The other day on the E train, a woman asked me how to get to “umm, Ground Zero.”
I was a little bewildered, and not because I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go there. What gave me pause was trying to decide how to proceed.
I always like to give detailed, friendly directions to out-of-towners, if only to counteract the stereotype that all New Yorkers are rude. But of all the things to see and places to go on your first trip on a subway—as she said this was for her—why go there?
I wanted to ask her if she’s been to the Met, the Empire State Building, Chinatown. The SoHo Apple store, perhaps?
Instead I gave her detailed, if not quite friendly, directions. I made her work for it.
“You don’t want to see that,” I said.
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
“It’s just a big hole in the ground, a construction site. Why go?”
“To pay my respects, I suppose.”
Then I wanted to chime in: “To whom? Anyone you knew?”
But I don’t own 9/11 just because I live closer to the Towers than she does—sorry, did. My New Yorker’s pride doesn’t make me guardian of what is to most an American tragedy. I took the map from her hands and pointed to the E’s terminus: World Trade Center.
“Is there anything there, a monument, a memorial,” she asked me. Anything to look at? No, not really, I said. Not yet.
I got off at the next stop, even though it wasn’t mine.
That woman, respectful in her slumped shoulders and doe eyes, was one of a projected six million people who will visit Ground Zero this year, according to the Downtown Alliance. That’s six million out of a total 40 million tourists annually. These are people who, for the most part, we can assume, knew none of the thousands of victims.
What draws them there?
I went down to Ground Zero, as a kind of tourist of tourism, to try and find out. Todd Sprout of Indiana, peering through the fence near the PATH station with his wife and two boys, said, “It was just someplace we had to go.” Paul Lyndon of the U.K., echoed the train lady almost exactly: “To pay respect to the victims.” One couple I talked to—on their honeymoon—called it a “must-see” during their tour of the Northeast.
I went home and called Maria Tumarkin, an expert in what historians and sociologists call “dark tourism,” also known as “grief tourism,” “tragedy tourism,” or even “thanatourism,” from thanatos, ancient Greek for death.
“Some say it’s just morbid fascination. But I think that’s a primitive viewpoint,” said Tumarkin. Her book, Traumascapes, asserts that since tragedy goes a long way toward defining national identity, vicarious experience of dark sites can allow the individual to be part of the mythmaking process, however indirectly.
It’s when people resort to code words and empty phrases like “closure” or “pay respects” that people stop listening, she explains. “Some people just go and chew it up and spit it out.” Especially when a visit to Ground Zero gets sandwiched between a pass through MOMA and a Broadway show—and that’s to say nothing of the tchotchkes and T-shirts people buy.
But, Tumarkin adds, going as an “onlooker can be an ethically treacherous position,” the power of the place can overwhelm anyone, as long as they’re willing to keep their eyes and ears open.
Which, I hope, that woman did when I showed her the way to the World Trade Center.
I was a little bewildered, and not because I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go there. What gave me pause was trying to decide how to proceed.
I always like to give detailed, friendly directions to out-of-towners, if only to counteract the stereotype that all New Yorkers are rude. But of all the things to see and places to go on your first trip on a subway—as she said this was for her—why go there?
I wanted to ask her if she’s been to the Met, the Empire State Building, Chinatown. The SoHo Apple store, perhaps?
Instead I gave her detailed, if not quite friendly, directions. I made her work for it.
“You don’t want to see that,” I said.
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
“It’s just a big hole in the ground, a construction site. Why go?”
“To pay my respects, I suppose.”
Then I wanted to chime in: “To whom? Anyone you knew?”
But I don’t own 9/11 just because I live closer to the Towers than she does—sorry, did. My New Yorker’s pride doesn’t make me guardian of what is to most an American tragedy. I took the map from her hands and pointed to the E’s terminus: World Trade Center.
“Is there anything there, a monument, a memorial,” she asked me. Anything to look at? No, not really, I said. Not yet.
I got off at the next stop, even though it wasn’t mine.
That woman, respectful in her slumped shoulders and doe eyes, was one of a projected six million people who will visit Ground Zero this year, according to the Downtown Alliance. That’s six million out of a total 40 million tourists annually. These are people who, for the most part, we can assume, knew none of the thousands of victims.
What draws them there?
I went down to Ground Zero, as a kind of tourist of tourism, to try and find out. Todd Sprout of Indiana, peering through the fence near the PATH station with his wife and two boys, said, “It was just someplace we had to go.” Paul Lyndon of the U.K., echoed the train lady almost exactly: “To pay respect to the victims.” One couple I talked to—on their honeymoon—called it a “must-see” during their tour of the Northeast.
I went home and called Maria Tumarkin, an expert in what historians and sociologists call “dark tourism,” also known as “grief tourism,” “tragedy tourism,” or even “thanatourism,” from thanatos, ancient Greek for death.
“Some say it’s just morbid fascination. But I think that’s a primitive viewpoint,” said Tumarkin. Her book, Traumascapes, asserts that since tragedy goes a long way toward defining national identity, vicarious experience of dark sites can allow the individual to be part of the mythmaking process, however indirectly.
It’s when people resort to code words and empty phrases like “closure” or “pay respects” that people stop listening, she explains. “Some people just go and chew it up and spit it out.” Especially when a visit to Ground Zero gets sandwiched between a pass through MOMA and a Broadway show—and that’s to say nothing of the tchotchkes and T-shirts people buy.
But, Tumarkin adds, going as an “onlooker can be an ethically treacherous position,” the power of the place can overwhelm anyone, as long as they’re willing to keep their eyes and ears open.
Which, I hope, that woman did when I showed her the way to the World Trade Center.
