I rarely watch Russian news, but I’m home today and did just that:
The September 11th coverage is spare, but great. They had a montage with some of the most famous pictures from that day, accompanied by “Lux Aeterna,” and it had me frozen to the spot. There’s something very simple and even predictable about a combination like that, yet once it is being executed, you see that it works, on many levels. Sometimes, all you can do is watch. And, as Toni Morrison wrote, embrace the dead.
In the days immediately following the tragedy, a lot of people in my school were objecting to the use of these images by the commercial media, but honestly, I think it depends on who’s watching. Some of us have the most dumbass reactions to the most human, most terrible, most important events. But why should the dumbasses set the standard?
Natalia A. 