This is my first post.
I’m writing this one day before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack. Unforgettable, horrific images resurfaced in the media these past few weeks. Images of anguish, destruction, mayhem. Documentaries flooded the networks, full of humane tales, or conspiracy tales, or nightmarish film-montages of that day, to commemorate that almost surrealistic event in New York City ten years ago.
And then, I stumbled across a video of cartoonist Dan Meth. A montage of Twin Tower movie cameos featuring over 75 clips, from 1969 to 2001. Even though it dedicated only a nanosnippet to the extraordinary documentary Man on Wire, it left me mesmerized, stunned and sad. It brought back 9/11 in full force, despite its Hollywood glow.
As a cognitive psychologist, this made me wonder about the nature of emotions, and about the power of positive versus negative images. Do the horror-images of burning and falling buildings and bodies commemorate 9/11 in a stronger way than Dan Meth’s poetic tribute to the Twin Towers?
See Dan’s film and judge for yourself.