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“Defamiliarizing the Reel”:

Defamiliarization and Re-realization of Images of Tragedy in Alejandro González

Iñárritu’s Mexico

Initially, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s contribution to Alain Brigand’s 11'09"01 September

11 production met with shock and disdain. As time progressed, audience reactions have

“become more positive,” mentioning it as “the most powerful and affecting segment” (Young

47). In light of some of the responses discussed in this essay, it becomes interesting to ask,

firstly, how the perception of the events on September 11th took shape and, secondly, in what

ways Iñárritu’s segment is different from this ‘accepted’ representation. Thirdly, it is

productive to consider what effect this contrast might have on the viewer.

When the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers fell on September 11th, 2001, the event

was instantly broadcast all over the globe. The televisation of the event meant that, according

to Slavoj Žižek, “for the great majority of the public, the WTC explosions were events on the

TV screen” (11). He goes so far as to state that the terrorists “did not do it primarily to

provoke real material damage, but for the spectacular effect of it” (11). Indeed other critics

have commented on the primacy of the September 11 hijackings as a visual event: Jacques

Rancière notes its “high-level of visibility” as a factor “that had never been seen previously”

(98) and Jean Baudrillard argues that “the fascination with the attack is primarily a fascination

with the image” to which the real is only “superadded” (28-29).

The fact that, to most spectators, the events were mediated, meant that the footage they

received was increasingly narrativized through assemblage, selection and framing by the

media. This framing, according to Geoff King, had already been “provided by Hollywood

spectacle” (47) and allowed the coverage on September 11th to be redeployed “in a manner

that made them [the events] more movie or fiction-like” than they were originally (48). King
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argues that as coverage developed with the inclusion of additional (amateur) footage and the

suggestion of Osama Bin Laden in the role of the villain, a narrative context was created. This

narrativization, along with the employment of standard cinematic editing devices1, lead to an

increasingly cinematic construction. Finally, as mastery over the assemblage increased, the

conventionality of such a construction gave “the impression of more objective and

unmediated access to what is happening,” offering “a comfortable familiarity” (54).

A desire for mastery over the events included, quite quickly, a rigorous selection of

material. Žižek notes that “it is surprising how little of the actual carnage we see,” through a

lack of “gruesome detail” that constitutes a “‘derealization’ of the horror” (13). One example

of such gruesome detail is the censored footage of the falling men that was excluded from

most mainstream media broadcasts.

It is precisely this footage that dominates the screen during Iñárritu’s “Mexico”

segment of the 11'09"01 September 11 film – an omnibus project of eleven filmmakers’ shorts

concerning the events of that day. Composed mostly of darkness, the visual part of the film’s

reel shows sparse flash cuts of bodies falling from the towers, causing Dennis Lim to call the

short “nakedly exploitative,” questioning its point beyond “the evocation and infliction of

trauma”. Similarly, Peter Matthews called it “an unremitting monstrosity” due to its

“abominable” representation of the falling bodies. Such responses point to the horror Žižek

finds lacking in the ‘derealized’ representations of the event.

Indeed censorship is a central theme of the segment. “By using footage that was

censored,” Maria Pramaggiore argues, “Iñárritu implicates notions of taboo in a variety of

contexts relating to 9/11” (15). Taboo and censorship were a direct inspiration for the

“Mexico” segment, as Iñárritu indicates in the “Interview with Director” on the 11’09”01

DVD. A series of photographs called “Blinded By The Light” was refused publication for
1
Such as the “match-on-action,” according to King “a standard device [...] used to establish a seamless cut from
one image to the other” (51).
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“trying to point out the dangers, injustices and tragic consequences of what was going on in

Afghanistan” (“Interview with Director”).

Although it ignores previous censorship by including controversial footage of that day,

“Mexico” is mostly an audial affair, opposing the quintessential visuality of the events. The

segment is framed by what Alison Young identifies as “the sound of voices belonging to the

Chamulas Indians of Chaipas, Mexico; they are chanting a prayer for the dead” (41). As

orchestral accompaniment is introduced, the chanting eventually gives way to sound clips

from news broadcasts on September 11th. The weatherman informs us of a “splendid

September night” as the music increases in tension. The sound of a plane’s impact is heard

along with the exclamation “holy shit”.

At this point, a move occurs from the local to the global. Starting with the New York

weather and a street spectator’s initial response, we move on to national, then international

news reports. This initiates a pattern: the news reports multiply and overlap until they are

replaced with more personal material – three recorded phone calls by victims in the building.

The repeated movement from local to global (or from personal to public) is completed by the

introduction of an emotionally motivated political response aimed at those responsible for the

attacks.2 The sound collage grows into a “crescendo of white noise” that, as David Holloway

argues, “evoke[s] both the saturation of 9/11 in media and the shutting down of coherent

vision that this entailed” (155).

