Just got back from seeing "United 93"

[pegkerr]

I expect I will have trouble sleeping tonight. The reviews are right. It is gripping and absolutely excruciating. I think it was absolutely respectful, and it did not strike me as exploitive. In fact, it was all the more powerful because it wasn't exploitive but, on the contrary, underplayed, which made the events depicted carry an even greater wallop. But that is my deeply personal reaction.

I cannot tell you whether or not to see it. I think that everyone must decide that for themselves. I believe that there are those who will never be able to see this movie.

I can only tell you that for myself, as painful as it is to sit through, especially the furious and desperate final twenty minutes, I am very very glad that I did.

Edited to add: here is my response to a comment made below by minnehaha B, who asked me, extremely reasonably, why on earth I would want to take my knowledge and memories of the event and replace them with a fictional dramatization designed to push all my buttons? I replied:

Another specific reason that I went to see the film is that I just finished reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. The book included a discussion of a study of some children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California "playing the Purdy game." This was a case where a perpetrator named Patrick Purdy stood at a playground's edge and sprayed hundreds of bullets at the children playing there. Five died and twenty-nine were wounded.

In the ensuing months, the "Purdy game" appeared spontaneously in the play of boys and girls at the school, where the children reenacted the tragedy. Sometimes they played it so that the children killed Purdy.

The psychologists figured out that story is part of the way that children heal from PTSD, by emotional re-learning:

One way this emotional healing seems to occur spontaneously--at least in children--is through games such as Purdy. These games, played over and over again, let children relive a trauma safely, as play. This allows two avenues for healing: on the one hand, a memory repeats in a context of low anxiety, desensitizing it and allowing a nontraumatized set of responses to become associated with it. Another route to healing is that, in their minds, children can magically give the tragedy another, better outcome: sometimes in playing Purdy, the children kill him, boosting their sense of mastery over that traumatic moment of helplessness."

You can argue that I am not a child, and that I didn't actually 'live' through the events of United 93 personally. Very true. But this rang really true to me, and reading this chapter was part of the reason that I went to see the movie. I have always had enormous respect for the healing effects of story and have personally used it for emotional purposes previously myself--witness how I continually return to the same books when I am distressed about something.

I think this movie is partly our nation "playing Purdy" from the trauma of 9/11.

Anyway, the chapter is titled "Trauma and Emotional Relearning," if you'd like to look at it.

Understand: processing by re-telling (and even re-shaping) story is a way I process things. For me, seeing it was the right decision. But I also understand and freely accept that Your Mileage May Vary.

Edited to add again: And do me the courtesy of at least believing that I understand that the movie includes fiction mixed with fact, dammit.

Edited to add again: All right, people. No more comments on this post, if you please. Because, you know, I've just about had enough. Yes, I am being dictatorial, but hey, it's my journal and I get to do that. The ushers are sweeping up the popcorn and the projectionist has left the building. If you would like to discuss this further, please take it to your own journals. Thank you.
Sincerely,
The Management

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

a memory repeats in a context of low anxiety, desensitizing it and allowing a nontraumatized set of responses to beome associated with it.

For some people, perhaps, and for situations the people were actually part of (as in the Purdy case). Not for me. If I wasn't involved in the situation, a movie like this causes me more anxiety, fear, horror, whatever, than just hearing about it or reading about it ever does. If I was involved in the situation, even peripherally, repeating the memory, no matter what the context, never takes away its power. Nor do I necessarily want it to.

Another route to healing is that, in their minds, children can magically give the tragedy another, better outcome:

Except that in a movie based on real events, either it has the same outcome or it's a lie. No healing there.

If it works for you, great. But for me, seeing on the screen things that it gives me pain just to think about is in no way helpful.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Understood, and that's just fine. [I was going to say that you shouldn't let anyone talk you into going then, but then I realized saying this is unnecessary. I can't imagine anyone talking you into doing something that you don't want to do.]

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think anyone could "talk me into" doing something that I still, at the time of the doing, didn't want to do. But people have on occasion given me reasons to decide that I wanted to do (for some values of "want") things that I initially thought I didn't want to do. I'm always open to hearing the reasons.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Yes, to your first paragraph. That's why I chose to stop watching tv coverage of the original event, and why I won't see this.

I do, however, respect Peg's desire to work through it in the ways that evidence shows work for her.

Putting on my 'student of PTSD' hat, modifying the outcome, for kids, is a way of working through the tragedy emotionally. It's not a lie, because they also, at the same time, know the actual facts surrounding their reality, but this is a way to move through the grief and to process it enough not to be overwhelmed by it.