After Tragedy

CULTURAL impact, as much as political consequence, distinguishes a once-in-a-generation event from a mere disaster. The Bastille’s storming sparked a century of Romanticism; the death of Franz Ferdinand birthed the Lost Generation; My Lai and Tet shaped a quarter-century of American film. Whereas no comparable cultural ripples spread from the Hindenburg or the Johnstown Flood, the Titanic’s sinking or Chicago’s Great Fire.

So how we remember September 11an act of war in the form of a Hindenburg-style calamity—will be defined in no small part by how the culture reckons with the day, and with its fraught and frightened aftermath. And while it’s early yet, the reckoning thus far has been defined largely by dogs that haven’t barked, and expectations proven premature-facile predictions of the “end of irony,” for instance, or vain hopes for the demise of reality TV. With the exception of Spike Lee’s film 25th Hour (2002), an underrated ode to a wounded Manhattan, the artistic response to 9/11 has been flat and disappointing, as if the weight of wall-to-wall media coverage left little space for fictional interpretation.

About the Author

Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat is a former National Review contributing editor.

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CULTURAL impact, as much as political consequence, distinguishes a once-in-a-generation event from a mere disaster. The Bastille’s storming sparked a century of Romanticism; the death of Franz Ferdinand birthed the Lost Generation; My Lai and Tet shaped a quarter-century of American film. Whereas no comparable cultural ripples spread from the Hindenburg or the Johnstown Flood, the Titanic’s sinking or Chicago’s Great Fire.

So how we remember September 11an act of war in the form of a Hindenburg-style calamity—will be defined in no small part by how the culture reckons with the day, and with its fraught and frightened aftermath. And while it’s early yet, the reckoning thus far has been defined largely by dogs that haven’t barked, and expectations proven premature-facile predictions of the “end of irony,” for instance, or vain hopes for the demise of reality TV. With the exception of Spike Lee’s film 25th Hour (2002), an underrated ode to a wounded Manhattan, the artistic response to 9/11 has been flat and disappointing, as if the weight of wall-to-wall media coverage left little space for fictional interpretation.