By decoupling the sound and image portions of the film reel, “Mexico” challenges the

cinematic-continuity assemblage observed by King. When the crescendo of white noise is

reached, “Mexico” shows the all-too familiar footage of the towers’ collapse, but without the

2
Besides completing the development from personal to public, the response itself reflects this movement in full:
the emotional and personal statements – the woman’s voice is repeated saying “I want their fathers to be hit, I
want their mothers to be hit, I want their children to be hit” – are aimed outward at the countries harbouring
terrorists. Furthermore, it is the kind of sentiment that would cause many to enlist in the United States army and
be dispatched abroad to Afghanistan or Iraq.
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accompanying sound. The sudden contrast with the overwhelming saturation of sound

seconds before emphasizes a sudden break with convention. What King called “the

impression of more objective and unmediated access” that was the result of compliance with

cinematic convention is now negated by pointing out the artificiality of the material that is

shown: we are used to the building’s collapse including the sound of it crashing down. By

confronting us with the fact that this footage is mediated, we lose the “comfortable

familiarity” that King associates with the aforementioned impression. Similarly to what

Pramaggiore argues for the segments by Penn and Lelouch, “alternative visual and sound

techniques [...] ask viewers to re-examine their own understanding of the events, and

particularly, the images and sounds that have become synonymous with 9/11” (13).

Chronologically, sound and image also collide: the ‘thumps’ of falling bodies and the

crash of an airplane prefigure their closest correlates on the image reel and the Chamulas’

mourning prayers anticipate the tragedy of that day. It is a denial of the simultaneity of image

and sound that contradicts the ‘mastery’ that the conventional assemblage of 9/11 footage

aspires to.

In summary, if the perception of the September 11 events is characterized by mediated

and selected visuality, framed by the familiarity of cinematic convention, then Iñárritu’s

“Mexico” can be said to formally express the opposite. It foregrounds audiality instead of

visuality; it prominently features footage not selected due to censorship; and it breaks with

cinematic convention by pointing out its mediatedness and denying the simultaneity of sound

and image.

As for the potential effects these formal qualities might have, we might consider

reflecting on interpretations of what the accepted representations achieved. According

to Žižek, the visuality of the event was selected and structured into a ‘derealised’, sanitized

version of the real (13). Iñárritu’s inclusion of censored material then achieves a re-realization
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precisely by including some of the carnage absent from the representations we are used to.

Additionally, if the cinematic conventions adopted in news broadcasts and documentaries

offer a comfortable familiarity (King 54), then breaking with this cinematic-continuity

assemblage effects a defamiliarization.

The final moments of Iñárritu’s short film carry a strong suggestion. As the segment

ends, Arabic text and its English translation ask: “does God’s light guide us or blind us?” The

fact that, moments later, a blinding light eclipses the text seems an urgent suggestion by the

director that the latter is true. Perhaps overly familiarizing ourselves with tragedy can be

dangerous. If blind piety caused great tragedy to the anglophone world, then it might require

rigorous desensitivization to such tragedy to be able to turn it around.

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Works Cited List

Baudrillard, Jean. “The Spirit of Terrorism.” The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays.

London and New York: Verso, 2002. 3-34.

Holloway, David. Cultures of the War on Terror: Empire, Ideology, and the Remaking of

9/11. Montréal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2008. Print.

Iñárritu, Alejandro González. "Mexico." 11'09"01 September 11. Prod. Alain Brigand. Paris:

Bac Films, 2002. DVD.

“Interview with Director.” 11'09"01 September 11. Prod. Alain Brigand. Paris: Bac Films,

2002. DVD.

King, Geoff. “Just like a Movie?: 9/11 and Hollywood Spectacle.” The Spectacle of the Real:

From Hollywood to 'reality' TV and Beyond. Bristol: Intellect, 2005. 47-57.

Lim, Dennis. “Trauma Center: All Over the Map.” The Village Voice July 15, 2003: n. pag.

Web. 25 Mar. 2013.

Matthews, Peter. "One Day in September." Sight & Sound January (2003): n. pag. BFI Back

Issues. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. <http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/1493>.

Pramaggiore, Maria. “The Global Repositioning of the City Symphone: Sound, Space, and

Trauma in 11’09”01 – September 11.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media

52 (2010): 1-3. Web. 18 Jan. 2011.

Rancière, Jacques. “September 11 and Afterwards: A Rupture in the Symbolic Order?”

Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Ed. and trans. by Steven Corcoran. Continuum,

London, 2010. 97-104.

Young, Allison. "Images in the Aftermath of Trauma: Responding to September 11th."

Crime, Media, Culture 3.30 (2007). Web. 21 Feb. 2013.

Žižek, Slavoj. “Passions of the Real, Passions of Semblance.” Welcome to the Desert of the

Real! London and New York: Verso, 2002. 5-32.