Roger Friedman's Cloverfield Controversy

The best controversy is the fabricated controversy; the controversy which comes into being through the rantings of a jackass with a soapbox. Without these controversies we as a nation might have to tackle actual problems and actual controversies that truly affect people's lives. Luckily for us there are people in the world like Roger Friedman, a jackass with a Fox News provided soapbox.

You see, while everyone else was dismissing Cloverfield as a stupid Blair Witch knockoff Roger Friedman had the clarity and sense of purpose required to see Cloverfield for what it really is: An insult to the memory of 9/11:

"But Cloverfield also inadvertently disses New York for what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, by re-enacting scenes of buildings exploding and massive clouds of debris for fun and profit."

You see, by setting a disaster movie in New York City (a first, for sure) and then destroying buildings in New York City (again, an unprecidented feat in cinema) Cloverfield is commenting on 9/11 and insensitively mocking its memory. Because any building exploding in New York is somehow related to 9/11, so says Roger Friedman.

Then there is the notion of turning a profit off of the memory of 9/11. Yes, because Cloverfield is trying to profit off 9/11 whereas a movie such as, oh I don't know, World Trade Center was not. I'd love to hear an explanation of the arbitrary line that makes World Trade Center a beautiful piece of Americana and Cloverfield an opportunistic, insensitive monstrosity.

But the most endearing part of the article has to be this:

"Does no one recall what was said following the World Trade Center disasters? There was such sensitivity about the huge human losses that images of the Twin Towers were erased from movie posters and excised from films.

Yet six years later, the "Cloverfield" gang is cool enough with it to show New York being pulverized. Very quickly and without warning, downtown New York is destroyed. The first bit of damage is depicted by a World Trade Center-like structure exploding and collapsing downward, sending off a cloud not unlike those my friends ran from that day."

These two paragraphs have everything. They are a literary Smörgåsbord of vapid rhetorical shit. The hurt emo pleading of, "does no one recall?", the vastly inflated "huge human losses" because, yeah, New York couldn't stand to lose 5,000 people (I totally just went there), the imagery of the phrase "images of the Twin Towers", and the cherry on the top, the personal note of "my friends ran from that day". It would send shivers down my spine if it didn't send bile to my throat.

The problem, though, is the beginning of the second paragraph: "six years later"

Look, you obsessed shitrag with your psychologically enfeebled peon followers: Get THE FUCK over it. And if you can't get over it; if you're going to spend the rest of your life emoing yourself out over something that happened in 2001? Then do us all a favor and just slit your damn wrists now while you listen to The Cure.

Because healthy human beings, reasonable people, get over things. We deal with it. We move on. If you spend your entire life drawing labored comparisons to that time some planes hit a building in 2001 you're never going to develop as a human being; you'll be stuck in a state of arrested development forever incapable of actualizing your full potential. You'll be a perpetual child.

Grow the fuck up.

I'm not saying that Cloverfield is a good movie or that it is beyond critique. But it's not a fucking commentary on 9/11. It's a monster movie set in New York because, dipshit, New York is a great setting for movies.

Was The Day After Tomorrow out of line when it froze New York?

Was the King Kong remake incredibly insensitive when it placed a Monkey in New York?

Was Spider Man insulting the memory of those brave souls who lost their lives on 9/11 by covering New York in webbing?

No?

Then shut the god damned fuck up you whiny little bitch.