Everyone gets a cookie, even the corpses

In a bit of PR I'm sure United Airlines is loving, to the delight of patriotic and voyeuristic Americans across the land, Universal's "United 93" opens this weekend. The movie is meant to portray, using actors intended to impersonate the real people on board, what occurred on the hijacked airliner bound for the White House that passengers crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001.

It also appears to be a tasteless, culturally bereft piece of trash that takes the "everyone is special and everyone gets a gold star for merely existing" mentality to what is perhaps its logical limit.

You see, the Sept. 11 families are apparently upset that the film might not recognize each and every passenger as a coequal "hero."

There was concern that bravery aboard United Airlines Flight 93 not be made into a kind of Olympic sport, where some passengers received a gold medal for gallantry while others had to settle for silver or bronze. ...

Not everyone could charge the cockpit along the narrow aisle of a 757 jetliner, family members concede. But they believe strongly that everyone did what he could in the face of horrific fear and certain death – consoling, encouraging, planning, praying.

In this widely held view, everyone should be considered equal in a collective act of bold resistance. Yet some family members expressed disappointment with the breadth of television movies made previously about Flight 93, feeling that the lives of some lesser-known passengers and crew members were diminished or ignored.

Good god, now we're worried about injuring self-esteem post-mortem? Isn't it enough any more that when you're the victim of a routine, everyday accident, you're just a victim; but when you're the victim of a terrorist attack, you're automatically a hero, inspiring to all?

Or is the problem that one family's loss just doesn't seem quite as bad as another's if their loved one isn't shown personally punching a terrorist in the throat on screen? Is one passenger's life worth fundamentally less than another's if he doesn't get to shout a star-spangled catch phrase that sounds like "Walker: Texas Ranger" dialogue?

Never mind the challenges of dramatizing actual events and actual people when there is no reliable measure of validity and innumerable complicating political and emotional factors–the problem here is not just in the portrayals, but that this movie has been made in the first place.

Now, I'm all for the creative capitalist credo of make and sell whatever crap you like if you can find people who will buy it, but at this point, what can a film like this contribute? We all know Sept. 11 was tragic and terrifying, and anyone with a soul can imagine just how tragic and terrifying it must have been. How can reducing it to Lifetime movie sap and cheap action flick thrills benefit anyone?

What purpose does this movie serve but to lull viewers into fitting Sept. 11 into a comfortable little niche in the righteous national mythology and pushing the issues that spawned it and will continue to spawn more atrocities like it further into the background?

But of course, as there are no gay cowboys or gay penguins involved here, nobody in this country cares to raise an ethical stink over charging admission to a stylized Hollywood depiction of a real and recent tragedy. Instead, we've got Ebert and Roeper giving it two thumbs up.

Thanks, but I'll save my aviation-themed ticket dollars for "Snakes on a Plane," which, though also pointless and worthless, at least looks to be funny.