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How Soon Is Too Soon For This 8-Bit Video Of The Burning Twin Towers?

Rebecca Fishbein

Published Sep 11, 2015

Modified Sep 11, 2015

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Rebecca Fishbein

Published Sep 11, 2015

Modified Sep 11, 2015

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We've gotten some uncomfortable 9/11-related pitches over the years, but one of the strangest specimens to float through our inbox is this 8-bit video, dubbed "Before & After," of the burning towers set to the dulcet tones of a Nintendo player. See below:

The video is the work of one Anthony Sneed, a New Jersey-born New Yorker who often uses the 8-bit medium to illustrate things like Hitler, the KKK, and JFK's assassination.

Sneed told us that the above video is intended "to make a statement about consumerism and the fact that we have 9/11 movies that have made hundreds of millions of dollars," particularly in an age where we've become desensitized to the videos and photographs from that day. Or so Sneed says. "I remember when it was happening everyone was saying it looks like a movie when this is all going down," he told us. "The most real event that's ever happened to America and the people in New York City, especially, the first thing we equate it to is a movie, it's fiction. I thought it was really strange."

Though Sneed insists the video's apparent glibness means no offense, there is something decidedly jarring about it. Maybe we're not all so desensitized after all. "I think the music is what makes it come off as a little crass," Sneed said. "It comes off as funny, but my intention is not to make it funny. It's really hard to find somber Nintendo music. So I was like, 'Well, if I can't find it and everything is really silly, I'm just going to go in this direction. Everything is like a movie with that.'"

Still, Sneed's got a point about how 9/11 and consumerism seem to go hand-in-hand. "I remember when I went to Canal Street in 2002, they were selling these lighters with the Twin Towers that said 'Never Forget' on them. When you lit the lighter, the first [tower] exploded. The other plane had these red LED lights that would alternate and blink when you would light it," he said. "I said, 'That's so fucked up.' Then I thought about America and capitalism, and I was like, 'Oh, this makes complete sense to me.' It's so cold, it's such a cold thing to do.'"

Anyway, apparently "Before & After" is part of a larger 9/11-related work, some of which was on display at a show in Chinatown in 2011.

Tagged

9/11

anthony sneed

too soon

original

Rebecca Fishbein

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