Is this the AYBABTU of WTC?

September 15, 2001 3:04 PM

Is this the AYBABTU of WTC? I think it strikes the right measure. What do you think?
posted by Real9 (41 comments total)

really, could it be more offensive?
posted by rebeccablood at 3:30 PM on September 15, 2001

Really, I was waiting for someone to do the ultimate tasteless flash animation to the effect of "all your world trade tower are belong to us."
posted by ilsa at 3:40 PM on September 15, 2001

Wow, that is lame.
posted by Big Fat Tycoon at 3:41 PM on September 15, 2001

Making the music more somber would help. Well, that, and not doing it in the first place.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:43 PM on September 15, 2001

And yet, strangely it stirs the already swirling pot of emotions.

Cheesy? Yes. Powerful? Yes. Right? Probably not.
posted by fooljay at 3:43 PM on September 15, 2001

The first civil liberty that should be taken away is the right of people to compose those "stirring," "dramatic" music scores like the one used in this animation and filed away by all the news networks for times like this. Find those CDs and destroy them. The world will be a better place.
posted by aaron at 3:47 PM on September 15, 2001

Propaganda? Yes.
posted by crunchland at 3:50 PM on September 15, 2001

oh, and the music wasn't very effective.
posted by crunchland at 3:50 PM on September 15, 2001

i don't have my speakers plugged in...w/out sound, it was rather moving...right up to the "you will pay" bit...bleh.
posted by epersonae at 3:54 PM on September 15, 2001

Speaking of pro-war propaganda, how tasteless is it that CNN and other networks are now using "America At War" or "America's New War" as their coverage slogans? Bang the war drums a little louder, please, I can't hear them over the false piety roaring from the cable news stations.
posted by hincandenza at 3:56 PM on September 15, 2001

It's glib. It's repellent. It's not particularly well done.
posted by donkeyschlong at 3:57 PM on September 15, 2001

If I was supreme overlord of the Internet, I'd get rid of the Flash tributes, the maudlin US-flag-backgrounded pages with MIDI music and tenth-rate poetry... I wish we could grieve in this country without turning things into a Hallmark card.
posted by darukaru at 4:18 PM on September 15, 2001

How long will it be before a TM* supporter puts up a pro WTC tragedy page.

*You know who that is right?
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 4:34 PM on September 15, 2001

Speaking of pro-war propaganda, how tasteless is it that CNN and other networks are now using "America At War" or "America's New War" as their coverage slogans?

thanks you. that's been bugging me for days. way to escalate a dangerous situation and pander to the most extreme emotions of the moment, guys!
posted by rebeccablood at 4:41 PM on September 15, 2001

"*You know who that is right?"

That'd be TmV, wouldn't it?
posted by mitchel at 4:44 PM on September 15, 2001

Are we all seeing the same animation? I'm confused.

I found it effective, compelling, and appropriate. It encapsulates in a few seconds what a lot of people have seen, felt, and thought for the last four days.

The images were well chosen and focused on human suffering in lieu of the pyrotechnic spectacle of jumbo jet meeting skyscraper.

The music was apt: a combination of old a new reflecting the diversity of our people. It featured a somber tone with an underlying grim determination. I'd be hard pressed to pick a better score.

I'm not ashamed to say that I want the cowards who did this found and exterminated. And when that's done, we should continuously hunt and destroy all terrorists wherever we find them.

You've said it's bad. I ask: what precisely is bad about it?
posted by Godling at 4:52 PM on September 15, 2001

One man's patriotism is another man's jingoism...

Both words, by the way which have been used far too often for my liking lately...
posted by fooljay at 5:05 PM on September 15, 2001

Revenge never solved anything.
posted by Hackworth at 5:06 PM on September 15, 2001

Fucking tasteless. Crass. Nasty. Especially the music and the text.

How exactly might they suggest these un-named evil people, whoever and wherever they might be, "pay" for the terrorist atrocity?
posted by skylar at 5:31 PM on September 15, 2001

Uh...the music was lifted -- it's the opening theme music to _Angel_, still on the WB. I thought it was the only redeeming feature of the animation, and felt bad that it was linked to the ridiculous visuals.
posted by jburka at 5:50 PM on September 15, 2001

I have it on good authority that it is the Angel themesong. Perhaps vampires were involved?
posted by Marquis at 5:51 PM on September 15, 2001

jpegs and flash rarely go well together...
posted by lotsofno at 5:53 PM on September 15, 2001

thanks you. that [CNN using "America's New War" graphics]'s been bugging me for days. way to escalate a dangerous situation and pander to the most extreme emotions of the moment, guys!

Come on...that's hardly pandering. CNN's job is to report the news. When you've got every last senator calling Tuesday "an act of war," when you have Bush saying we had begun "the first war of the 21st century," when you have Colin Powell saying the terrorists have declared war on civilization and civilization must respond, it's not crazy to call it war.

Perhaps you can argue with the wisdom of that sort of political response, but you can't blame CNN and others for reporting it.
posted by crabwalk at 6:10 PM on September 15, 2001

A ditto on hincandenza's post: "America's New War" is particularly despairing to me -- all it lacks is a an exclamation point at the end.

"Bored with post-millennial ennui? Tired of the same old tactical strikes? Tune in to CNN tonight for America's NEW War! News for the edge of your seat!"

(That said, I have been pleased with the general restraint and atypical lack of artiface all the televised media showed during the first couple of days of coverage (Fox News being an exception, but I never expect much from them.)

