9/11 was aesthetic. Some of my strongest childhood memories are of those burning towers. I grew up in Brooklyn, though did not see the destruction in person. Yet nobody could escape the images. They were plastered across television, in the paper, and magazines. Most Americans did not know anyone who was killed, but this event was about all of us.
Safety is the basis of American consumerism. That is why shootings in shopping malls, movie theaters, airports and wealthy neighborhoods always get more press than those in trailer parks, housing projects and industrial zones. We need to be safe to consume, but we also consume to be safe.
On vacations, we shop because we can. We have surpassed the dangers of savagery and can now enjoy civilized leisure time. And when we sense impending danger, we flock to supermarkets to stock up on the necessities, afraid they will not be available later.
Of course, the security that consumption lets us feel is an illusion. Nothing feels more real, more grounded than going out and purchasing an object, but what about buying an idea? Nike sells motivation; J. Crew sells style; Coke sells happiness. American productive fervor has passed.
On 9/11, al-Qaeda hit us where it hurt most—the World Trade Center. It was a building that represented “trade,” but dealt with numbers instead of objects. The attacks challenged our constructions and beliefs and signified a religious war. Only an unassailable sense of what is “right” can provoke war and drive nations to mutual destruction.
It is not a coincidence that we call consumer products “goods.” They have become religious icons, objects of worship that comfort us in the day-to-day. They are our “daily bread.”
The institutions that make up our culture seem silly and arbitrary, but they form our collective consciousness. A special sense of ease comes from walking around a CVS. It is a store full of objects I do not really need, the chain itself a brand that doesn’t represent class, culture or intellect. I should hate everything about it. However, chain pharmacies are religious temples. They are little havens of reliability that claim all the answers to our problems. CVS is my home.
After 9/11, without a clear enemy, we did not know how to respond. All we could do was entangle our deep and serious sympathy for the victims with the images of American nationhood.
My family first got cable after the attacks. Allegedly, it was because the main TV antenna in New York topped one of the towers, but maybe it was just an excuse to saturate ourselves with images. As a child I was obsessed with TV—nothing seemed more real than “Lizzy McGuire,” “Invader Zim” or “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.” I got immersed in the idealized lives of the characters from “Seinfeld” and “Friends.”
Parents always lament their children’s aversion to yards and sidewalks, outside games and real-word interactions. “When I was a kid,” they say, “you couldn’t pay us to stay indoors.” When my parents were kids, they only had the A-Bomb. If it was going to hit, they were all goners, so they might as well stay together. But with terrorism, death isn’t for everyone—only the fear. And when they were kids, there weren’t as many fantastic visual alternatives to the outside world.