Art in the aftermath: what happens next?

BY HOLLY KLINE

ILIANA BOUZALI/YH

"What artists do will continue to be very vast and different, culturally diverse," Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), said. "I don't think human expression is going to take some predictable turn that just grabs the implications of this particular terrorist attack and makes that the subject of all kinds of work." In the arts, Reynolds implies, diversity will remain. And in cinema and popular music, specifically, rampant predictions of drastic change may be quickly disproved by reality.

On the cinematic front, many people believe that the recent attack will put an end to blockbuster action movies. Since some of the fictions that the movies depict closely resemble the horrors of Sept. 11, movies like The Siege and Independence Day threaten to offend with their close parallels to reality. Popular entertainment, as a result, seems threatening and inappropriate. "[The tragedy] is too raw, too close," Charles Musser, BK '73, professor of Film Studies, said. "You don't need to be reminded that someone can blow up New York if you're living in New York.

"But I'm not convinced that things are going to change so radically, despite what many people are saying," Musser continued. "This is very short-term soul-searching." After we pass through this period of mourning, Musser said, life is likely to resume its old rhythms, with action movies reappearing as violent and sensational as ever. "I can't predict the future," Michael Raine, professor of Film Studies, said. "But I'm pretty sure this isn't the end [of violent films]. Spectacle is there because it's possible and appealing." Big-screen violence exists because it gives viewers an adrenaline rush. And American filmmakers have perfected the art of captivating and thrilling audiences. Action, in fact, can be viewed as the hallmark of American cinema. It's formulaic, yes, but it keeps 'em coming back for more.

And more and more. America's appetite for thrills isn't a recent phenomenon. Even before modern-day action movies, musicals—counterintuitive as it might seem—delivered the wows of today's blockbusters, as Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times has argued. Audiences who were once enraptured by Fred Astaire performing his magic as he danced across the screen are now captivated by scenes of hand-to-hand combat and intense shoot-outs, á la The Matrix. Although the two genres seem to fall at opposite ends of the sensationalist spectrum, their extreme physicality links them together.

The new stigma placed on action movies has caused several films scheduled for release to be indefinitely postponed: Schwartzenegger's Collateral Damage, in which a skyscraper is bombed, and Tim Allen's Big Trouble, which involves a bomb on an airplane, currently remain in pre-box-office limbo. Historically, however, periods of cultural upheaval—the Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam—have usually been linked not to production delays, but rather to astoundingly excellent filmmaking. Rather than than inducing filmmakers to shy away from violent scripts, for example, conflict has spawned some of the finest war movies, including Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket.

This rich history of films inspired by violence and catastrophe has led some people to wonder whether the recent attack will end up spawning even more films about terrorism. "Instead of doing fiction that warns us about what might happen," Musser said, "you might have films that are based on true stories. Instead of having evil Russian gangsters, maybe fictions will be rearranged more according to this mysterious bin Laden character." But dangers can also surface if filmmakers make an excess of movies involving Arab terrorist plots (as in the Schwartzeneger vehicle True Lies). Such films threaten to foster the sort of anti-Arab sentiment that public figures have taken pains to discourage.

Dudley Andrew, a professor of comparative literature, acknowledges the possibility that some sweeping changes will reconfigure the face of cinema. "I want to agree with Mark Crispin Miller, a friend of mine and a Media Professor at NYU, who said, immediately after the attacks occurred, that this would get rid of the world-weary irony that has been pervading narrative fiction for a long time," he said. "There will be a new seriousness, and a return to—if not sentiment—then at least to the big social questions that are not going to be scoffed at as in the past."

Despite the current attraction to action flicks, film has played a significant role in the task of coming to terms with the attack. America's cultural repository of cinematic images has shaped this process in what Andrew suggests may be a disturbing manner. Newscasters and laymen alike have been comparing the event to scenes from movies, pro-cessing reality through the filter of a shared collection of fictional images.

"What bothers me," Andrew said, "is that movies set up expectations. They often begin with some outrage that is then rectified at the end in a way that is often more spectacular than the original. I'm worried about what it would take to satisfy the expectations of the American populace."

But speculation is just an educated guess. No one can really say what the movie line-up will look like next year or in the decades to come. The same holds true for music: where does it go from here?

Music in the aftermath of a tragic national event assumes many different roles, because people relate to song so personally. "Someone said after this event that they found that they weren't listening to music anymore," Professor of Music John Szwed said. "And another person said that they'd been doing nothing else all day long. What one person sees as trivial now, the other person sees as getting him through the dark night." Music plays a vital role in memorial services, with hymns like "Amazing Grace"and songs like "God Bless America" both uniting and uplifting participants. But these songs have been part of our musical heritage for many years. What will happen next with popular music, in which different subgenres constantly vie for market dominance?

Many of the same commentators who predict dramatic shifts in the focus of cinema foresee the end of teen pop and the emergence of a nearly exclusive demand for sentimental music. But others disagree with both their method and their message. "It's the wrong time to be predictive. The very wrong time to be predictive," states Joe Levy, BK '86, music editor of Rolling Stone. "The people who predicted that this is the end of teen pop are doing so short-sightedly and without enough historical perspective. People who predict that entertainment—pop music, movies, television—is going to shift drastically are not looking at the big picture as to how the country has reacted during times of trouble." He contends that the future of pop music will be governed, as it has been in the past, by a complex interaction of public tastes and commercial interests. Teen pop music may be on its way out, but only because it has been on the wane for a while now, since the kids who initially flocked to record stores to buy the latest from Justin, Lance, Christina, and Britney have now outgrown their pubescent idols. "That's why Britney keeps talking so goddamn much about growing up," Levy said. "Because if she doesn't, she's going to get left behind." With the other music on the market, much of which is "hard-nosed, emotionally substantial, thoughtful, and free," consumers have been turning away from the saccharine sound of teen pop. "Somebody has been buying all those Jay-Z and Staind records, that's all I'm saying," Levy said.

One constant during the weeks following the tragedy has been the need for sentimental, uplifting music. Even if this proves only temporary, in the immediate future, many people will likely look to music to provide needed comfort. But nearly the only artist whose record sales increased in the week after the attack was Enya, though retailers expect to sell massive quantities of sentimental music, Christmas music in particular, over the weeks to come. "People want musical comfort food, and I think that's going to continue," Levy said. "It may not be teen pop, but it's going to be something else. Sweet and sentimental isn't going to go away."

Unpredictable is the word of the moment, in art as in life. In this time of uncertainty, attendance at Yale's art museums has jumped, as people seek out art that both reminds them of humankind's potential for beauty and good and responds to catastrophic events. The impulse to reconnect with art may be indicative of a more general tendency toward contemplating life in the aftermath of an event that has forever altered the course of history. "I think an event of this tragic proportion causes people to reexamine their daily lives," Reynolds said. "[They] evaluate how they're living, what their values are, what they want to affirm and hold dear, what they want to defend, and what they want to attack." Regardless of the path that the arts will follow in the months and years to come, the trajectory of American life itself has been forever altered. 

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