Not suitable for children. Or adults.

This film ticks every single box in my list of pet hates.



1. Based on a schmaltzy, manipulative book which easily-impressed people think counts as Literature (see also: The Time Traveler's Wife).
2. Features Tom Hanks.
3. Uses U2's music.
4. Employs the Twin Towers atrocity as a plot device to explore said schmaltzy themes. This is the worst offence of the lot. I genuinely think that Love, Actually was the most degrading, immoral and reprehensible film in the history of cinema because it used footage of 9/11 simply to get people in a sentimental frame of mind for a romantic comedy.

I can't find a useful clip of the actual film, but here's an animation of the whole hateful monologue, which to me is the definition of cynicism.



Those people did not die so that Richard Curtis, Jonathan Foer and Hollywood studios can make money during the half-term. When Karlheinz Stockhausen said this about 9/11:

he was making a profound, challenging, deeply offensive point: one which showed he understood that 9/11 was as much a symbolic event as an actual one. However wrong you think he might be, at least he didn't use the murders of 3000 people to sell a few cinema tickets.

Despicable human being of the day

I'm not sure who Mark Wahlberg is. Is he Marky Mark, or was that someone else? Either way, he's got a mouth on him:

"If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, 'OK, we're going to land somewhere safely, don't worry.' 

Mark Wahlberg on 9/11 flight he was originally scheduled to be aboard

Way to go. Does he really think that there wasn't anybody on that plane capable of bravery? Or that he's exceptional because (now I've looked him up) he has a history of racial violence and could therefore have killed those Saudis? Perhaps his roles in New Kids On The Block and I Heart Huckabees involved some kind of counter-terrorist training? OK, he's waved a toy gun, bulked up his abs and committed some revolting crimes - that doesn't make him any more heroic than those passengers he's implicitly attacking for being too weak or cowardly to take on the terrorists.

I don't normally give space and attention to that parasitical class known as 'celebrities', but this outburst was more than usually repellent. To use the violent deaths of so many people as a means of ego-gratification, self-aggrandisement and self-promotion displays a level of narcissism excessive even by Hollywood standards. It sounds like the kind of moronic rage more often found in Private Eye's 'From the Message Boards' parody ('Anyone comes near my kids I swear ill do time').

Who does Wahlberg think he is? Rudy Giuliani? (Of whom Joe Biden says every sentence consists of 'a noun, a verb and 9/11').

Never forget 9/11

In case you think you might forget, you could buy this tasteful and coherent artwork: only $50

And now for something completely different

After that overview of dissident Republicanism, we're on to Fran on 'Cruel and Unusual: Abjection and Trauma in Taxi to the Dark Side', a documentary about torture in US concentration camps in Baghram, Guantanamo and Iraq.

We're talking about trauma (the compulsion to repeat and narrativize trauma for cathartic purposes) and abjection (Kristeva's post-Freudian concept of mental and physical breakdown in response to the loss of meaning when faced by conceptual boundaries being crossed) as it's mediated by TV. I love this stuff, though I'm no expert. Intangible, woolly or unclear concepts lead to abjection. I think her point is that 9/11 wasn't easily comprehensible, and led to an abject reaction - the physical, moral and mental horror of Guantanamo.

Spirit of Steel

Those of you condemned to life in The Dark Place and its surrounding environs can refresh your flagging intellects with a trip to The Light House, to see my colleague Fran's exhibition, Spirit of Steel, an exhibition of images of the Twin Towers site since the atrocity.

I would post an image, but bloody Blogger's gone all recalcitrant. They're very good. You have until June 4th.

I'm free of the place for a couple of days: off to referee the British Under-10s Fencing Championships. There'll be tears before bedtime…

Yeah, 9/11 victims' families, shut up!

Glen Beck, racist, neofascist Fox 'News' demagogue on the World Trade Center victims' families, as quoted in this piece about the broadcasting charmer:

"It took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims' families . . . When I see a 9/11 victim family on television or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining."

Gotta love the Murdochs, their wacky idea of quality journalism and their hatred of the BBC!