Did You Hear the One About Septemper 11th, 2001? (Mickey Mouse's Taliban Adventures ?)

MagicCityMorningNews ^ | Feb 25, 2004 | Brian Evankovich

[fight_truth_decay]

The events of September 11th, 2001, - tragically, after only two years - have become a joke. We need look no further than jolly old England for one example. In a story from the "This Is London" on-online edition from over the weekend, I read where about a sculpture featuring Mickey Mouse (that's M-I-C-K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E) flying a plane into the World Trade Center.

Quoting the article: “Entitled 'Mickey's Taliban Adventures', the sculpture, by Alan Bennie of the Edinburgh College of Art, shows Mickey flying a toy plane into foam-like recreations of the WTC. The buildings have eyes to give them startled expressions, and one has flames made of felt shooting out of it.

“Colin Greensdale, Edinburgh's exhibitions coordinator, said the sculpture is ‘about making you think.’”

This parody of Sept. 11th shouldn't be too surprising considering that's how the attack could be viewed from overseas: something that happened to somebody else, and didn't touch them.

I'd like to think that if this were done in the United States, the outrage would be huge. I'm sure it would. But the outrage would be followed by the usual political grandstanding and partisan bickering that now surrounds the entire War on Terror and the 9-11 attack itself.

Yes, we see the remains of the wreckage, the grieving families, the videos taken that day. We all remember where we were, how it felt. The burst of patriotism that followed was short lived - the other day, I saw a pick-up truck with an NRA bumper sticker and the tattered remains of an American flag on the radio antenna - an interesting clash. Guess it's the thought that counts.

The fact is, unless you were personally affected by Sept. 11th, it's become just another day. Something tossed about and discussed so much by the pundits and politicians and the average Joe that it has lost its impact. We've gone to war in two countries to supposedly avenge the event, and those military adventures have fallen into so much scrutiny and debate and second-guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking that the reasons for our retaliation have been lost.

"Mickey's Taliban Adventures" is a reaction of how we see the attack now. Just something to remember with two minutes of silence once a year. Twenty-five years from now, just like with the JFK assassination, somebody will wonder what the big deal was. Fifty years from now, it will be a footnote in a news broadcast - not unlike the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Then they'll talk about the latest celebrity couple of celebrity sex video.

Maybe Osama had a point.

[fight_truth_decay]

Glasgow's Sunday Herald newspaper reported a soft sculpture of Mickey Mouse flying an airplane toward crying World Trade Center towers had caused a stir at a college art exhibit. Alan Bennie, a student at Edinburgh College of Art, titled his work about the Sept. 11 terror attacks: "Mickey's Taliban Adventures." One museum director defined the work "dreadful." The exhibitions coordinator at the Royal Scottish Academy defended the soft sculpture as "social and political comment."

"What a bland thought process - a work depicting Disney as the root of all the troubles of the world. How original. It sounds dreadful," Julian Spalding, art critic and former director of Glasgow's museums and galleries.

In January, Israel's ambassador,among the guests at the opening of the Historical Museum's exhibition linked to an international anti-genocide conference to Sweden, destroyed artwork depicting a Palestinian suicide bomber in a Stockholm museum.

The art form, entitled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth", featured a basin filled with red water on which floated a boat carrying a portrait of Hanadi Jaradat, who killed herself and 19 others in an attack in the Israeli port city of Haifa in October.

Mazel reportedly ripped out the electrical wires attached to the artwork and threw a spotlight in the basin.

"This was not a piece of art," Mazel later told a radio station. "It was a monstrosity. An obscene distortion of reality."

Isn't art a freedom of expression? Is it overkill when such stories are highlighted in the press? What is the difference between the pen or the written word and the brush or in this case sculptures? We could even toss Mel's "The Passion" (which I viewed incidentally) into the pot as an art form, seen through different eyes around the world - media mania overkill?

Shock or gafaw?

[Ann Archy]

The writer, Brian must be a CHILD who thinks like a CHILD, because he certainly Writes like a CHILD.....so Osama might have had a point, huh?

[Cicero]

Shakespeare wrote "Let's kill all the lawyers."

If he had known what to expect, he'd also have written, "Let's kill all the postmodern artists."

If there were any artistic worth whatever in this exhibit, it might be worth arguing about. As it is, the whole thing is beneath contempt. As are all the curators and boards of trustees of art institutions that support this trash.

[Humidston]

Alan Bennie, a student at Edinburgh College of Art = Immature, Idiot, No Talent. Anyone can make "art" out of balloons and Tonka toys.

And Europe has become a sewer, a swill of foaming vomit.

[cake_crumb]

That's how the attack has been viewed by all of the left, no matter what party they affiliate themselves with, everywhere.

Remember the Trudeau cartoon right after 9/11/01 that had President Bush flying a plane into the WTC? Trudeau's publisher told me and everone else who complained that it was "humor" and "free speech."

Oh this type of speech is free alright. VERY free. With the truth.

[atomicpossum]

Perhaps a comical sculpture on the Dunblane Massacre would be a hit with the Brits.

[weegee]

So Disney has not persued a copyright violation lawsuit against the artist?

[weegee]

Postmodernism died on the morning of September 11th, 2001.

Those who invoke it now do so to mask their antiAmerican hate. That was a substantial attack on the civilian population.

To seek justification for the attacks (or to call them "an art form of their own") is to sanction terrorism. It gives pause for those who would do the same to the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, Stalin's gulag, the Rowandan genocide, etc.

[76834]

Yeah.
Was thinking along the same lines.
Wonder what these yahoos would do if it was Buckingham Palace etc. that got hit.
As far as forgetting, not around here.
I fly a flag all the time and break out a new one every Sept 11th.

[HungarianGypsy]

Which reminds me, is there any place to buy just the flagpole without the flag? I have two flags, but the pole got bent. Everytime I look for a pole it always comes with a flag.
In my neighborhood the house across the street almost constantly has a flag out (although I might want to say something about bringing it in at not or illuminating it?). Every holiday the VFW (I assume it's them) goes through and put flags in front yards throughout the city of Mesa, AZ. It was great to see that when we moved in.

[Democratshavenobrains]

Most Democrats stopped caring about 9/11 a few months after it happened. Unless they can use it to bash Bush.