The Paper's reporter Cheng Xiaojun
From August 22, the documentary series "NYC Epicenters 9/11➔ 20211/2" directed by the famous American director Spike Lee was officially broadcast on HBO. The show has four episodes of two hours each, with the first three airing on Sundays and the last one broadcasting just in time for Saturday, Sept. 11, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
According to reports, "New York Epicenter" takes the city of New York as the background stage, and through the appearance of a large number of New Yorkers, tells the overall impact of a series of major social events on American society in the past two decades, from the 9/11 incident to the "black life is also fate" civil rights movement, and then to the new crown epidemic.
However, with the full episode still to be broadcast, some of the tendencies shown by Spike Lee in the show have sparked heated discussions in American society. In the end, he was forced to be known for his tough personality, and he also had to bow his head and show weakness, and decided to actively delete some of the sensitive content in the fourth episode.
Poster of "New York Epicenter"
In fact, as early as August 21, the day before the first episode of "New York Epic", there were articles written by film and television critics who had seen all four episodes in the first place, pointing to the fourth episode, when Director Spike Lee would interview members of the nonprofit "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth" (Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth).
Founded in late 2007, founder Richard Gage is a San Francisco-based architect who claims decades of experience in the field of fireproof steel construction. He believes that a plane crash or a fire caused by an airplane crash alone would not allow a building like the World Trade Center to collapse in this way. Therefore, there may be a conspiracy from within the US government behind it, and the way it collapses is more like that of a pre-arranged directional demolition device.
Over the past decade, Gegie and his fans have seized every opportunity to promote their conspiracy theories, participated in documentaries, held symposia across Europe, North America and Asia, and grown in organizations that now have more than 3,000 members of architects and engineers, plus 28,000 ordinary members.
In the fourth episode of "New York Epicenter," Spike Lee interviews Richard Geighi and others about the U.S. government's deliberate concealment of the truth on 9/11, and the interviews are by no means cross-cutting, and the length is so long that it is easy to think of the interviewer himself agreeing with these views to some extent. However, this seems to run counter to the open-minded, progressive, rational image that director Spike Lee has always held.
Spike Lee has always been a self-proclaimed New Yorker and a die-hard loyalist to the New York Knicks, an NBA team home to New York
On Aug. 23, Spike Lee was interviewed by The New York Times to answer these questions publicly. To the surprise of many, he made it clear that he did agree with these conspiracy theories.
"Yes, I have doubts about many of the issues of 9/11. So I hope this documentary may have some impact so that Congress can hold a hearing on the truth of 9/11. It turned out that he also believed that the explosion and combustion caused by the impact of the aircraft could not produce enough heat to melt steel, and the way the World Trade Center Seven fell to the ground was very similar to the scene we usually saw in the directional blasting and demolition of the building. Therefore, he has no idea that there is anything wrong with putting these conspiracy theories in the film. "The audience will make their own decisions, I am only responsible for presenting the information, let everyone make their own judgments, and we must respect the intelligence of the audience." Lee responded.
Spike Lee's attitude of supporting conspiracy theories immediately drew many objections, criticizing the director and HBO for not providing such a platform for Richard Geiger and the like, and fearing that this practice of promoting conspiracy theories would involve unnecessary knock-on effects, so that the various conspiracy theories about the epidemic and vaccines that are still rampant can also gain public opinion space.
On August 25, under pressure, Spike Lee issued a public statement through HBO: "I have now returned to the editing room to revisit the fourth and final episode of New York Epic. Please be sure to make a judgment after watching the final film. thank. In addition, Spike Lee did not make any more apologies, and a closer reading of this brief statement reveals that the director neither explains what he will re-examine, nor does he say what will happen after the review, nor does he admit that this re-examination stems from a series of criticisms of his endorsement of conspiracy theories.
However, a day later, HBO confirmed to a number of media that the content of the fourth episode of "New York Earthquake Central" has been re-edited by the director himself, removing the content involving conspiracy theories. Some media people compared the original version they had seen before, and found that the audience would see the fourth episode on September 11, which would be nearly half an hour long, and the interview content of "Looking for the 9/11 Truth Architect and Engineer Group" had disappeared.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorists hijacked a civil airliner and rammed the World Trade Center in New York, causing several buildings, including the Petronas Twin Towers, to collapse and more than 2,700 people to die. In July 2004, the U.S. 9/11 Investigation Commission came to a conclusion and finalized the terrorist attacks. However, there have always been conspiracy theories in the United States that doubt this statement, in addition to the "9/11 Truth Architects and Engineers Group", there are also "9/11 Truth Scholars Group", "9/11 Citizen Observation" and other non-governmental organizations, which have been unremittingly carrying out the so-called 9/11 truth search movement for more than a decade, publishing books and shooting documentaries, insisting that 9/11 was self-directed and self-directed by the George W. Bush administration.
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