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Now that the film is opening, that question has been answered: "They don't." The Hughes' version of "From Hell" is an extravagant period farrago that bears only a superficial resemblance to the novel. Of course, filmmakers have to be allowed the freedom to interpret or diverge from their source as they wish. But whatever choices they make does not mean that the source has been banished from memory. Yes, films have to stand on their own, and good movies can radically alter the meaning of the source (Robert Altman's film of "The Long Goodbye" and Roman Polanski's film of Ariel Dorfman's "Death and the Maiden" are just two examples). But adaptations that are inferior to the source deserve to have that inequality held against them.

Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's "From Hell" is one of the most intricate and disturbing works that the field of graphic novels has yet produced. Springing from the gossip and speculation that has long named Queen Victoria's syphilitic son Prince Albert as Jack the Ripper, "From Hell" spins a variation on that theory. In Moore and Campbell's version, Albert falls in love with and marries a young prostitute by whom he has a son. Fearing a scandal that could rock the throne, Victoria calls on her physician, Dr. William Gull, to silence the mother, who has been placed in an asylum. A group of the young mother's fellow prostitutes decide to make some money with their knowledge of Albert's marriage and try to blackmail the Queen. Victoria once again summons Gull, who sets about silencing these women by murdering them.

The graphic novel is essentially a feminist work, in which the Ripper murders are the logical outcome of the sexual repression of Victorian England. The novel is loaded with graphic, shocking scenes. But nothing in it makes the blood run cold as much as the moment when Victoria hands Gull a list of the women to be silenced. She says, "We leave the means to you, Sir William. We would simply it were done, and done well." The obscenity of the moment comes from the disparity between what she is asking and the prim language she uses. And Moore and Campbell don't stop there. Gull, half-mad and steeped in pagan lore, designs the killings as a tribute to those pagan powers, the locations of the bodies forming a pentangle at the center of which is St. Paul's Cathedral. It is, in the view of the authors, less the ultimate blasphemy than an unholy revelation. It's Moore and Campbell's intention to tear down the wall that separated the powerful and the impotent in Victorian England by linking all that was most revered in that society to its most ghastly crimes, saying in effect that the Ripper killings were simply the most extreme examples of that society's everyday crimes.

Rendered in inky black-and-white panels, the graphic novel absolutely shuns the picturesque nostalgia which is always a danger with period works. The look of the movie couldn't be more different. Working with the cinematographer Peter Deming ("Mulholland Drive") and production designer Martin Childs, the Hughes brothers have splashed out on a period re-creation that manages to make even the crummiest back alley and sewerage-infested streets look like the latest addition to some historical theme park: Squalorworld. The movie is big on fire-red skies and black clouds, wet cobblestones, flickering gaslight, and cloaked figures moving through the fog. In other words, it revels in exactly the sort of horror-movie clichés that held no interest for Allan Moore or Eddie Campbell. "From Hell" evokes nothing so much as a pair of small boys given the budget to make their own version of the Hammer horror movies they've gorged on. Which would be fine if the result weren't such a brain-dead version of a dark and complex work.

The screenplay, by Rafael Yglesias and Terry Hayes, has chosen to turn the movie into a whodunit, with the Ripper's identity withheld from us until the very end. What this means, of course, is that the novel's most daring material -- about Queen Victoria's complicity in the Ripper killings, and the dark, pagan artifacts dotting London -- is simply jettisoned. What's been substituted is a pathetic little object lesson on prejudice. Abbeline (Johnny Depp), the inspector working the Ripper killings, insists to his superior, Sir Charles Warren (Ian Richardson -- overacting as usual), that the killer must have had an intimate knowledge of anatomy. Warren insists that no educated man would have been capable of such a thing. He says the Ripper must be a Jew or an Indian escaped from a wild west show. Clearly, the Hugheses mean us to see this as the Victorian equivalent of how some minorities today are assumed to be criminals. They're not wrong, but their source goes beyond that easy equivalency.

One critic has already remarked that the butchery done to Moore and Campbell's work is the equivalent of the butchery done to the Ripper's victims. That's a pretty good analogy. Instead of a family man struggling with the corruption of his higher-ups and the temptations of the low life he comes into contact with, Depp's Abbeline has been made a clairvoyant opium addict who sees the crimes in his visions. Depp, the softest spoken, most likable of actors, does just fine suggesting a man who has withdrawn into opium as a means of dulling the pain of losing his wife and son in childbirth. His British accent is uneven but accents are disposable things, the easiest way of confusing technical proficiency with good acting. Most of the three scenes between Depp and Ian Holm, as a respected surgeon whom Abbeline consults on the case, are a relief from the stylistic thrashing about of the rest of the movie; for a few minutes you get to watch two good actors simply responding to each other, with no fuss. (Though no actor could triumph over the whipped-up emoting Holm is eventually called on to do.)

The Hugheses come up with some good effects -- the Ripper simply vanishing into thin air as he leaves the scene of a crime, or the way, when the Ripper's identity is revealed, that his eyes become jet black. (The directors also wreck the effect by repeating it over and over.) With a few exceptions, it's a relief that we don't see the worst of the killings. But I found the "discretion" of those scenes worse than even the grisliest detailing of the killings in the novel. And that's because the movie is nothing but style -- the period recreations and "Se7en"-style shock cuts and montages employing distorted color and grainy film stock.

What's lost is the detailing of the relationships that Moore and Campbell provided. The novel gives a sense of the tangled relationships between the targeted prostitutes and their clients; there is an inextricable mixture of both callousness and care among the women and the men who use them that complicates our responses. The Hugheses have reduced all the interactions to rutting in their immaculately lit back alleys. And they've lost the novel's touching relationship between Abbeline and Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), the prostitute who decides to aid him in his investigation for the sake of a romance that feels like nothing more than a contrivance.

The gaudiness of "From Hell" might make the film effective for some viewers, on its own cheap terms. But the movie is a disastrous example of filmmakers whose reductive sensibility is not up to the density of the work they've undertaken.

Charles Taylor is a Salon contributing writer.

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

The appeal (and the fun) of Donofrio's story lies in the way she defies conventional expectations -- maybe she fulfills some of the stereotypes of the '70s-era single mom, but she busts others wide open. Marshall, on the other hand, marinates the movie in conventionality like a '50s mom basting a pot roast, which wouldn't be a crime by itself if she only knew where to put the camera, or had any sense of how to guide actors or shape a scene.

Marshall's biggest crime in "Riding in Cars With Boys" is the way she undermines the subtlety of her actors. She has the use of some terrific ones: Drew Barrymore plays Beverly, a boy-crazy teenage troublemaker in a bouffant do, circa 1965. Her family is working-class Connecticut stock. Her father (James Woods) is a strait-laced cop; her mother (Lorraine Bracco) is a homemaker.

