On an autumnal Saturday, September 29, 2001, a group of comedians and celebrities met at the New York Friars Club, for a special television shoot of the program "Rust".
On the grill, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was roasted, crucified and ridiculed this time, and among those present at the venue were names like Drew Carrie, rapper Ace T and MTV presenter Carson Daley.
The evening was moderated by Jimmy Kimmel, and one of his participants was Gilbert Gottfried, not too popular a comedian outside the US (and even there, to be honest, he is sometimes considered a hard-to-digest character).
Not long into his stand-up, Gottfried told the audience he could not get a direct flight to the city because he said "they had to make a stop at the Empire State Building." The days are post-terrorist attacks on twins, and Gottfried will find in those moments the hard way that the comedy's shock range has been drastically reduced in the three weeks since the disaster. The joke was met with contempt and curses, and Gottfried quickly turned to a comedic classic - the infamous aristocrat joke, in order to save his part in the evening.
"I do not think anyone has lost an audience more radically than I did at that point," the stand-up comedian wrote years later to Vulture magazine as part of a project called "The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy."
"Someone in the audience shouted 'too early,' and I've never heard that before.
" I knew there were times when people waited a bit to tell jokes about something, but I always thought that concept was ridiculous.
Is there an office somewhere with a clerk behind a desk, who decides when it's not too early? "
The order of the hour was the admiration of clichéd justice fighters against terrorism.
"24",
Schwarzenegger Syndrome
But with the bloody, post-traumatic America of the greatest terrorist event in its history, it was difficult to speak logically.
Large entities and corporations felt they had too much to lose, and in an act of utter panic began to change, postpone or cancel large projects that were on target - for reasons of sensitivity.
And some would argue - hypersensitivity.
The amount of examples is almost inconceivable: an episode of "Friends" from its eighth season was rewritten and re-filmed, after Chandler's character threw him a joke about an airport bomb. The pair of twin towers that were clearly visible in Tony's rearview mirror in the iconic opening of "The Sopranos" have been transformed into a generic urban landscape. In an episode of Sesame Street, the Elmo doll gets caught in a fire, catches trauma and relaxes as she talks to some firefighters. Sabotage scenes from action movies like "Peak Hour 2" have been cut, the cinematic distribution of high-explosive movies like "Peripheral Injury" with Arnold Schwarzenegger has been postponed for months. And if all that was not enough, even a scene from the children's cartoon "Lilo and Stitch" was changed, because its protagonists hijack a Boeing 747.
And yet, as extensive parts of a 2002 film like "Double Identity" are rewritten and reproduced for fear of portraying CIA agents as villains as "anti-American," a picture emerges here of a hysterical nation, not of a nation at the height of a mental arithmetic process. Extremely deep.
In the first months and even in the first years after the disaster, the levels of absurdity only intensified: episodes of "The Simpsons" and "Family Man" were shelved, a sequel to the cinematic hit "Forest Gump" was completely shelved due to "irrelevance", and box office failures Later, like "Donny Darko" which came out about a month after the attack, the dark character will be charged.
Even the comedian George Carlin, a clear symbol of political irregularity, decided to put to sleep for a few good years his then-new show, which was recorded during two consecutive evenings in Las Vegas on September 9 and 10, 2001. And also to change its original name , Which was "I kind of like it when a lot of people die" to "Complaints and Comments".
The order of the hour was the admiration of clichéd justice fighters against terrorism.
"Dual Identity",
Three years later Carlin thought of using the name again, but was forced to shelve it again - this time due to Hurricane Katrina.
Apparently there are things that just weren’t meant to happen.
Clichés of justice
The new conditions apply to any popular form of entertainment.
Some would associate them with the beginning of the anti-hero era, in which the main characters are judged less harshly than their predecessors.
On November 6, less than two months after the attack on the World Trade Center, the character of Agent Jack Bauer on "24" hit the screen and gained immense popularity, between defusing a bomb and capturing a terrorist.
The order of the hour was the admiration of clichéd justice fighters against terrorism. "Peak Hour 2,"
Only later will series like "The Defender" and "Undercover" also appear, which dared to give a glimpse into the world of American procrastination, sabotage and bureaucracy, and expressed internal criticism. But for American film and television buffs, the order of the day until then has been the admiration of justice fighters against Bauer-type clichés, who do everything they can to protect the nation from its enemies - and, on the other hand, completely escapist figures like Captain Jack Sparrow of "Pirates of the Caribbean."
The change, needless to say, did not last long. Within a few years the cinema returned to excellent but violent films in a way that would not have been accepted in late 2001, like "Kill Bill". In time, America reopened to World War II-style disaster-disaster films (which contain visual symbolism that more than hinted at Ground Zero events). Even "The Dark Knight," Christopher Nolan's rough Batman film of 2008, is considered more realistic than any Comics and superheroes produced in the years before it. The immediate response to the disaster, then, turned out to be nothing more than a temporary phase. An almost uncontrollable instinctive action for a blow or pain.
There is also a positive side to it, And maybe more than ever.
Even the contents of the 20th anniversary of that day, which recently surfaced on various platforms marking two decades of one of the most scathing and formative events in U.S. history, allow themselves to take less of the theme "Where were you when the world stood still" in favor of taking a critical stance. Speed is also forgotten.
