define your terms! but believe me, people who write this way are very, very proud of their technique. They get to feel smart while simultaneously doing no mental work at all:

• On Pixar and its "immaculate run of terrific films": "Successful, critically acclaimed family films that combined humor and pathos for a pure and honest human message."
• On Hurt Locker: "can’t be accused of partisan polarization."
• On No Country For Old Men: "It’s also funny, in that strangely macabre way all Coen movies are funny and beautifully photographed." NCFOM also contains an ending line that is "among the most haunting in modern cinema."
• On Children of Men: "an unusually thought-provoking allegorical conceit." Also, Clive Owen's "human gravitas lends 'Children of Men' much its soul."
• On Brokeback Mountain: "the social obstacles love must perpetually overcome." Also, it's an "exquisite western," FWIW.
• On Pan's Labyrinth: "Del Toro’s smartest touch is his ambiguous approach to the notion 'Pan’s Labyrinth' is even fantasy at all. It is, in so many ways, a simple testament to the imagination of a child."
• On There Will Be Blood: "best described simply as a considerable work of art."
• On LOTR: "The beauty of his composition... is utilized to tell the kind of human story that made its predecessors classics."

Of course, sometimes he doesn't try:

• On The Dark Knight: "one of those oh-so-rare event movies that actually delivered, and in spades."
• On Children of Men: "Clive Owen is so good in these types of roles."

He intersperses this with attempts at humor. His cold opener to the article: "Here it is. When next you read 'Moving Pictures,' it will have been more than 10 years since the Y2K bug crippled the world as we know it, leaving billions of innocent people cold and hungry and desperate in unkempt city streets across the globe." That's it. That's the punchline.

The writer is a senior English major, by the way.