Bev and her dad used to get along famously when she was a kid. Early in the picture, we're treated to a syrupy sequence in which the two sing along with the Everly Brothers' "Dream" on the car radio -- and if your attention should drift momentarily during this misty moment, don't worry, because it will be reprised later in the movie in case it didn't thump you hard enough on the head the first time. When Bev reaches puberty, though, the two grow apart, and the rift deepens when Bev gets knocked up by her boyfriend, Ray (Steve Zahn), whom she ends up marrying at the age of 15. (Donofrio actually married at 17.)

From there -- the picture spans the years 1965 through 1985 -- Bev's life gets even tougher: She has the help and support of her best friend, Fay (Brittany Murphy), who also has a young child. But when her fragile marriage takes a nose dive, Bev is left to raise her son, Jason (played by several actors), by herself.

The relationship played out between them is supposed to be a richly complicated one, which only makes sense: Jason is a child being raised by a child, and there are plenty of times he has to play the adult to Bev's "girls just wanna have fun" arrested adolescent. But at their worst, which is most of the time, they're two self-centered monsters stubbornly clunking heads -- their relationship isn't written or played out with enough skill or delicacy to make it particularly interesting. Half the time you're simply wishing they'd put a lid on it.

And huge chunks of the movie seem to be simply missing in action. Bev's big dream, as we're reminded repeatedly like so many whacks to the kneecap, is to go to a top-drawer New York school. (The name "NYU" is uttered over and over again in dreamy, reverent tones usually reserved for candidates for beatification.) We see Bev applying to a special program early on in the movie, but we never see her actually get admitted anywhere. Eventually we're told that she has zipped through her schooling and has managed to land a publishing deal for her memoir, but we have no idea how she got there.

The actors do their best with Morgan Upton Ward's wobbly screenplay. Murphy has a few scenes where her sweet, lost-in-space flakiness flourishes into something brighter and tougher, even though Marshall doesn't quite know how to play it up. And Barrymore works her role here valiantly. She's often been given more credit for being a charming presence than a gifted actress. It's been hard to convince audiences that her nicely turned performances in movies like "Home Fries" or "Ever After" were more than just riffs on her own bubbly personality. But she's one of those actresses who responds so naturally and effortlessly to the camera that she's often able to tap something true and deep.

Here, though, she's best in her most offhanded moments -- as when, having donned a party dress for a teenage soiree at which she hopes to seduce her latest crush, she absent-mindedly fans her armpits before joining the fray. When she's called on to do more -- particularly in the '80s scenes, where she's done up in frightful dragon-lady makeup designed to make her look older -- she comes off feeling forced and awkward, as if she'd had trouble latching onto her place in the movie.

Zahn's performance is the only one that shines defiantly in the face of bad direction. He's always an astonishing comic presence -- with his easy knack for delivering a line a half-beat late, he's the equivalent of a seemingly lazy jazz musician who's actually got the time right in his pocket.

But Zahn can make you giggle even as there's something about him that's taking you apart inside. He works minor miracles with the most basic lines of dialogue, just by doing something as simple as putting the right amount of hesitation between the words or glancing away so briefly you barely register the flicker of his eyelashes. "I love you. A lot," he tells Bev at one point, and just after he's said "I love you" -- just as we're looking in wonder at his face and everything it's giving up to us -- Marshall switches camera angles so we can't see him.

There are plenty of other times where Marshall's camera feels exhaustingly attentive -- she works the teat of high emotion like a state-of-the-art electronic cow milker, to the point where it wearies us just to watch. But in the face of something we actually want to see, she swings the camera away, and it feels like deprivation. This Marshall is worlds away from the one who gave us the witty and entertaining "Big." Why does she punish us so, all in the name of good old-fashioned mainstream entertainment? The answer may be simply that she doesn't know any better. If that's success, a woman needs it like a fish needs a bicycle.

Stephanie Zacharek is a staff writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

It all adds up to something, but it's not as big a something as Lurie would like to believe: The message of "The Last Castle" is that following military rules blindly is a very, very bad thing, but that following a quietly powerful and charismatic military leader -- in this case, Robert Redford's disgraced three-star General Irwin -- is a very, very good thing. In other words, if you just figure out your proper role and learn how to play it, everything will turn out for the best.

In "The Last Castle," the trouble begins when the disgraced but ever-dignified General Irwin is transferred to "the Castle," a maximum-security military prison in which hundreds of convicts suffer under Colonel Winter's iron rule. Irwin makes it known almost immediately that he has no respect for Winter; Winter fights back by trying to break him. The animosity between the two escalates until Irwin -- who has rather effortlessly earned the trust of his fellow inmates, including the surly Yates (Mark Ruffalo), whose dad served under Irwin during the Vietnam War -- hatches a plan to undermine Winter's power.

"The Last Castle" isn't aggressively pro-military in the worst way, but Lurie (along with writers David Scarpa and Graham Yost) seems to be walking pretty gingerly along the top of a very narrow and rickety fence. "The Last Castle" desperately wants to be the "Henry V" of prison revolt movies -- a picture that makes you understand the value of war when it's absolutely necessary, by coaxing you to sympathize with a ragtag group of prisoners who are clearly oppressed. But the themes that ring out most loudly in the end -- some men are just born leaders; others do best if they just conform -- are numbingly retrograde. "The Last Castle" is comfortably conservative without being particularly exciting.

For one thing, the conflict between Gandolfini's Winter and Redford's Irwin doesn't crackle nearly as much as it should. Gandolfini, playing one of those "small" men who puffs up his stature by being a by-the-book bully, pulls off some cleverly timed jokes -- he doesn't make the mistake of chomping down on his role, as some less intuitive actors might, and it makes him an enjoyable villain most of the time. But forced to stand up against Redford's quietly gleaming dignity, he's sunk. Redford's Irwin has been around the block a few times: He gets lots of hyperexpository sentences that begin with things like "I had a friend in Hanoi ..." and "Three years ago in Bosnia ..." Redford's performance is formal and stiff: It's hard to play a role like this with any looseness, although it probably doesn't help that the press materials for "The Last Castle" refer to him as a "screen legend" -- isn't that sort of a kind synonym for "fossil"?

Yet Redford looks better here than he has in most of his recent movies, especially "The Horse Whisperer," in which he seemed to have been shot through layers of flattering gauze. He's wholly more believable, and more appealing, when he's unafraid to look his age. (And at 64, he's not even that old.) It could be that not playing a romantic lead takes some pressure off Redford -- I understand how difficult it is for beautiful actresses to grow older, but male actors must have their own struggles with it, too. Redford comes off well in "The Last Castle" because he looks comfortable with who he is, which, you could argue, is the root of all sexual charisma to begin with.

