(Deeper Underground) I Get Nervous in the New York City Streets

9/11, marc_buehler/NBC, 2001

Yeah, again. After publishing my analysis of Cloverfield last month, I continued thinking about the film's relation to September 11th. What I have written below is really pushing the limits of the narrative as I highly doubt the producers, being American, are communicating the message that I think could be extracted from it.

»Spoilers Throughout«

In my previous analysis I argued Clover (the titular monster) was a personification of 9/11 and as such, the instigator of the character drama. The origins, motivations, and purpose of Clover are ultimately unknown. The only clue is the brief shot of an object strike the ocean in the final scene before the credits (the promotional material offers a scant back-story). Despite Rob's camcorder perfectly capturing that brief glimpse, Rob and Liz are entirely unaware of it. When Clover starts wrecking New York, no-one understands what is going-on nor why it is happening.

I also said that the American public was largely unfamiliar with large scale incidents of terrorism at home. When the first tremor strikes with Clover's landfall the group amassed at Rob's farewell party turn to the television for information. The news bulletin simply reports that a ship has capsized in the nearby harbour prompting the characters to go to their building's roof and view it themselves whereupon a very large explosion occurs, driving everyone out onto the streets. The audience knows the cause of that explosion is the large monster they've come to see, but the protagonists cannot see/comprehend it despite it's magnitude. After attempting to flee the city and turning back, Rob and his cohorts stay in an electronics store for a few minutes. Whilst there a crowd is seen gathered around the on-display televisions tuned to the rolling news. On screen we see the smaller antagonists attacking the army only a few blocks away. Although the crowd is within walking distance of this danger, they are mentally distant from those events - just like the bombings in far off lands they see on the nightly news.

In the prior news segment we see an aerial shot of Clover moving between the downtown skyscrapers. It's not obvious what the thing is, but it is obvious that it is animate and big. The reporter speaking over the footage is almost oblivious to this large moving object in the field of view, never actually referring to it. In the third news clip;  the reporters, and thus the protagonists, have finally acknowledged the elephant in the room. Though they understand the nature of the threat, they and others continue to ask why it is happening - why 9/11 Clover is attacking the city. (Promotional material explains Clover is distressed rather than belligerent).

As the dust was settling around the World Trade Centres, people were asking why someone would fly planes into the New York skyline. September 11th seemingly came out of nowhere. The elephant, so to speak, was that there was something out there that did not like America. Something that was going to strike back. And it wasn't out of the blue - the US embassy bombings in Eastern Africa and the USS Cole bombing all occurred within half a decade of 2001. When these incidents weren't being marginalised, they were often explained away as jealousy of the greatest nation on Earth. If that nation only knew fortune comes with a sword hanging overhead.

Unlike just writing an essay about what you want to say, in art the message is open to interpretation. Clover's slow reveal and the dawning realisation of events are dramatic elements, and almost certainly not thematic as I have argued above. This is just one possible interpretation of Cloverfield that happens to be something of a sensitive subject.

It's still alive...

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