As for the Flash presentation: I have both feet in the camp that finds it tacky in concept and offensive in execution.

(OT RE: Music in said piece...every time I hear that theme begin -- and yes, I do watch "Angel" from time-to-time -- I immediately think wistfully of the theme to Fox's "Millennium"...man, did I like that show...well, not so much season three...anyway, anybody else think that Darling Violetta may have taken a page from M. Snow on that one?)
posted by gee at 6:18 PM on September 15, 2001

I should clarify: When I say that I find the piece "tacky in concept," I mean that I find the idea of pouring a melodramatic varnish upon a tragedy that is stunning enough in it's own right, for the express purpose of stirring feelings of knee-jerk retribution, tacky.
posted by gee at 6:26 PM on September 15, 2001

Crabwalk sez: Come on...that's hardly pandering. CNN's job is to report the news.

Or, perhaps more accurately, the product/service CNN sells is news. And I'm nitpicking out of cynicsim, just acknowledging the nature of the commercial media.

Perhaps you can argue with the wisdom of that sort of political response, but you can't blame CNN and others for reporting it.

I celebrate CNN for reporting it. And, outside of personal reservations toward pre-mature saber-rattling (deliberate emphasis on both hyphenates), it's not the word "War" I take issue with. As mentioned above, it's the specific choice of packaging it with the word "New". Especially when held against CNN's comparatively even-handed reporting, it just smacks of newsatainment too much for this consumer.
posted by gee at 6:50 PM on September 15, 2001

I don't have a problem with "new" -- after all, how ever this turns out, it will be a very new sort of war we'll be fighting, under very new ground rules. And personally, I find the use of the term "war" almost (dare I say it?) refreshing. For linguistic, not policy, reasons: we've had so many years of "police actions" and "limited conflicts" and "military responses" that it's good to hear people being honest about what's going down.

(Speaking of the commercial media: it might also be worth noting the four major networks lost an estimated $100 million a day Tuesday and Wednesday by going mostly commercial-free. That doesn't even begin to count the cable news stations and the other cable stations that gave up their feeds, much less the cost of massive coverage like this. Of course, they'll make much of that back when the war starts up and they see ratings spike.)
posted by crabwalk at 7:30 PM on September 15, 2001

What was the old war? America's Old War covered today, with up close and personal looks at Grant and Lee?
posted by raysmj at 7:32 PM on September 15, 2001

No, this is the 'All Your Base' for this week's incidents.
posted by SenshiNeko at 8:00 PM on September 15, 2001

I neglected to include the marked footnote:
*I will be chagrined if I incorrectly recall my junior-high civics lesson. In the interest of fair play, I am not going to research before posting this entry, so that, should I be wrong, I may receive a proper dressing down in public.
posted by gee at 9:34 PM on September 15, 2001

The "war" bullshit has pissed me off from the first hour. Politicians trying to convince the public they have big balls, nothing more. Maybe it was a move by the insurance companies to get out of paying ("acts of war" are usually excluded) OK, I'm not THAT cynical, but I have a background in international law and diplomacy - "war" is a very specific term not applicable here.
posted by sixdifferentways at 10:00 PM on September 15, 2001

But if I am going to pay that much attention to semantic accuracy (and I am directing this at myself), I can't get around the fact that in the U.S. war is declared by Congress*, and at the time of the debut of these sundry
[blank] War brand Special Reports (should I include a trademark symbol?), Congress has not yet even voted on an declaration. Still haven't for that matter.

True enough, but I suppose it comes down to whether we want to follow the legal definition of war or one based on common sense. Remember, under the Congress definition, there was no Vietnam War, no Korean War, no Gulf War -- no war at all, in fact, since 1945.

Were I in charge of CNN, I'd probably use a tag like "Preparing for War" -- even though I'd be shocked if Congress ever actually formally declared war. (I'd make that change immediately after my first order of business, which would be to fire Bobbi Batista.)
posted by crabwalk at 10:27 PM on September 15, 2001

Actually the definition and procedure was changed after Vietnam. Congress has to vote for war, but can also delegate limited power to the President for short military actions.
posted by sixdifferentways at 10:59 PM on September 15, 2001

Closing font tag

Should be closed now...
posted by fooljay at 4:01 AM on September 16, 2001

Wow. That music has gotta go.

That aside, I'm with Godling. I watched it the first time through with my speakers off (I usually leave them off, I have a totally absurd startle reflex) and found it compelling. And yes, most of the tributes have left me nauseated. I don't know why I found this one so powerful.
posted by swerve at 4:08 AM on September 16, 2001

Actually the definition and procedure was changed after Vietnam. Congress has to vote for war, but can also delegate limited power to the President for short military actions.

It's debatable whether the War Powers Act actually changed the definition -- since (a) Congress had to vote for war before and (b) Congress could okay short military actions without declaring war before.

The idea of the WPA was to *require* the president to seek Congressional approval before launching a mini-war. So far, presidents have gotten away with ignoring that clause, both because they can argue they are the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces and because, due to its structure, the WPA will never be brought before the court system to argue its constitutionality.

The result is that, while Bush pere got approval for the Gulf War and Bush fils has gotten approval for some sort of response, it was strictly optional. (See: Grenada, Beirut, Sudanese pharmaceutical factories, etc.)
posted by crabwalk at 8:42 AM on September 16, 2001

Good god

what crap.
posted by delmoi at 9:11 PM on September 16, 2001