Redford has all too often been an actor who just tries too hard, and it rarely serves him well. Still, even if much of his dialogue in "The Last Castle" is stiff and comic-book masculine, there are a few moments where he lets down his guard. In one scene, with Delroy Lindo as a general who's paying him a visit, he lets out a zinger of a crude remark, and its off-the-cuff snap is a wonderful surprise.

But moments like that are rare in Lurie's oppressively rugged movie. On the basis of "The Last Castle" and his last picture, "The Contender," it's probably safe to assume that Lurie is the kind of director who thinks he's packing his movies with important food for thought. "The Contender," allegedly a picture with a solid feminist core (the movie's dedication read "For our daughters"), actually suggested that if a woman politician is falsely accused of a transgression, she's better off if she takes the high road and refuses to defend herself. That way she can just sit back and play the role of moral princess, while the more powerful men around her leap to her defense and clean up the mess.

"The Last Castle" is far less offensive because at least it functions on some level as an action movie: Guys get into fistfights; stuff gets blown up. Its flabby logic isn't its sole excuse for existing. But there's one crucial problem: Even with those fights and explosions, it's still deadly dull. By the time Irwin starts edifying one young prisoner on the history of the military salute ("You know where saluting comes from? It comes from medieval times ..."), it's time to head for the hills. "Follow the leader" was one of the most boring childhood games imaginable, and it doesn't improve with age.

Stephanie Zacharek is a staff writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

Grace and Jessie compete for a role in the school play on Once and Again (10 p.m. Fri., ABC). Lara Flynn Boyle hosts a rerun of Saturday Night Live (11:30 p.m. Sat., NBC), with music from Bon Jovi. E! True Hollywood Story (8 p.m. Sun., E!) looks at the ups and downs of the Spice Girls. Tony becomes suspicious of Pussy on The Sopranos (8 p.m. Sun., HBO). On Alias (9 p.m. Sun., ABC), Sydney simultaneously tracks a terrorist and spies on Francie's boyfriend. Patricia Wettig ("thirtysomething") guests as a reclusive star witness on The Practice (10 p.m. Sun., ABC).

Specials

The four-hour Concert for New York City (8 p.m. Sat., VH1) benefits the victims and honors the rescuers of the Sept. 11 attack. Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Macy Gray, James Taylor, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Gwyneth Paltrow, Susan Sarandon and Denis Leary are among the performers and hosts. The new cable movie In the Time of the Butterflies (8 p.m. Sun., Showtime) stars Salma Hayek, Edward James Olmos and Marc Anthony in an adaptation of the bestseller about sisters who fought against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Laura San Giacomo has the title role in the new TV movie Jenifer (9 p.m. Sun., CBS), the true story of a young woman diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease and her devoted sisters (Annabella Sciorra, Jane Kaczmarek), who went on a fund-raising tear to help find a cure. The two-part cable drama Victoria and Albert (9 p.m. Sun., A&E) stars Victoria Hamilton and Jonathan Firth as the royal couple, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Diana Rigg and Jonathan Pryce co-star.

Sports

Baseball: NLCS, Game 3 (8 p.m. Fri., Fox); Game 4 (7:30 p.m. Sat., Fox); Game 5, if necessary (7:30 p.m. Sun., Fox or Fox Sports) ALCS, Game 3 (4 p.m. Sat., Fox); Game 4 (7:30 p.m. Sun., Fox or Fox Sports

Football: Patriots at Colts, Ravens at Browns, Titans at Lions or Steelers at Buccaneers (1 p.m. Sun., CBS) Rams at Jets, Falcons at Saints, Bears at Bengals or Panthers at Redskins (1 p.m. Sun., Fox) Broncos at Chargers or Chiefs at Cardinals (4 p.m. Sun., CBS)

Talk

David Letterman (CBS) Kevin Kline, Caroline Rhea, Richard Holbrooke Jay Leno (NBC) Kevin Spacey, Bjork Politically Incorrect (ABC) Bill O'Reilly, P.J. O'Rourke Conan O'Brien (NBC) Steve Zahn Craig Kilborn (CBS) Jacinda Barrett

All times Eastern unless noted.

Joyce Millman is Salon's TV critic. To read more by Joyce Millman, visit her column archive.

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

"The evildoers have struck our nation, but out of evil comes good," Bush told military personnel in a speech at Travis Air Force Base on Wednesday. "We are a good, kindhearted, decent people, and we're showing the world just that in our compassion and our resolve."

But the simultaneous campaigns of war and relief create a simplistic, and erroneous, impression of the impact the U.S. can hope to have in Afghanistan, particularly when it comes to living conditions and human rights, contends Dr. Lynn Amowitz, the Fireman Health and Human Rights Fellow for the organization Physicians for Human Rights. Amowitz, who studied Afghanistan during the last 18 months, says that country's gravest ills may be due in part to the Taliban, but the roots of the problems extend far deeper than a change of government or airdropped rations could quickly remedy. Meanwhile, she says, every day that the U.S. drops bombs on Afghanistan, a dire situation becomes much worse -- despite any consolation offered by pamphlets and peanut butter.

When Amowitz first left for Afghanistan last spring, she set out to determine the full extent of the health and human rights crisis there, particularly as regards the nation's women. In May, after more than a year of study and several trips to the country, Amowitz released a comprehensive report detailing the extent to which the Taliban was responsible for the suffering of Afghan women. With Afghan issues still largely below American radar, the document received very little attention at the time.

Then, after Sept. 11, "all of the sudden, Afghanistan was interesting," says Amowitz, who in the weeks since the attacks has been fielding phone calls from news organizations across the country.

Amowitz's report, "Women's Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan," pinpoints the full extent of the Afghanistan crisis in almost 100 pages filled with grim statistics. The report details the country's general health disaster, but Amowitz's particular concern is the unique situation of women under the Taliban, who are forbidden to work, get an education or appear in public without wearing a burqa and being accompanied by a male escort. Amowitz looked at the physical and mental effects of these restrictions. As a result, she unearthed some unexpected trends, such as a nationwide concern over women's rights, and the extent to which Afghan women actually support seemingly oppressive dress codes.

To obtain her data, Amowitz and a staff of local Afghan surveyors interviewed 746 men and women over the course of three months. Although researchers involved in a previous Physicians for Human Rights study had interviewed women who lived in Kabul, the new study targeted a more diverse group: Afghans who lived in Taliban and non-Taliban regions, refugees in Pakistan who had fled the Taliban and refugees returning to Afghanistan who had never lived under Taliban rule.

"This is the problem with Afghanistan -- you can't go to one place and generalize to the entire country; it is so diverse, the people are diverse, the traditions are diverse, the ethnicities are diverse," contends Amowitz. "Each group has their own tradition and culture. To say that one group represents the rest is absolutely impossible."

