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Atwood thinks Star Wars caused 9/11?


Darth Richard II

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I suspect she was getting mixed up with something else. Like the flight simulator game people loved to use to crash into the twin towers, and which the attackers actually used to practice their crashes.

That’s all I have.

But....this play was 18 years ago. Why is it getting attention now? Because Season 2 is starting?

And the Twin Towers were attacked several times by bombers.

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4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I suspect she was getting mixed up with something else. Like the flight simulator game people loved to use to crash into the twin towers, and which the attackers actually used to practice their crashes.


From the article:

 

Quote

 

Asked if she truly believed that, she added: “Remember the first one? Two guys fly a plane in the middle of something and blow that up? The only difference is, in ‘Star Wars,’ they get away.

 

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Yeah The Twin Towers were bombed/blown up in lots and lots of books/games/movies. (Hell, I remember Stephen King thinking they might have gotten he idea from his book Insomnia and Tom Clancy thought they maybe got it from one of HIS books were they crash a jet into the white house).

But yeah I just had to post that cause it's such a WTF moment, although I honestly think it's just old age. :./

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13 minutes ago, polishgenius said:


From the article:

 

 

Er, I don’t understand what you are trying to say. I read the article. I think she got mixed up with something else. Attacking the Twin Towers or buildings like them (ie tall) was a theme in a lot of books, tv shows etc. And why didn’t you also quote ‘That’s all I have’?

What, pray tell, is your explanation?

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52 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah The Twin Towers were bombed/blown up in lots and lots of books/games/movies. (Hell, I remember Stephen King thinking they might have gotten he idea from his book Insomnia and Tom Clancy thought they maybe got it from one of HIS books were they crash a jet into the white house).

But yeah I just had to post that cause it's such a WTF moment, although I honestly think it's just old age. :./

Islamic extremists tried twice before, in the 90's, to bomb the World Trade Centre. Both times truck bombs were used that did only a little damage. I think Atwood is trying to say that flying planes into structures to destroy them is a very old concept, and that her play in which this apparently happens, is not the only reference to it in literature or film. Farscape even had a Peacekeeper battle cruiser destroyed in a somewhat similar fashion before 9/11.

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21 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Huh, did they try twice? I only remember the one time, but I was in high school at the time and gave zero fucks about the rest of the world.

They actually managed to set a bomb off twice but I think there were more attempts that were thwarted in the planning stage. Unless someone was actually arrested, the FBI kept pretty closemouthed on what they did.

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1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Huh, did they try twice? I only remember the one time, but I was in high school at the time and gave zero fucks about the rest of the world.

There was a truck bomb in '93 that did some moderate damage.

There was an HBO movie, Path to Paradise, which I do not know was ever shown after 9/11. The end contain a dramatization of a line from the mastermind Ramzi Yousef that commented that the next attack will bring down both towers while he was chopper passing them.

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There was one major bombing, where a van full of explosives was parked in the subterranean garage, killing 6 people and injuring a thousand. The idea was that the foundations would be damaged so badly one tower would topple over into the other and kill a helluva a lot of people. I thought there was a second, minor bombing, but after a quick search I guess I was wrong.

Prior to 9/11 there were all kinds of movies and books that showed major damage to famous buildings around the world, both in terrorist movies and science fiction, from blowing up the Super Bowl to aliens destroying the White House in Independence Day. For that matter, Independence Day has one of the heroes flying his jet plane into the alien ship and blowing it up. I seem to recall the Eiffel Tower and Buckingham Palace as other places that get blown up in books and movies.

Star Wars shows "fighter jets" attacking a huge piece of infrastructure. I always thought that the idea the fighters could safely get away from a planet sized structure blowing up pretty goofy, but hey, science fantasy, right? If she wants to think the idea inspired terrorists, why not? As I said, I think it had more to do with Flight Simulator. I remember lots of friends playing that and laughing about crashing the plane into a building. In fact, crashing the plane into the Twin Towers was a real thing that people chatted about on line before 9/11. After 9/11 the makers removed that function.

The fact that the interviewer asked her about the play showing film of buildings blown up in the background sounds like the same-old same-old "it's dangerous to talk about ideas like this because people will do it". Ban Grand Theft Auto. Ban books. Ban television programs. Ban news stories about murders or suicides or whatever, because someone else will do it. We could do a whole thread on the topic.

