Furthermore, trying to eradicate the World Trade Center from public memory in the current scenario is tantamount to disrespect for the dead. Television and movies provide valuable historical documentation of the period in which they are made—what does it say about our country if its first response is to eliminate the World Trade Center from the record? The image of those two buildings standing strong against the New York sky reminds us not only of what once stood as symbols of America’s political and economic power, it reminds us of the thousands of lives lost and the millions of tons of rubble which now sit in their place. Until some sort of memorial can be erected at the site of the towers, their image should serve as a monument to the dead and the relatively peaceful world America thought it had achieved.

The image of the World Trade Center will also have the vital power to tear us away from any inclination to forget our vulnerability, the hatred for America that exists in so many other parts of the world. Just as pictures of the Berlin Wall remind us of a time when political division and fear brought the world to the nuclear brink, images of the World Trade Center will focus our anger and sadness into action against terrorists. To erase those images would allow America to push last week’s tragedy from its immediate consciousness, thereby diminishing its long-term capacity to prevent similar attacks.

Landmarks, and vanquished landmarks in particular, have a unique power over the public’s conscience and imagination. Hollywood clearly knows this; in the past, it has packed theaters with people eager to see the destruction of the White House and Empire State Building (Independence Day), the Eiffel Tower (Deep Impact), and the Statue of Liberty (Planet of the Apes). At a time when our fascination with such images must be harnessed in order to memorialize a real-life disaster of epic proportions, Hollywood is instead eliminating those images from view. Doing so is a mistake, one that misinterprets Americans’ strength and their need to remember this catastrophic event.

The United States is now confronting the vision of those two great buildings collapsing violently in on themselves. It is certainly capable of remembering them as they once stood.

Nathan K. Burstein ’04, a Crimson editor, is a history concentrator in Leverett House.