Whether rural or urban, male or female, Taliban-controlled or not, the Afghans that Amowitz surveyed all agreed on the bleakness of their situation. Only 17 percent of all Afghans in rural areas, and 38 percent in urban areas, have access to safe water; no wonder, then, that 42 percent of all deaths in Afghanistan are due to diarrhea. Fifty-two percent of all children under age 5 suffer from malnutrition. Women and girls in Afghanistan suffered the most. Because girls are forbidden to go to school, for example, they miss out on critical landmine awareness programs, putting them at risk for injury by the country's millions of landmines (males, however, still account for a majority of all landmine injuries, since they move about more freely). And women who are sick often can't even go to the doctor, since 21 percent of all women in Afghanistan and 64 percent of the female refugees in Pakistan have no access to healthcare at all -- either they can't afford it, don't have the required male escort to take them to a clinic or simply don't have a female doctor they can visit.

"The problem is that time is of the essence there," Amowitz says. "If you don't educate women, and if you require that women see women doctors, at some point there will be a huge void of physicians to treat women."

Since 1987, Physicians for Human Rights has been sending doctors to Third World countries to document health issues through the filter of human rights; the two, they say, are inextricably tied. In Afghanistan, Amowitz links women's human rights with the general well-being of the entire country. For example, widows who have no man to feed them and who cannot work are not only impoverished and unhealthy themselves, but usually have children who also are starving. Says Amowitz: "In traditional societies where women are still the caretakers of the household, it's a hardship on the family if the women is not either physically and mentally well."

But Amowitz also found some encouraging news. Women's access to healthcare has marginally improved during the last year, thanks mostly to the diligence of the nonprofit organizations and international aid groups that have dispensed food, medicine and shelter there. (Other groups have opened special bakeries for war widows, feeding the 20 percent of the female population that is forbidden to work and has no male support.) In fact, 70 percent of the country's healthcare system is now dependent on international aid -- meaning that 7.5 million people rely entirely on the beneficence of the global community.

The flip side of that news, though, is the hard truth of life after Sept. 11: Those international aid organizations have left Afghanistan, having been either forced to flee for their own safety or ejected by the Taliban. And even with the good intentions of the U.S. government, the promised millions in aid has so far consisted of little more than 275,000 airdropped meals of beans, rice and peanut butter, most of which appears to be going into the mouths of Taliban soldiers.

Only a few aid groups have managed to get supplies in to Afghanistan by truck, and those supplies also have fallen victim to the war: On Monday, the U.S. accidentally bombed a Red Cross building, destroying two depots full of wheat and other humanitarian aid, and on Tuesday the Taliban seized an additional 7,000 tons of U.N. food (roughly half of the available supplies for all of Afghanistan).

"I fail to see how this attacks the problem of feeding 7.5 million people for any sustained period of time," Amowitz says, and she's not alone in her concern: On Monday, the BBC reported that Unicef officials have predicted 100,000 Afghan children could die this winter unless food reaches them in the next month.

"It's pretty easy to see that without international aid, you've now got 7.5 million Afghans at critical risk for death -- by starvation or by exposure," Amowitz says. "It's a catastrophe that no one is able to understand or see. Without the international aid community in there, the longer this happens, the worse it's going to be." But even if the women of Afghanistan don't starve to death in the upcoming months, there's a good chance they may kill themselves. According to Amowitz's report, 70 percent of women living under the Taliban had symptoms of depression, and 18 percent of all women in Taliban areas had attempted suicide, along with 9 percent in non-Taliban areas. ("That number is probably higher," Amowitz says, "because I can only talk to the people who survived, not those who didn't make it.")

But, she adds, the Taliban isn't entirely at fault here: Only 30 percent of these suicidal women blamed Taliban policies for their depression -- the truth is that the country's problems run far deeper than the edicts of its fundamentalist regime, Amowitz says.

"This is where you have to take the whole context of Afghanistan," she explains. "Twenty years of war, devastating poverty, a new drought. You've lost your livestock and you can't work, you've lost family members in the civil war. And then finally these people come in to power and they take away all your rights as a human being. That's probably enough to push you over the edge, and say, 'I've had enough, I want to end it all.'"

Amowitz was surprised to discover that many women outside Kabul didn't mind being wearing the burqa. Some 90 percent of the women who don't live under Taliban control still choose to wear the burqa, reports Amowitz, an indication that what urban, educated women in Kabul may find oppressive, others simply find traditional. Indeed, 82 percent of all of the women surveyed didn't consider it very important whether they were persecuted because they didn't wear the appropriate clothing. This could be because they weren't being persecuted, however -- only two of the women Amowitz spoke with had ever been punished for what they were wearing, despite highly publicized beatings over dress code violations in Kabul, documented by RAWA.

"That's not necessarily representative of what is going on everywhere in Afghanistan, and doesn't represent what goes on every day," says Amowitz. "If you talk to aid organizations that have been in the area for years and years, they will tell you that [physical abuse by the Taliban] is not as frequent as it would appear on TV." In fact, she contends that most such behavior happened in 1998 and 1999, and then only in the large cities like Kabul.

And although Taliban policies are extraordinarily oppressive, the Taliban turns a blind eye to its own edicts in some parts of the country. "The Taliban is not one group, it is a group of a lot of people with a lot of different ideas. There are moderate, liberal, severe and fanatical Taliban," says Amowitz. "In some areas the Taliban [avert] their eyes to women having education, and there are classes that occur; a lot of nongovernmental organizations run schools, and healthcare is not a problem. It depends on where you are in the country."

Still, more than 90 percent of both women and men interviewed by Amowitz in Afghanistan said they believe in women's rights -- specifically equal access to education, work, freedom of expression and representation in the government. Only half of those surveyed believe in strict dress codes for women. Furthermore, 80 percent of those surveyed felt that the teachings of Islam aren't inherently restrictive of women's rights. This, says Amowitz, was the most encouraging news yet, proving that the Taliban's attitude towards women isn't representative of the male population at large, nor of the version of Islam that the Taliban invokes. And a vast majority responded that these issues -- healthcare, education, freedom of expression, government representation and the right to work -- belonged in any future peace talks.

At the moment, though, human rights activists and doctors have few solutions for the humanitarian crisis taking place in Afghanistan. Amowitz contends that food should be brought in by truck wherever possible, and borders should be opened so that starving refugees have some kind of safe haven ("If aid organizations can't get in," she says, "the civilians should be able to get out.")

In the long term, she adds, if and when the Taliban is removed from power, Afghanistan's problem is even more daunting: Not only do women need to have their human rights returned to them by a benevolent government, but the entire country needs food, clean water, sanitation, hospitals, police stations, buildings and infrastructure. Afghanistan, says Amowitz, will need to be rebuilt from scratch.

For her own part, Amowitz climbed back on a plane on Monday and plans to quietly slip over the border into the northern part of Afghanistan, to catalogue the toll that the war is taking. "It's not clear what I will do there -- I need to do a lot of interviews and figure out what we can add to the situation, human rights-wise," she explains. In the meantime, she says, "I hope that our study shows that the Afghans have been victims for 23 years, and that victimizing them even further is unconscionable."

