Scott Caan's "9/11"

A/N: Please note that this is more akin to a dialogue between me and the ideas in the play than a review or critical analysis.

“9/11”

Last January I had the opportunity to see Scott Caan’s play “9/11” in its entirety, as it would happen, just days after the terrorist attack by religious extremists on Charlie Hebdo in France. It was eerily timely, for despite the passage of thirteen years, “9/11” remains remarkably on point and sadly all too relevant.

Originally written in 2001, “9/11” takes place hours after the planes hit the towers. It follows a handful of characters’ attempts to deal with and make sense of the enormity of the tragedy, brothers Matty (Mark Pellegrino) and Sean (Scott Caan), Sean’s best friend Vic (Val Lauren) and several other characters they meet along the way. It is at heart a conversation about anger, fear, helplessness and ignorance.

Matty, Vic and Sean all have very different reactions to the tragedy. Matty is angry and vengeful, sensing that the world he knows has forever been changed. He sees danger around every corner, expects more attacks, and is ready to grab a gun and go to war. He knows exactly who his enemy is: Muslims, Arabs, people easily identifiable by differences in physical features, dress and language. He’s a racist and he knows it. He also doesn’t care.

Vic is struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy, clinging to the President’s direction that citizens should go about their usual business, go out, go shopping, and spend money to prop up a stock market in a tail spin. Vic’s attempt to behave as if nothing has changed infuriates Matty, who becomes increasingly agitated as Vic conducts business on the phone.

Matty is just as appalled by Sean, who shows up seemingly having no reaction to the attacks at all. But Sean, who is having quite the day himself, simply doesn’t know. When Matty fills him in, Sean, while horrified, can’t fathom the possibility of going to war. “This is America,” Sean says, “We don’t go to war. We bomb people.”  In Sean’s mind, “people” is synonymous with a place, the Middle East. Through that abstract conception, Sean erases the myriad of human beings who make up that place and thus has no problem imagining the entire region bombed out of existence.

Things come to a head when Matty attacks a man he perceives as Middle Eastern, only stopping because Vic intercedes and pulls him away. Matty’s defense of his actions leads to one of the most powerful exchanges in the play:

Matty:

            I see this guy and he’s giving me looks. He’s not American looking.

            He’s not European looking. He’s got brown skin and a beard down to here, follow me?”

Sean:

Yeah, he’s from the Middle East.

Matty:

             Middle Eastern cocksucker’s looking at me and giving me fucking

             looks, right?

Vic:

            Who’s giving who looks Matty? Who said he didn’t hear you call him

            camel fuckers?

Matty:

            Dude that’s what they are. That’s what they are. They’re bad people.

            I call bad people bad names.

Vic:

            He’s a person [emphasis mine].

Vic brings home the brutality of racism: ripping someone’s identity from them and imposing a falsehood that negates their own behavior and actions.  It’s something Vic knows all too well, for as it’s revealed a little later, Vic himself is of Iranian descent, a fact he and his family have hidden from everyone to avoid painful stereotypes, discrimination and violence.

But Matty is unrepentant, unwilling to truly hear what Vic is saying. The exchange continues:

Vic:

            What if that guy had blond hair and blue eyes what would you

            have done? Would you have slapped him? What if he was a fucking

            Nazi like you?

Matty:

            No, I would have done nothing about it. I would have walked away.

In forcing this admission, Vic lays bare the indefensible position of having to prove your loyalty if you are obviously an “other.”  It’s there in the demand that all who identify as Muslims or who are Middle Eastern voice a condemnation of Muslim extremists, as if without it, the suspicion will always linger that they are extremists themselves.

America has had a hard time letting go of this concept. One only need look back to the interment of Japanese Americans during World War II to see it in motion. For a country with an ideology built on the concept of freedom, we have a long history of doing violence to any signs of difference.

The real breakthrough in the play comes when Sean is speaking to Matty about Vic’s heritage. “Who cares,” Sean asks, “you love the guy. Who cares where his uncle or his father’s from?”

Finally Matty cracks, confused and vulnerable for the first time, as he faces the possibility that he completely fucked up.

But let’s take that concept a step further. Who cares what his religion is. Who cares what his sexuality is. Who cares what his race is. He’s a friend, he’s family, you love him, and that’s all that matters. They are different from you and that’s okay. To me, this is the most salient, and the most powerful, point of this play.

Individually it’s overwhelming to figure out how to impact change on a global level. And the fact of the matter is, most of us don’t have that kind of power. But at the level of the personal, we have all the power. We decide if we’re going to listen to the Vic’s in our lives who hold us to account when we’re on the wrong side of things, whether it’s a friend, a co-worker, a journalist, Jon Stewart, or someone you met on twitter.

I found myself thinking a lot about this play as I read stories about mosque attacks in France in the wake of Charlie Hebdo, as I had discussions with a Muslim friend about the discrimination she and her friends face every day, as she spoke about how disheartening it was to see the only representation her religion, which she loves, gets in the media is to be used synonymously with terrorism. And how when she tried to share those feelings with people, they dismissed her complaints as irrelevant and refused to listen.

The simple fact is, it’s the agitators who are brave enough to call out discrimination when they see it and the people who are brave enough to take a long hard look at their own flaws, at their own contribution to the ugliness in the world, who have the most chance of impacting the lives of everyone around them in a positive way.

In a world where terrible things seem to happen on a daily basis, it may be the best that we can ask for.