In the course of the imagistic orgies that flared up after Sept. 11, a brand new American symbol was invented: the towers themselves. Poets and commentators anthropomorphized the skyscrapers as, on the one hand, "pillars of strength," which, like Atlas, seemed to support the weight of the entire United States; and, on the other, as wavering ghosts, which, like Hamlet's murdered father, seemed to call out for revenge, especially when they were superimposed on top of sympathy card images of disconsolate angels. The buildings quickly lost their material reality as architecture and became living beings, "two brothers" endowed with the capacity to move, to "reach," "stretch," and "stand tall." We even cast this prime piece of Manhattan real estate as Christ in a resurrection scene: No sooner do the buildings collapse than, like phoenixes, they rise again from their ashes, often in the form of the American eagle, soaring skyward out of the smoking rubble: "As the Eagle lay on the ground In awe I witnessed a miracle, a rebirth! The eagle rose triumphant."

The transformation of the Word Trade Center from a physical location into a turn of phrase, a "vibrant symbol of the bounty and pride of democracy," gave both terrorism and dissent a new dimension, that of heresy, of the desecration of holy idols, of buildings that quickly acquired the mystique of temples and, in many images, of New Age crystals, which, like gigantic prisms, emanated a throbbing aura of iridescent energy. As a result, those who advocated restraint became more than just opposing voices but iconoclasts and flag-burners, blasphemers who inflicted physical harm on objects that our high-flown rhetoric treated as sacred relics. We left the realm of reason, of bricks and mortar, and entered the realm of faith, of sacraments and graven images, of flags that have "magical powers to keep away fear." We scoff at the extremism of terrorists who are willing to die in the name of Allah, but we ignore the religious dimension of our own behavior which we justify not by carefully reasoned defenses but by animistic symbols as hallowed as the Koran or the Kaaba. Both the Islamic fundamentalist and the American patriot may share more than they care to admit.

Economic as well as political factors contributed to the proliferation of kitsch after Sept. 11. Kitsch is frequently associated with fundraising, especially fundraising for diseases that afflict children, whether it be the doe-eyed poster children of the first muscular dystrophy campaign, or Ryan White, the heroic young AIDS victim who, after being railroaded out of his bigoted hometown, was canonized as the patron saint of AIDS charities, largely by means of the attention lavished on him by People magazine. And yet, appearances notwithstanding, AIDS affects far fewer children than it does adults. Similarly, on Sept. 11, only three victims were below the age of 13 (all passengers on the hijacked planes). That's a surprising statistic, given the disproportionate number of relief agencies that, after the attacks, were launched specifically to help children, the cash cows of the tragedy's nonprofits, which have primed the pumps of American generosity with ad campaigns featuring images of bereft toddlers superimposed on apocalyptic photographs of the ruins. Even during an event in which children are only indirect casualties, they are the ones brought in to shake the tin cans. They, and not adults, are easiest on the eyes, the most photogenic of panhandlers, issuing importunate entreaties with a mere kiss on the cheek or squeeze of the hand. Children are the unpaid workmen of kitsch, its drudges and slave laborers. Many did, of course, lose a parent, but many parents lost something equally important: their lives. Once again, the primary victims of the tragedy were shuffled off to the sidelines to make room for a cast of more narratively appealing objects of compassion, much as the rescue workers were elevated into the starring roles of this "Towering Inferno," since their deaths were more dramatic than the banal denouements of file clerks collapsing at the water cooler and stock brokers suffocating in bathroom stalls.

Recent Stories