Janelle Brown is a senior writer for Salon Technology.

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

At first he claimed it was a rupee a page, but after I gently raised my eyebrows, he immediately lowered the price. I later confirmed that 75 paisa is at the bottom end of what's charged around here for a decent photocopy, using the thinner, Pakistani A4 paper (imported paper starts at one rupee a page).

I'm making photocopies to show my stories to some of my sources and family here. He observes a photo of Sohail Mohammad Shaheen, the Taliban's deputy ambassador in Islamabad, on a story I wrote about a recent visit with Shaheen and his two wives at their house.

To most patrons of this store, he would just be the "photocopy walla," the photocopy guy. But he has another identity. "I trained in Kandahar," he tells me softly, in Urdu. Oh. "I'm ready to go now to become a 'shaheed,'" he says. He doesn't know, or prefers not to say, who ran the camp he attended -- was it al-Qaida? -- though when he went, in 1998, the area was firmly under the control of the Taliban, so it surely had its stamp of approval. He says he's ready and wants to go back to fight the U.S.-led coalition. "Insha'allah," he says. God willing.

But for now, the imam at his mosque told the congregation gathered for jummah, Friday prayers, that the Taliban didn't need afraad -- manpower -- yet. (They did, however, request blankets.) So he waits. (The Pakistani government has warned mullahs to refrain from rallying mujahids.)

Qaiser Nadeem is just 20, with only the slightest bits of mustache and beard sprouting from his young face. He is wearing a simple monotone-colored cotton shalwar kameez when I first meet him at a video store where he works, surrounded by what are likely bootleg copies of "Mulan," "Alice in Wonderland," "Small Soldiers" and a whole row of "The Little Mermaid," along with, of course, the copy machine behind which he stands. He's somewhat difficult to speak with because he averts his eyes from mine. The Quran warns against mixed-gender eye contact with anyone other than a relative, lest it create lustful thoughts. But he does talk to me, this Western Muslim woman journalist, and after a while I let my eyes drift to the copy paper as I speak, hoping to make him comfortable enough to keep talking.

It would be easy to portray Nadeem -- an aspiring mujahid willing to cross the border and battle the U.S.-led forces in the name of Islam -- as the product of the zealotry that sways uneducated youth into a blind hatred for the West. He doesn't hate the West, he says. He doesn't like its culture and doesn't like selling it from the shelves of the store where he works. It's a job, though, he says. He looks down upon what he sees as a decadent lifestyle. Most of all, he hates its foreign policy, particularly its support of Israel.

"If they did the right thing, then nobody would hate America," he said.

The next time we meet, we sit curbside in front of Toy Land 2 at Jinnah Super Market, a toy store with a stack of toy boxes piled outside, including the Just Start Scooter. I have a sense of irony about the place; the last time I was here in 1992, my cousins had arranged a secret meeting with the man I was about to marry on the eve of our wedding. As in other cultures, it's considered unlucky over here for a husband and wife to see each other before their wedding (and in many arranged marriages that's the the first time they're meeting), and I guess it turned out to be unlucky. Though this was a "love marriage," it was supposed to follow the same rules as an arranged marriage. But when we both showed up at Jinnah Super Market, escorted, of course, by our battalion of cousins (all of whom have insisted on anonymity in these dispatches), we broke one of the key rules.

Now I sit next to this young man, both of us looking off in other directions to avoid eye contact. He explained that his transformation began after a cousin came back from Kandahar several years ago a more religious man, preaching against music, television and those who didn't pray the requisite five times a day. Nadeem was living a modern life, watching Bollywood movies, not very religious, mostly a troublemaker, he says. But he was intrigued, and crossed the border around this time of the year in 1998 to train in Kandahar. What was the training camp like? He broke into a grin.

"Bahoth acha laga." I liked it a lot.

"Bahoth maza atha tha." It was lots of fun.

"Bahoth suhkoon hoe thah hay." There is lots of peace of mind.

In his daily life, he says, he has to squeeze time out of a day in which he works from 10:30 a.m. to midnight in this video store that belies his religious convictions, only to eke out a monthly salary of about 2,000 rupees (about $30.76).

At the camp, "dhimagh saf hoejah thah hay." Your mind gets cleansed.

The camp lasted three months, and was attended by about 2,000 others, like himself, he said. They woke up around 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. for a special namaz, prayer, called "tahajjud," which isn't one of the day's five required prayers, but falls between the night's isha prayer and the predawn fajr prayer, earning special sawab, blessings. (I'm familiar with the prayer because my dadi, my father's mother, often falls asleep in her chair praying this namaz, battling sleep to earn those extra blessings.)

They would go back to sleep and then rise again before dawn at 5 a.m. for fajr namaz. Then they had thalawath, reading of the Quran and durs, lectures about the Quran.

That was followed by light exercise, he said, to get the blood circulating, including jumping jacks. Around 8 a.m., they'd eat breakfast that always included roti (bread) and chai (which he considered "first class").

Military training would begin afterward, learning to shoot a firearm -- pistols and Russian-made Kalishnikovs -- many of which were provided by the CIA to the Afghan mujahedin during its war against the Soviet Union. The trainees, for the most part, took aim at a bucket or a rock, making fun of each other when any of them missed the target. Then they broke for lunch, the afternoon's zoh'r namaz and a two-hour nap until 4 p.m.

They awoke for the day's third prayer, as'r namaz. There would be more durs, until around 6 p.m. or 6:30 p.m. They would pray the sunset magrib prayer, eat dinner and gather again for taleem, study. And, then, the night's last prayer, isha, before going to sleep.

He knows the stereotype about students like himself being the blind followers of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. He says, in Urdu, with a couple of English words parachuting into his thoughts, "Onkee guidance hay." I have their guidance.

"May tho kodh say soch kur kurthah hu." I do it with my own thinking.

And becoming a martyr for Islam is something he has thought about a lot. "My most important thing is my life. If I can give that then I will give my life," he said. What would he accomplish? "If I was successful for Islam, then Taliban will survive."

That's all he has time for, so he gets up and returns to work, where he reluctantly pulls "Little Mermaid" down from the shelf for a customer. But all the while, awaiting orders to move across the border.

Asra Q. Nomani, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal currently on leave to write a book, is reporting for Salon from Pakistan. To read more about Nomani click here.

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

Maybe Azaz Hussain, a young Pakistani journalist for an Urdu newspaper, Khabrain, my cousin and I had given a ride to some nights earlier, had been on to something. As we dropped him off at his newspaper office, he asked me, "Are you here for journalism or matrimonial?" Perhaps, it would seem, a little of both?

