Andrea Peyser: An Insult To Her Profession And To Common Decency

I read this article in yesterday’s NY Post, and I can’t seem to suppress my anger.

Andrea Peyser, a woman who masquerades as a journalist and can barely write above high school level, is angry. Angry because someone made a movie out of a book about 9/11: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Several movies have focused on the events of the day—-World Trade Center and United 93 being the most prominent ones—- but this is the one that put her over the edge, it seems.

After seeing the promos for the film, I knew at once that I could never see this movie. It’s the typical Oscar-baiting melodrama, something I do not really care for in most instances. I also tend to think it is a bit too early to have movies about September 11th. For New Yorkers especially, 9/11 is still a very recent. However, a decade may not be too short a time period for others. It may very well be a good movie, but I know that I myself cannot come to appreciate it. Yet I understand that this is a personal thing (9/11 is very personal for so many, after all), and my opinion about a film I have not seen is not the final word on the subject.

But Peyser doesn’t see it like that. Calling the handful of pictures dealing with September 11th a new movie genre called “9/11 porn,” she establishes the fact that she has no idea what "porn" really is. She proclaims that Osama bin Laden would have “loved this.” Loved what? A piece of media dealing with a devastating attack on the country? Does anything about 9/11 that doesn’t scream about American patriotism automatically earn it praise from Muslim extremists?

She doesn’t stop there. She assumes that the grieving souls who suffered on 9/11 would not go to see the film, as if she speaks for every victim of the attacks, and declares that the movie “tells lies.”

Right off the bat she calls the main character of the film, a nine year old boy, "weird." She then mentions that the boy is autistic (likely Asperger’s). Just to clarify: we have a woman who is offended by a film about 9/11 already making fun of an autistic child. For someone who is decrying a movie for being unsympathetic, this is a hypocritical move. She goes on to call the child an “entitled, self-absorbed, and self-mutilating boy.” Does she even understand autism? And of course he feels entitled and self-absorbed: every child at age nine feels that way.

She takes umbrage with the fact that nobody ever says outright that the boy’s father, played by Tom Hanks, was “murdered.” She says that the events of 9/11 are presented as “some kind of cosmic accident.”

She says that this is a movie that “does for the monsters who brought down the World Trade Center what ‘Triumph of the Will’ did for a guy named Adolph.” What? I was under the impression that the movie was not about the actual attacks, but about how a boy deals with his father’s death. And has she even seen Triumph of the Will? It is a Nazi propaganda film. Peyser seems put off by the fact that this isn’t a propaganda film for American patriotism. In one breath she decries the film for being like a propaganda film like Triumph of the Will, and in the next breath condemns it for refusing to add in the tropes of such a propaganda film.

Unless the movie spent time idolizing the extremists who brought down the plane, I have the feeling that Peyser not only has never seen Triumph of the Will, but has no clue what the movie was about in the first place.

She goes on to further demonize a nine year old autistic child:

The horrid boy curses out his doorman…and cruelly abuses his mom… Appearing in every last frame of the film, the kid becomes the movie’s only identifiable terrorist. He tells his defeated mom, “I wish it were you in the building instead of him.”

“So do I,” she replies.

Nothing is spared in this quest for emotional blackmail, cheap thrills, and a naked ploy for an Oscar.

Once again: a nine year old autistic child. Of course he is self-absorbed. That’s the nature of Asperger’s: the person with it focuses on very specific things, and cannot stop talking or thinking about these very specific things. In an adult, being an entitled jerk is one thing. But mix being a nine year old child with autism and you don’t have a “terrorist” (a despicable thing to call anyone dealing with the loss of a loved one, much less a child), but a suffering youth who is likely to hurl abusive things at loved ones. Everything Peyser is saying is not only heartless and cruel, but downright evil and ignorant.

I return to Peyser’s outrage that the film is about a child and his own journey, and not specifically focused on demonizing the people who caused 9/11:

The most outrageous falsehood promoted in the film is the thing it leaves out. The word “terrorist” is consciously never said. Nor is “murderers,” “butchers,” or “Muslim extremists.”

This is not done because the movie is not about the people who caused the attacks. It isn’t trying to emulate propaganda, or trying to place blame anywhere. It’s about a boy.

In a climactic scene, Bullock tells her son that 9/11 “made no sense.” This is the biggest lie of all.

For 9/11 made perfect sense. It was an act of barbarity committed by people bent on destroying this city and this nation.

I remember the aftermath of the attacks. I remember people clearly saying that 9/11 made no sense to them. Namely, the people affected by the tragedy. Ten years later it is easier to have a sense of perspective. But the film takes place two years after the attacks, and it is a subjective look at two people who suffered a great loss directly caused by the attacks. The fact that it made no sense to these characters isn’t meant as a statement that represents the reality of the day for everyone (something Peyser does herself in the article, revealing yet another hypocritical side of this despicable woman).

She claims that “families of 9/11 victims have uniformly rejected the film without seeing it.” Right here, we have a woman speaking on behalf of everyone who suffered from the 9/11 attacks. As a journalist, she should know that this is unacceptable for someone in her position to do.

Peyser only speaks for herself, although she would like to think that she represents New York, as well as those who suffered great losses. She thinks that as a New Yorker, she deserves to speak on behalf of the 9/11 victims. But I am a New Yorker too. I am a New Yorker who remembers September 11th very clearly. I am a New Yorker who is not afraid to say: Andrea Peyser, you do not speak for me, and you do not speak for the people of New York. You are not only a failure as a journalist, you are a failure as a human being. You complain about the fact that the boy in this movie is unsympathetic? Remember this: he is only a character. You, however, are real, and you are the only unsympathetic monster in the equation.