Disappearing Trick: Twin Towers "Erased" From "The Carrie Diaries"

While I understand the need to be sensitive to the loved ones of 9/11 victims, is "writing out" the entire Twin Towers from the annals of pop-culture history the way to go about it?

I refer to the new CW "Sex and the City" prequel series "The Carrie Diaries," and the way the producers consciously "erased" the WTC from the show. The main character works in Lower Manhattan in the 1980s -- of course there would be some trace of the two buildings in the skyline, or mentioned at all during the show.

But no:

"When we really sat down to talk about whether we wanted to put the World Trade Center into any of our stock footage what we decided is this is a show about love and romance and coming of age...If one 16-year-old who is watching the show possibly lost a parent—if we caused them pause or hurt in any way—it wouldn't have been worth it."

But isn't removing all trace of the Twin Towers also hurtful, in a sense? Isn't it a denial of what happened? I mean, this is hardly a "9/11 Truther" issue, here. Whatever you believe regarding the circumstances of the tragic event, the buildings did go down. It wasn't a David Copperfield trick.

Should the logo for this Woody Allen movie be changed?

This isn't the first time the Twin Towers have been "erased," either in the original "Sex and the City" or other TV shows/movies. And those who do chose to refer to 9/11 are often accused of being "insensitive"...even though this is a historical event that definitely without a doubt happened and set the tone for world events for over a decade.

What other "sensitive" bits of history will be tossed down the rabbit memory hole?

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The Fashion Of Disaster: Vogue's Supermodel Sandy Shoot

To put your finger on the massive disconnect between our pop (and "high") culture and (the often grim aspects of) Reality, look no further than Vogue's latest fashion shoot featuring stick-thin models in expensive gowns posing amidst the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Entitled "Storm Troupers" (clever), the pics by famed photog Annie Leibovitz juxtapose willowy women in high couture with search-and-rescue dogs, military emergency food supply teams...

...and a flooded street in the Far Rockaways:

I suppose the message here is "Fashion Cares" -- and certainly, by donating funds for a Sandy charity Vogue "bought" the right to use one of the worst natural disasters to hit the United States as the backdrop to advertise Chanel and Ralph Lauren -- but I would have much preferred to see these models in the hand-me-down emergency clothing donations that so many people who were flooded out of their homes had to wear. You know: ill-fitting old pant-suits, oversized sweatshirts with holes in them, and (gasp!) OLD (though warm) SOCKS.

What you won't see in Vogue's photo shoot

It is almost as if we have reached the scenario presented in "Hunger Games," where the suffering and danger experienced by the "proles" are displayed as just another fashion accessory -- a rustic addition to the world of glitz and glamour:

Effie Trinket or Anna Wintour?

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Skyfall, Spyfall, And The Ouroboros Of Fantasy And Reality

Does anybody else find it strange that the U.S. military/government is currently embroiled in a spy scandal the same week James Bond spy thriller "Skyfall" is #1 at the box-office?

Is there any connection between these two narratives -- one real, one fictional?

We have the "Bond Girls" -- beautiful, at times treacherous:



And the "Bond Girls" are sort of like the "draw" for the movies, aren't they? They're like the "Godzillas" of the movie series. Like when you turn on a Godzilla movie, you're really tuning in for the monsters, not the exposition. The Bond Women are like the Monsters -- Distractors from the core elements of the plot.

What comes first in these queer intersections of the real and the unreal? Does the movie come first, and then reporters shape the narrative of real-life events to mirror the movie -- as to market the news?

Or is it all more a strange precognitive thing on the part of our fantasy-makers...no, to call it "precognitive" sounds too fanciful, too wacky. Is it like-energy attracting like-energy...the idea of the world outside ourselves as a mirror of our own lives?

Fantasy weaving into reality -- here's another example:

The Drudge Report, one of the most popular news sites in the world, links to an article called "Talk Host Calls For Second American Revolution":

The link to that news story takes you to (surprise!) Infowars.com, whose marquee headliner story is:



...and we are now back to a movie narrative, that of "The Matrix." (Click here for the story about how a bunch of Georgia GOP lawmakers recently discussed theories similar to that of Jones in a closed-door session that was conveniently videotaped). Another headline on Infowars today is this one:

A "storyline" that has been "predicted" months ago in a comic book:

Now let's go to another item on the same Infowars marquee:

This of course refers to the recent Hurricane Sandy. Which was eerily prefigured by last month's "Batman" comic:



...the widespread lack of power and "third world conditions" left in the storm's wake echoed in the NBC show "Revolution," heavily promoted this Fall:

And on, and on. What comes first here, the chicken or the egg? I subscribe to no hard-and-fast theories; if I had to guess, I'd say it's an omelet of many theories -- or perhaps something too weird to even fully comprehend. But it sure is interesting. I could just go on and on with examples, each leading into each...

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