 

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I believe the aliens blow up the Twin Towers in ID4, actually, but its been ages since I've seen it and I wouldn't be surprised if they cut that from future versions.

From what little I can recall when I read about it the motives and inspiration behind the 9/11 attacks came from some weird obscure even in the middle east but ti's been ages. I know it was debunked that flight sim was a direct inspiration for the IDEA but they certainly trained on it.

I'm going to have to do more research on this now, my curiosity is piqued.

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6 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Er, I don’t understand what you are trying to say. I read the article. I think she got mixed up with something else. Attacking the Twin Towers or buildings like them (ie tall) was a theme in a lot of books, tv shows etc. And why didn’t you also quote ‘That’s all I have’?

What, pray tell, is your explanation?

 


What I'm saying is that I think that quote pretty much makes it clear she's talking about Star Wars? She's exaggerating or misremembering how much they fly 'into' the it - the trench run could look like 'inside' if you're not too bothered about details- but it's obvious she means the Death Star attack.
It's possible she's taking the piss a bit by making an even more ridiculous suggestion than 'they got the idea from your play', but my explanation really is that Margaret Atwood has no trouble saying idiotic things (she's a moon landing conspiracist!) and a history of being snobby about spaceship fiction (until she realised she could make loads more money leaping onto the popularity of SF) so I'm not having any trouble here believing that she meant it when she said something idiotic about Star Wars.

I didn't quote 'that's all I have' because I wasn't responding to 'that's all I have'.

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2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 


What I'm saying is that I think that quote pretty much makes it clear she's talking about Star Wars? She's exaggerating or misremembering how much they fly 'into' the it - the trench run could look like 'inside' if you're not too bothered about details- but it's obvious she means the Death Star attack.
It's possible she's taking the piss a bit by making an even more ridiculous suggestion than 'they got the idea from your play', but my explanation really is that Margaret Atwood has no trouble saying idiotic things (she's a moon landing conspiracist!) and a history of being snobby about spaceship fiction (until she realised she could make loads more money leaping onto the popularity of SF) so I'm not having any trouble here believing that she meant it when she said something idiotic about Star Wars.

I didn't quote 'that's all I have' because I wasn't responding to 'that's all I have'.

I’d be pissed off at that interviewer for those comments, considering how casually the powers that be destroy not just single buildings but entire cities. Have you looked at what’s left of Syrian cities lately? Maybe Margaret Atwood was responsible for that too?

Yes, she meant Star Wars, that’s obvious, did I say it wasn’t? But that doesn’t mean she’s not confusing it with something else and has latched onto Star Wars in her head.

As for the moon landing, do you know where she’s from? A city called Sudbury, where NASA trained all the moon mission astronauts. Some cynical northerners have always said, oh for sure, they went to the moon, did they? It’s been a joke up north for years. Most people think she was joking, except the right wing press. Fox News tried to set up shop in  Canada and Atwood signed a petition to the regulators demanding they not grant a license because what they broadcast was hate speech, and also because in Canada there’s a regulation that actually requires news stations to broadcast the truth. Many stories suddenly appeared about Atwood saying she was a nut case who couldn’t be believed.

In any event there are many theories about what inspired Bin Laden to crash planes into buildings, at least she believes they did it. Do you know how many thousands of people in the US believe 9/11 was arranged by Bush? That it was a US government conspiracy? That crashing a plane into the buildings couldn’t bring them down? Those are the crazy people, not someone who thought Star Wars could have been the inspiration. I don’t think Bin Laden left notes about that.

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In addition to what FB said, Margaret Atwood grew up reading SF and it has always been her first love. She is not late to the game. I have heard her being interviewed many times and she does have a rather dry wit that does not translate well into print. She also started her writing career as a poet. Keep that in mind also. 

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14 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah The Twin Towers were bombed/blown up in lots and lots of books/games/movies. (Hell, I remember Stephen King thinking they might have gotten he idea from his book Insomnia and Tom Clancy thought they maybe got it from one of HIS books were they crash a jet into the white house).

But yeah I just had to post that cause it's such a WTF moment, although I honestly think it's just old age. :./

Roland Emerich and Micheal Bay both showed them specifically getting destroyed in the late nineties.

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