I do my best to discourage the mother. "This potential bahu is seriously thinking of buying a motorcycle to ride around Pakistan," I say. "You wouldn't like that, no?" The mother insists she doesn't mind. In fact she had slaughtered a chicken for me, knowing I would be coming today.

"I did Isthikhara and saw in my dream that I would be going to report in Afghanistan. You don't want a bahu running off to Afghanistan, do you? Why don't you first see if I return or become a 'shaheed'" -- a martyr, I joke.

No, that's OK, says the mother. We'll marry both of you together first, she says, and then you can both go off to Afghanistan together. Great.

Who will take care of you in 10 years if you fall sick, the eligible boy asks; he's 34 years old, a year and a half younger than I am, but still called a boy until he gets married. "But I might become a 'shaheed' tomorrow," I say, joking, sort of. "What is the purpose of worrying?"

As I leave he stands at the top of the stairwell and asks, "Should I tell my family to bury their expectations?"

Yes, I think, perhaps.

Isthikhara is a Muslim act of faith in divine revelation, which reveals itself in the subconscious of dreams. I write as I bounce on the highway past trucks painted elaborately with peacocks and paisleys. The other day, on this same route, I saw a lorry, as the big trucks are called, with a larger-than-life Osama bin Laden airbrushed onto the back, a machine gun on his side. My would-be husband's younger brother, beside me, repeated what has become a refrain over here: "Osama bin Laden, the hero of the Muslims."

The driver of this slightly beat-up Suzuki taxi has a purple velvet "Allah" written in Arabic dangling off a suction cup attached to the front window, a graduation tassel swinging with each bounce. A small black-and-white photo of bin Laden from a newspaper sits in the right corner of his rearview mirror tucked below a watch. A reporter from South Africa took a photo of this driver, Mullah Abdul Hafiz Pirzadah, as he glanced his gentle eyes into the rearview mirror. He wishes he could remember the reporter's name. It was a very difficult name. You know, one of those foreign names. Not as easy as a Muslim name. A horse grazes on the side of the road, tied to a post. The sun blazes deep on this late afternoon carrying with it a thin layer of sweat. Men sit piled atop buses where luggage would normally rest. We circle around an exit ramp. Islamabad, nine miles away.

My cousin Arina had written the instructions for me to the Isthikhara, which Muslims are taught to recite when they want to make a decision. I know I want to go to Afghanistan. It is, after all, the birthplace of one of my Sufi spiritual inspirations, Rumi, when Afghanistan was part of the Persian Empire. The rest of the world has to get the blessing of the Taliban Embassy. Me, I had to e-mail my father two nights ago to pass his blessing onto my bure abu (my father's eldest brother) and my phuppi (my father's sister) who feel responsible for my safety here in Pakistan. (Dad, thanks for calling.)

My cousin Arina has gotten some 42 marriage proposals (really, only a slight exaggeration) and turned to Isthikhara to sort them all out. The instructions are simple: two rakats Naf'l prayer (that's two sets of specific prostrations in the direction of Mecca, the holy city for Muslims), after which you read a prayer in which you think about the question before you. Then, you're supposed to sleep without speaking to anyone. (I woke up and used AOL Instant Messenger without speaking a word. I don't know if that counts.)

Sure enough, a message came to me in the moments before I awakened this morning. In the dream, I, a friend who is here as a journalist and another woman were having our papers surveyed by Sohail Shaheen, the deputy Taliban ambassador whom I recently wrote about. (I got reams of critical e-mail after I wrote of my visit with Shaheen and his two wives in his house, which is called the White House. One reader equated me to "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, who was ridiculed for being sympathetic to the Communists during the Vietnam War. I can only believe that some readers were made uncomfortable by any information about the Taliban, the monsters of the free world, that could make them seem remotely human. Islamabad Asra? Fine. And perhaps, one day, Afghanistan Asra, too.)

In this dream, the three of us were cleared to go to Afghanistan. I woke up from the dream with a smile, knowing the mandate. In the dream, I saw on TV CNN-like graphic flames on the northern four-fifths of Afghanistan with the southern one-fifth the only part left in Taliban control. That's OK. We'd still go.

I go to the Taliban Embassy. It's a right turn at the white sign with black lettering, "Embassy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." There's a Pakistani journalist escorting a Western reporter in for an interview with Sohail Shaheen, the sort of tag-team reporting that's coming with a price tag during this war coverage. Some Afghans shuffle in and out. A guard puffs on a cigarette. The driveway is cracked. It's not a posh place. A man known as Abid Saheb, one of the English-speaking officials inside, comes out barefoot. He hands out a press release photocopied on cheap Pakistani paper. The headline: "American Terrorist Attacks on Afghanistan Continue."

A Western journalist puts his right hand over his heart as he approaches Abid Saheb. "Could I have one?" he asks gently.

"It is the last one," says Abid Saheb.

"Visas?" the journalist asks meekly.

"Monday," comes the response.

I have to return my application tomorrow, but I already got my answer in my dream. I hope. Now just that little matter of a stamp.

I come home, tell my phuppi about my day. I got the Pakistan visa extension (they're only giving 14 days right now). Then, there was the small matter of the marriage proposal.

"Thoba. Thoba. Thoba." Loosely translated: What a shame. What gall. Howcouldtheybesobold?

I guess that's a no.

Asra Q. Nomani, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal currently on leave to write a book, is reporting for Salon from Pakistan. To read more about Nomani click here.

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

"In my eight years working here, I've never seen this kind of outrage," says Susan Wengras, legislative aide to Betty Olds, a City Council member who voted against the resolution. "Parents in other cities are calling to say that they've cut Cal off their children's list of potential colleges. Others are talking about a boycott of Berkeley businesses, and we've also gotten some letters from people saying, 'I lost three friends. How dare you do this?'"

But while the media plays up the "only in Berkeley" radicalism of the measure, many local observers say the real surprise is how hotly debated it was and how relatively moderate was its wording. The resolution barely squeaked by, on a 5-4 vote, passing only after its language was softened; while the council's antiwar members favored an immediate cessation of the U.S. bombing campaign, the final resolution called on President Bush to stop the air raids "as soon as possible."

In fact, the Berkeley resolution doesn't show a city united in its antiwar opposition, but a city divided. "Deeply split," in the words of Mayor Shirley Dean, a moderate Democrat, who opposed the measure.

What's more, Berkeley is not alone. Other liberal college towns with a strong antiwar tradition -- such as Madison, Wis., Cambridge, Mass., and Santa Cruz, Calif. -- are also experiencing a political identity crisis following the carnage of Sept. 11. Aging activists whose antiwar convictions date back to the Vietnam War era still have influence in these communities, but their power to define public opinion and city policy has greatly diminished.

