RECIPES FOR TERROR?
(written two days after the 9/11 attacks,
this column appeared in newspapers 9/16/01)
Screenings Column © 2001 Gil Mansergh
The pictures of a plane plowing into a skyscraper looked familiar somehow. Where, I wondered, had I seen those images before? The answer, of course, is at the movies. But while trying to entertain us, Hollywood may have unwittingly created a veritable how-to-do-it-kit of techniques for terrorists. Here are a few examples:
• How to Recruit Suicide Bombers—In the Indian movie “The Terrorist”(2000) a girl named Malli (Ayesha Dharkar) is the ideal candidate to coerce into volunteering for a suicide bombing mission. Her brother has died for the cause and she has already killed in its name. She has no doubt at all about the rightness of her decision — she will become the “thinking bomb,” needed to assassinate the country’s leader.
• How to Get Weapons Aboard— Mitch, (John Malkovich) the would-be presidential assassin from “In the Line of Fire”(1993) uses his home workshop to show us, step-by-step, how to make a plastic handgun that won’t show up on metal detectors. Or you can learn how to get the ground crew to hide the pieces of a gun in the washroom by watching “Con Air”(1999) or even how to use the parts of a soap dispenser to kill in “Turbulence” (1997). Another choice is to use the guns taken from the “good guys” as they are in “Executive Decision” (1996).
• How to Get Into the Cockpit—Airline pilots have complained for years that the door into the cockpit isn’t strong enough to keep out hijackers. The door in “Skyjacked” (1972) looks about as flimsy as one on a school locker, and although the one on the 747 shown in “Air Force One” (1997) is sturdier, its lock is no match for plastique explosives. The other technique to use is to have a flight attendant get the crew to open the door like Jimmy Stewart did in “No Highway In the Sky” (1951) or to threaten to kill a stewardess to get the pilot to come to her rescue as happened in “Turbulence” (1997).
• How to Fly the Plane—Having untrained personnel take over the controls has been a movie cliche since at least 1936 when the movie “Flying Hostess” had the stewardess take over the pilot’s chair. This plot device was repeated in “Airport 1975” when Karen Black takes the controls and then again in “Turbulence” (1997) when flight attendant Lauren Holly must follow flying directions from the ground. Those same directions could also allow a determined hijacker to keep a jetliner aloft long enough to plow into a building.
• How to Avoid Suspicion on the Ground—The procedures followed by air traffic controllers are outlined quite clearly in “Pushing Tin” (1999) and the method for bypassing all the communications to inbound aircraft at Dulles International is shown in “Die Hard 2: Die Harder” (1990).
• How to Crash a Plane Into a Building—Although I don’t recall seeing this TV movie, the poster for “SST: Death Flight” (1977) depicts a Concorde-style plane crashing into a skyscraper. In “Con Air” (1997) the disabled transport plane slices its way through building after building on the Las Vegas strip.
• How to Remain Calm In the Face of Imminent Death—In “Fearless” (1993), Jeff Bridges plays the heroic survivor of an air crash. He is a man who believes his life is coming to an end but is so comfortable with that eventuality that he can reach out to offer support to others.
Hollywood is not unaware of the impact of their films. Two movies which were due for release have been put on hold because they include plot lines involving terrorism. Disney’s megastar Tim Allen joins up with Rene Russo in a film called “Big Trouble.” The plot revolves around people trying to find a suitcase with a nuclear bomb inside and the suitcase eventually ends up on an airplane. In Warner Brother’s “Collateral Damage,” Arnold Schwarzenegger watches his family die when a terrorist bomb blows up a downtown skyscraper. Both studios have issued statements of concern and indicated they are making an “immediate and complete effort” to retrieve all advertising and promotions and the website for these films.
• A Movie for Americans to Watch and Think About—In “The Siege” (1998) New York City buses, theaters and the FBI headquarters are bombed. When a bus driver reports that he thinks the terrorists are speaking Arabic the entire city turns into hysterical racists. Martial law is declared, the Army moves in and Arabs are detained and jailed without due process. The filmmakers have gone out of their way to balance out the villains and show good Arab-Americans as well as Arab terrorists. But as Roger Ebert wrote when “The Siege” was released: “Most people will be comfortable with...the Arab villains because that’s what they have been taught on the news. True, at the present moment most of America’s enemies in the world are Arab. But at one time or another, this country has been at war with the home nations of most of the major ethnic groups in America. And it was ‘we’ who went to war—all of us. Japanese-Americans who fought in U.S. uniform in World War II (or were in internment camps) will not have to have the buried message of ‘The Siege’ explained to them.”
