I’m sure today’s comic won’t have you rolling in the aisles. But sometimes a thought floats into your head and starts gnawing away at you until you have to address it in some form or another.
Should Nicholas Cage reconcile the difference between his participation in a movie that features a plane crash in it’s finale with his participation in a movie that recreates a real-life terrorist attack that also involved planes? Probably not. I mean, he’s an actor. When you boil it down to its essence, it’s his job to show up and become the conduit through which you can emotionally connect with the story. The politics surrounding it are incidental.
But still, as I drove around this weekend and thought about it, I couldn’t absolve his decision completely. I mean, when you look at both movies on his resume, it just looks insensitive.
Perhaps I’m making too big a deal out of it. In my circle of friends, Con Air is universally reviled. Even among the Michael Bay apologists.
I recieved some interesting e-mail over the weekend regarding Friday’s comic. Some people told me to get over it. To move on. To see the movies – they’re both really well done! Appreciate them for what they are. Use them to help things heal. It was good advice even if I didn’t take it.
I also recieved e-mail from people who lived that horror five years ago. People from New York City who told me things I couldn’t imagine. Being from Iowa, I was so far removed from the tragedy, yet took things very personally and many of these people felt the same way. "If you were here when it happened, you wouldn’t want to see these movies, either," they told me.
I don’t know who’s right. People mourn in different ways. And as much as it kills me to close myself off to art – to live in fear of those emotions (re: "letting the terrorists win") I’m somewhat ashamed of myself.
But at the same time, I hold a greater reverence for respect due to the dead than I do for art and I make sure to keep my priorities in order.
It was a rainy day in Iowa all day Sunday. This was the comic that sprung from that frame of reference.
Just for a little background color.
