4. The Twin Towers Became Shorthand For Period New York
Films always rely on visually iconic shorthand to get locations across. It's irritatingly crass, but every film set in Paris has to feature the Eiffel Tower; there's no easier way to get it across. Likewise, the New York skyline is so iconic in itself that to tell an audience a film was set in the Big Apple all a director needed to do was show one shot of the Twin Towers. Of course, since 9/11 that isn't the case. The Empire State Building has become the go to NYC building again (although the new towers may soon replace it), with the Twin Towers now used for a totally different purpose; to tell us it's a period movie. Mere years after the disaster films set in New York pre-2001 were digitally adding the Twin Towers and soon it was a required element of film set in the past. This practice resolutely puts the Towers in the past, showing an emerging acceptance of what happened. Given how blanket the censoring of themes marginally related to the events was initially this marks an interesting shift towards the events becoming a historical mark, rather than something in the present.
