has been to “name something you remember watching on this,” the “this” in question being a familiar picture for anyone with a public-school education in America: A rolling stand with a TV set strapped to it. “Wheeling in the TV” was one of the best fleeting moments of relief in public education. We’d all exhale, and say to ourselves “Ok, we’re not learning anything today, thank god.” But one particular answer to this prompt struck me, and surely struck many my age: 9/11.
has stuck in my mind despite it failing to exhibit any remarkable qualities in artistry or entertainment, simply because it’s such a movie of its time, a time which overlapped with the beginning of my adolescence when I was particularly enamored by these kinds of dramas.
Movies like these feel tailor-made to play on those rolling school TVs. They feel educational and idealistic in a way that tries to fend off cynicism in impressionable teenagers—at least until they’re sent off to college. In the early 2000s, many of us were particularly vulnerable. There were too many questions, too much uncertainty and dread about “what comes next” that the only sensible respite became “let’s go back, for at least two hours, to what it was like before.
it represented Payne’s idea of the ‘70s as a “simpler, clearer, more humane time”—it seems that the need for the respite of the past is still as strong as it was withIt is a warm blanket of assuring comfort, telling you that your dreams can be achieved, that the people who don’t believe in you will be won over, and that there are people always willing to fight for your cause. For many, it fills the role of “the kind of movie we need right now.
Soham Gadre is an entertainment and culture writer based in Washington D.C. He has written for Polygon, MUBI Notebook, The Film Stage, and Film Inquiry among other publications. He has a