I was considering writing about commercials that have irked or puzzled me lately.

I was considering writing about the frantic nature of the holiday season.

Maybe I’ll get back to those, because after reading a post on Jeremy’s site, The Rabbit Hole, and following it’s link to the Two Towers Protest site, I just felt I had to speak out.

This is a group that is protesting the name of the second Lord of the Rings movie “The Two Towers” A quote from their site:

We believe that the events that took place on Sept 11th 2001 gave America a chance for greater sensitivity. This is something that many people believe has been missing for a long time in the United States. The Spiderman movie which was released in 2002 had the images of the two towers removed from the movie. This sentiment was greatly appreciated by the Two Towers Protest Organization. We would like to see this kind of sentiment put towards the renaming of "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" to something which would be more appropriate considering the events which transpired on Sept 11th 2001. The name of this movie will undoubtedly cause a return of the emotions felt on Sept 11th which left so many people in the nation feeling stunned and in a state of shock.

Okay, I can understand that some people might find the name a sting of a reminder of the Sept 11 events, and the attacks on America’s own Twin Towers at the New York World Trade Center. This protest group’s argument is that the movie producers are being insensitive to those who still feel the effects of Sept 11.

I have a few problems with this protest group. First, the movie producers didn’t come up with the name the movie. The book by J.R.R. Tolkien is called The Two Towers. I think that if the producers WERE to change the name of the movie, they would be going against the ideas and creative work they were striving so hard to present in the first place. The book, and therefore the movie, does have it’s own two towers, and make no reference to those two towers of the World Trade Center, as the books were in fact first published in the 60’s.

Secondly, from what I can tell from the protest site, their belief is that by having the movie called “The Two Towers”, which SOME people might find a sensitive name, they think that such a name will bring up bad memories for those who were strongly affected by the events of Sept 11. I say that if this name does cause us to remember the events of Sept 11, good. It seems to me that by trying to be more “sensitive” to those that still feel the grief of the terrorist attacks, we would end up erasing any reminders of it, and this would actually down play the event itself.

While the name of the The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is not in any way related to the World Trade Center, it if brings back the memory of those events, is it a bad thing? IF it keeps in America’s mind the horrible events that we have lived through, that we now fight because of, is that bad?

I argue that it isn’t, and that it would be far worse to try to rid our culture of anything that might be a reminder of the events that did affect us in such an important way. I argue that by in their effort to be more sensitive to those who still feel the effects of Sept 11 (and given what has happened since, who hasn’t) that successful efforts of protest group would actually work against goal, which is to not forget how Sept 11 has affected people.

The views of this article are absolutely the views of the creator of this website, but they are just personal opinion. If you don’t agree with the views expressed here, tough cookies. Ain’t freedom of speech great? If you have another perspective on the topic above, you may feel free to e-mail me. (Please include a name so I can give proper credit for the submission.) I may, depending on the number of responses, time constraints, and how I feel on any given day, post other people’s opinions on the topic.