9/11 references in popular culture?

Cafe Society
21

The entire 2001-2002 season of Third Watch was affected and re-directed after 9/11. The season started with a special episode with real emergency personnel talking specifically about the human loss within the “brotherhood” on that day.

After that, there were references to characters working “at the pile” which is what the excavation site came to be known, and scenes of the personnel loading on to city busses after their regular work shifts to go down to work.

There were also characters exhibiting many of the physical symptoms which plagued those who worked at Ground Zero; eye infections, upper respiratory infections, a plaguing, hacking cough, and a political dig at the Guiliani and Bloomberg administrations for failing to disclose exactly what the GZ personnel had been inhaling since the EPA did studies and knew.

There were several (previously unseen) characters who were said to have lost their lives, and they showed a dramatization of what happened in the firehouses around the city when one of theirs was found – how everyone was called and everyone from the house went down to carry out the body.

And, most poignantly, in an extended storyline which stretched several episodes, a main character’s father, an FDNY chief, was found when the command post of the tower one lobby was finally reached in the excavation, and the entire episode was built around the funeral and an extended eulogy to all the fallen and the city as it was up until that morning.

Law & Order had an episode in this past season in which a woman who worked at the WTC was murdered late on the night of 9/10 and her body was taken and dumped at Ground Zero in all of the confusion immediately after the buildings collapsed. (The killer just happened to get “lucky” to have such a perfect way to hide his crime.) There was an extended plot there with regard to the financial settlements which have been extended to families of 9/11 victims.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent has made several references to the day, about people moving businesses out to Queens because it “seemed safer” and numerous allusions in an episode about Islamofascist terrorists intending to act as suicide bombers at a Veteran’s Day parade.

Not surprisingly, none of the comedies which are set in that bizarre, parallel universe NYC have made even a passing reference.

22

Farscape had a reference in the episode Terra Firma. John Crichton had just come back to earth, and is talking to his dad Jack. Crichton says something about how the technology he now has must be used for the benefit of all mankind

Jack: “I don’t see why. Why should we give them access to technology they can use against us?”
John: “Cause it’s the right thing to do. Wouldn’t worry about it, Dad. Subcommittee’ll tie it up for years and load it down with a ton of guidelines.”
Jack: “Now you’re being naive, Son. The best and safest thing to do is keep it to ourselves.”
John: “Space travel was your dream to unite mankind. When did that change?”
Jack: “September the eleventh. This isn’t the same world you left four years ago son. People don’t dream like they used to. It’s about survival now.”

23

From a Buick 8* by Stephen King has a passing reference.

He’s talking about the passage of time, and says, “The stock market went up, and two buildings came down.”

24

How has nobody mentioned 25th Hour, which (imho brilliantly) uses ground zero as a backdrop for the action all along, including long shots of machines moving the wreckage around, as a symbol for the loss and turmoil in the lives of the characters, and also just so that we all know that the action takes place in a very particular and special setting - New York City, still reeling from the loss of the World Trade Center and the people inside.

LC

25

Lucki Chaarms, it was mentioned in the OP.

I just finished Tom Robbins’ Villa Incognito, which uses 9/11 as a plot device. It made it the most timely of his books, I thought.

26

From Eminem’s “I Think My Dad’s Gone Crazy”:

27

Were they in the actual film? It’s been awhile so I don’t remember. The promo to which you refer had Spider-Man making a web between the towers to catch bad guys. It was pulled.

The shot at the very end with the American flag was added after 9/11. Also, scenes of New Yorkers cheering on Spider-Man were added to one of the battles with the Green Goblin.

And in Gangs of New York there is a time-lapse shot of the skyline which ends with the Twin Towers. I was waiting to groan when they would then fade out as did the other shots, but thankfully Scorsese avoided what would have been trite and cliched.

28

Apparently, the WTC did appear in the background of some scenes. I personally did not see it, but I did see the Center reflected in Spidey’s eye in a pan-out, I believe after the sequence with New Yorkers talking about Spider-Man.

29

Useless Trivia Time! The only Third Watch lead actor that didn’t introduce a segment on the “In their own words” show was Molly Price (Officer Yokas) — she was one of the interviewees, as she was engaged to an FDNY firefighter at the time (he escaped unhurt, and they were married a month later).

30

I read an interview with Spike Lee in USA TODAY when 25th Hour was released, and Lee’s positively incensed (Yeah, I know, when isn’t he?) that there haven’t been many references to 9/11 in the media, which is one of the reasons he featured it in 25th Hour, even placing one of the character’s apartment so that it overlooked Ground Zero.

31

The towers are visible at the end of Vanilla Sky in a scene where Tom Cruise’s character is on the roof of a very tall building. The movie was released in December 2001.