The following is the sort of thing you’d expect a “creative director” of a museum to say. But maybe not so much if the museum is devoted to remembering 9/11?
This iconic picture of firefighters raising the stars and stripes in the rubble of Ground Zero was nearly excluded from the 9/11 Memorial Museum — because it was “rah-rah” American, a new book says.
Michael Shulan, the museum’s creative director, was among staffers who considered the Tom Franklin photograph too kitschy and “rah-rah America,” according to “Battle for Ground Zero” (St. Martin’s Press) by Elizabeth Greenspan, out next month.
“I really believe that the way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently,” Shulan said.
Yeah, look how kitschy. How vigilantly and vehemently American. Ewwwwww!
But:
Shulan told The Post he didn’t know that the way Greenspan described the discussion about the photographs “is the way that I would have.”
“My concern, as it always was, is that we not reduce [9/11] down to something that was too simple, and in its simplicity would actually distort the complexity of the event, the meaning of the event,” he said.
Good point. A bunch of terrorists hijacked some planes and flew them into buildings with the goal of killing as many people as possible, because they hated America. Pretty damn complex.
I wonder what the FDNY thinks about Michael Shulan finding them too “kitchy” for raising an American flag at Ground Zero? Then again, why should their opinion matter? It’s not like they’re “creative directors” or something important like that. All they do is pull people out of burning buildings.