4 - 10 October 2001
Issue No.554
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 - 10 October 2001 Issue No.554 |
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Plain Talk
How does an entertainment industry react to tragedy? This question crossed my mind again after the tragic events of 11 September. What can the entertainment programmers offer to a nation in mourning?
Here in Egypt we've had times of mourning, though thankfully of a different kind. When President Gamal Abdel-Nasser died the whole nation went into mourning. Radio and television played no music, there was no room for dancing or laughter. For days all that was broadcast were Qur'an recitations and some historical/religious serials. Even theatres closed down.
On the other side of the coin the entertainment industry has also responded to more joyous events, which tend to be occasions for song and dance, and for musicals, performed on stage or else relayed to the people by radio or television.
Thousands of miles to the West we wonder what are American film companies and television channels offering to a people in mourning? While nurturing these thoughts, evoked by the terrorist attacks, I came across an article by John Leland and Peter Marks in the Herald Tribune with the intriguing title "Entertaining a Nation in Mourning: An Industry Rethinks its Lines." Already, they write, the film Gangster, laden with suspense, mobsters and international terrorism and ready for release, is causing problems for its producers.
Once, not so long ago, this was the stuff of box office dreams, say the writers, "but the tragedy of September 11th changed all that. Now the makers of Gangster and dozens of other films, television shows, plays, books, musical recordings and video games are trying to find their places in a shifting cultural landscape." Many productions have been stopped, "sweeping aside hundreds of millions of dollars."
According to the article, creators and producers are just beginning to grapple with long term questions of what the public will want once the initial shock wears off.
There is no doubt that with the instant TV relay of the tragedy for days on end, the public has had its share of violence. It has been glutted with images of destruction, and with the heartrending messages sent by many of the passengers in the hijacked planes, who called at the last moment to speak to their loved ones.
What about those lovely American comedy series that were such a staple of programming? In such a climate of mourning and suspense, can audiences accept them? I suppose the entertainment industry is, as yet, too shy to carry out a poll to find out where the boundaries of taste now lie, and where they will lie in, say, a year's time.
There is no doubt that the entertainment industry must be in a dilemma. Numerous films had come out of Hollywood full of mindless carnage, hijacking and terrorist attacks. That scenarios intended to entertain a mass public -- though for the life of me I cannot imagine the entertainment value of watching disasters unfold -- should have become prophetic was never really on the cards.
One response to tragedy is that "businesses are scrambling not to offend." Studios have put off the openings of action films and television series are holding back episodes now considered too close to the realities of recent days.
The Herald Tribune article quotes a number of people working in the entertainment industry. Playwrights and novelists are reassessing their subjects. A publisher and editor-in-chief at Farrar, Straus and Giroux says, referring to fashion shows and industrial designers "This sort of ironic, hip attitude is going to have to undergo revision." A record industry magnate has this to say: "We have good records, but not meaningful records. Maybe the attack will jolt writers to speak to the times we're living in."
But there are some who believe that this "self- policing" threatens to produce a culture of blandness. One theatre director believes "we're going to go right back to Doris Day movies. I can feel it in the bones of the country. It's escapism."
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