The change is partly demographic: The '90s boom brought more wealth and fewer radicals to these cities, attracting people who cared more about good schools than international politics. But even longtime residents say the Sept. 11 attacks altered many people's convictions. Some liberals who marched against Vietnam believe that bombing Taliban and terrorist targets in Afghanistan is justified.

"This is not the '60s revisited," says Jane Bear, a Santa Cruz resident and former antiwar activist who attended a City Council meeting Wednesday that debated the current crisis. "We always said [during Vietnam] that if we were attacked on our own soil, and our own civilians were killed, that that would have changed everything. Now it's on our soil. Now the new generation has to do away with the rhetoric of the '60s and come up with a way to deal with what's going on."

Rethinking attitudes toward U.S. policy is no easy proposition in cities like Berkeley, where the municipal government has long condemned America's foreign affairs, from the Vietnam War to investment in South African apartheid. The Reagan administration's military involvement in Central America prompted the city to declare itself a sanctuary for refugees from El Salvador during the '80s, and more recently, the City Council passed a resolution that declared solidarity with the nation of Tibet. One day each year, the city flies the Tibetan flag over City Hall. But the Sept. 11 attacks have forced even the most liberal conclaves to reevaluate their political views. Berkeley's Wengras says that she marched against the Vietnam War and never expected to support Bush, whom she calls "a moron." "But this is a different time, a different war. We were attacked at home; we lost over 5,000 innocent people. We can't let this go unanswered. How can you let people use human beings as missiles? When terrorists come and do this to us, we have to respond."

Berkeley City Council members who share Wengras' view tried to kill Tuesday's controversial resolution, but they settled for watering it down significantly. The original draft condemned U.S. foreign policy in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, but opponents got that language removed. The final draft called for a halt to the bombing "as soon as possible," rather than immediately. And it contained a sentence offering condolences to families who lost loved ones in the attacks.

Because the press and public have come to expect radical measures from Berkeley, complains council member Linda Maio, they ignored the fact that she and her colleagues worked very hard on the language to make sure "it didn't look like we were trying to tie the government's hands," she says.

"We understand that you have to take out military installations, that you have to take out planes and weapons," Maio says. "It's not that the city opposed the start of the bombing but just that it should end quickly, 'as soon as possible.' When that is isn't up to us."

Nonetheless, the resolution has brought scorn and derision on the city; it has been widely denounced as naive, simple-minded and even traitorous. Opponents have threatened to boycott the city, and that scares political leaders already coping with a local economic downturn. Mayor Dean says that a local lumber company lost a $60,000 contract, and that the Chamber of Commerce has received dozens of complaints. Some people have even asked the chamber to cancel their local restaurant reservations for them.

"I just went to KTVU [a local TV station] for [Fox News show] 'The O'Reilly Factor,' and before I left, I checked my voice mail," Dean says. "Of the last 26 phone calls, 20 mentioned the boycott. I'm very worried about that."

Given the potential damage to the city, Maio says she has some regrets about even the watered-down resolution. "If I had known that it would have been mischaracterized as a condemnation of the bombing, I wouldn't have voted for it."

Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin, has also experienced a backlash against its deep-rooted antiwar convictions. After the Madison School Board attracted howls of protest for banning the Pledge of Allegiance from its schools on Oct. 8, the board reversed its decision this week.

In Cambridge, Mass., where pro-peace passions have traditionally grown as thick as the ivy in Harvard Yard, a patriotic mood prevails. Even though Cambridge has had a so-called peace commissioner on the city payroll -- charged since 1982 with promoting nonviolent problem-solving -- the enormity of the Sept. 11 attacks and the outrage about them have largely kept her quiet. The only war-related resolutions passed by the Cambridge City Council since Sept. 11 put flags on city streets and guaranteed full pay to city employees called up to serve in the military.

The difference between the moods in Cambridge and Berkeley probably stem from the cities' relative proximity to the terror attacks' ground zero, says Terrence Smith, chief of staff for Cambridge Mayor Anthony D. Galluccio. "Two planes left from here; a lot of people from the Boston area died," says Smith. "It's harder to make those leaps to pacifism when you could run into someone on the street who lost a mother, a brother or a father. The knee-jerk left-wing reaction is hard enough to support but it's even harder on the East Coast, in Boston, because of the proximity, because there are people walking our streets who lost people in the attacks."

Still, even in Berkeley and Madison, the municipal governments' antiwar moves didn't sit well with many residents. A week after Madison's school board banned the pledge, more than 1,200 packed a public hearing and after nine hours of debate, the board bowed to citizen pressure and voted to reverse its decision. "It was democracy at its best," says Bill Geist, a Madison resident who attended the meeting and called for the pledge to be returned to local schools. "There's a new breed of patriotism here. There are flags everywhere and for the first time, those who feel there's a peaceful alternative may believe that they'll be outnumbered."

Demographics -- the city's shift from being a university town to one more focused on business -- account for part of the shift, but not all. "The real energy came because of Sept. 11," says Geist.

Dona Spring, the Berkeley council member who first sponsored the measure, didn't return calls for comment. But other veteran progressives in this antiwar capital aren't surprised by the angry local reaction. "Berkeley's been moving toward the center for some time," says Gus Newport, the city's radical mayor from 1979 to 1986, who was known for his peace trips abroad and his opposition to U.S. foreign policy. The reasons, Newport says, are obvious: College students aren't as radical as they used to be, and because of a state-mandated end to rent control and the '90s boom, property prices have spiked, bringing a more affluent and conservative class to what used to be known as "the People's Republic of Berkeley."

Still, liberal strongholds like Berkeley are not likely to become the Bush administration's most ardent supporters. Peace activists in these cities believe they will once again become centers of antiwar opposition if the conflict in Afghanistan drags on and grows bloodier. Right now, Santa Cruz "is about 50/50, 50 leaning toward supporting Bush," says council member Mike Rotkin, a longtime radical activist, speaking after the town hall meeting Wednesday. "But that's just because they don't have a real good understanding of what's going on. If you talk to them for 15 minutes, you can usually open them up."

Mayor Dean of Berkeley agrees: "The support (for Bush) is tied to what's been going on; whether it will last depends on how the administration handles future events. If they go astray, you would see a strong antiwar movement appear in a flash."

But Dean expresses some dismay at her city's deeply ingrained antiwar attitudes. "Berkeley is still a liberal city, a lot more liberal than most cities," she says. "But what I see is a lot of folks from the '60s who are nostalgic and out of touch. They look back through rosy glasses and think of the unity of that era and they want to reach back for the good old days. They don't understand that this is not the Vietnam War. They don't understand or accept or don't believe that there is a difference. But there is a difference and it's pretty apparent. We got attacked on our soil and 6,000 people were killed. The only crime they committed was that they went to work in the morning."

Additional reporting by Jakob Schiller

Damien Cave is a senior writer for Salon

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

The post-Sept. 11 sanitizing of American pop culture seemed tasteful, even impressive, at first. A horrific tragedy had occurred, and the gatekeepers of mass media took it upon themselves to spare us the usual onslaught of crudeness. Who among us, softened by crying and late-night CNN, didn't wonder that first week if mainstream culture had finally, miraculously, grown up? On TV and the radio, the normal din vanished and instead we saw and heard maturity. We felt incredible grief, of course, but also sublime pride -- the firefighters, the blood donations, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- and the country's formerly coarse, mindless, vapid commercial noises were right there raising the bar for civilization.

Then that first week ended. News services got their footing and started looking for the big picture. The big picture, at least until the bombing, was ourselves: How were we coping? How would we change? The media chose to answer by taking its own temperature. Hollywood, we were told, was tearing up its violent scripts. Video game manufacturers were deleting representations of the World Trade Center. Radio conglomerates were suggesting playlists more appropriate to the times. Mass media had sent itself back to the drawing board.

For the rest of us, our critical faculties slowly eased back into place and we started to have doubts about culture's new maturity. Gamers complained about game modifications. "I'd like to remember the New York skyline with the towers there," the St. Paul Pioneer Press quoted one as saying about Microsoft's PC Flight Simulator. "A much better memorial would be the towers left in place with Old Glory at the top flying at half-staff." Movie nuts felt the same: The New York Post noted that only 22 percent of Hollywood.com users voted in favor of deleting images of the World Trade Center from movies. In the sport of kings, the people behind the Belmont Breeders' Cup had to rethink their hasty revision of the official logo -- according to the New York Daily News, fans missed seeing the World Trade Center image in the skyline. Finally, we wanted to know, did Clear Channel really ban John Lennon's "Imagine" from the airwaves? In truth, despite dozens of articles to the contrary, the company only issued a recommendation to that effect; but this was beside the point.

The point, it seems, lay somewhere in the shifting space between civilized restraint and hypersensitivity. Where, in that continuum, lay the deletion of anything remotely terror-related from popular culture? We didn't entirely miss the Jerry Bruckheimer previews, but we didn't look forward to 10 years of insipid, peaceful pablum, either. Over a month later, we still haven't responded clearly to the current dilution of America's entertainment stimuli.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

It may be dumb but it's fast: Pop culture had already begun cleansing itself by the afternoon of Sept. 11. "As soon as [the attacks] happened," Arnold Schwarzenegger told Jay Leno about a violent film that had been in the works, "the first thing I did was I went to the phone and I called Warner Brothers."

Other calls got made, too. It was widely reported that hip-hop group the Coup scrambled to change their album artwork, a representation of the World Trade Center exploding. According to the Houston Chronicle, Russell Athletics draped a "God Bless America" banner over a New York billboard that had previously promoted sweatshirts with the suddenly grim line, "Yes, New York. It Comes in Black." And the Los Angeles Times reported that among the movie releases being delayed was "Sidewalks of New York" -- a comedy, no less -- apparently for fear that the city wasn't ready to laugh at itself.

According to the New York Times, DC Comics has "indefinitely postponed publication of one violent comic and rewritten forthcoming stories to eliminate references to terrorism." The Detroit News reported that "24," a Fox TV show, cut a scene showing an airplane exploding in flames. Even the fashion world had to adjust, frantically revising anything resembling terrorist chic. The International Herald Tribune reported that Diesel had renamed its striped denim line from "Scars and Stripes" to "Stars and Stripes."

Advertisers scrambled as much as anyone. The Houston Chronicle reported that the American Association of Advertising Agencies sent out a memo urging members to "exercise sensitivity."

"We have taken a look at everything we do to see if it can be misinterpreted somehow," Stan Richards, of Dallas ad agency the Richards Group, told the Chronicle. "The last thing advertising wants to do is offend people."

Journalists, too, heeded the call. Stebbins Jefferson wrote in the Palm Beach Post: "What the country needs now is not legal censorship but the self-discipline of producers and customers to avoid the Ground Zero where the entertainment industry ignores the negative consequences of products that could encourage troubled minds to commit violence." Pop culture stumbled in those first few days after the attacks, but it soon steadied itself and returned to the business of reconfiguring reality. This particular reconfiguration is a new one -- we haven't seen this kind of caution since World War II or the McCarthy hearings -- but the impulse is familiar. What's remarkable, then, is not that we're again subject to protection from genuine experience; what's remarkable are those few accidental moments of authenticity when we weren't. In light of that, mass media's return to normalcy is worth observing.

In the first days after the attacks, the American flag was up for grabs. Military buffs hoisted it, but so did New York buffs and missing-people buffs and regular buffs, too. Also available, and newly commodified, was sensitivity. The entertainment and advertising industries snatched it up with lightning reflexes, and all of their post-Sept. 11 decisions soon fell under the heading of "sensitivity." When TV scripts were rewritten, magazine ads were toned down and movie releases got pushed back, representatives told us again and again that they were being sensitive. But were they?

Surely their hearts were in the right place, and maybe the people making these decisions deserve praise for being proactive so soon. But to call the recent decontamination of our cultural landscape "sensitivity" is to indulge in a troublesome spinning of facts. Worse, it permits a faulty definition of the concept in a time when we need it to be right on the money.

Earlier this week, CBS announced that another episode of "The Agency" -- this one about anthrax -- would be shelved. As the thinking goes, the show would have unhinged our anxious selves. This doesn't sound implausible: We're wrecks right now, and TV's good at pushing buttons. But choosing not to push those buttons -- is that sensitivity? Nothing we see on a TV drama could make us any more paranoid about envelopes, ventilation systems and talcum powder. Conversely, we aren't going to feel any better by not seeing the show. If it's truly our mental health that CBS is concerned about, they're misinformed if they believe they can really come near it. At a time when TV news contains all the tension and suspense imaginable, TV dramas suddenly seem strangely impotent.

The tiptoeing around our sadness has also lost its way several times, as did CBS's caution with our anxiety. When Paramount's "Zoolander" had shots of the New York skyline altered to exclude the World Trade Center, surely audiences felt no lack of sorrow. Aside from further erasing the destroyed buildings, the decision is plain clumsy. Making a skyscraper disappear doesn't actually make us forget it -- it's just that we can't see it. This kind of hypercaution is like remaking "The Elephant Man" but lopping off his head to spare us the ugliness.

Stephen Farber recently made the point in the Los Angeles Times that anticipating audience sensitivities is hard enough to do, much less responding to them properly. Indeed, why stop at the twin towers? Maybe showing cities besides New York will have the unexpected effect of making us mourn in reverse. Perhaps a fictional anthrax plot wouldn't make us any more nervous than one about, say, mail carriers. Where does the line get drawn?

For being such compulsive market testers, the movie, TV and advertising people have seemed strangely off the mark lately. It's true that we were, and are, shocked by what happened on Sept. 11, and by what could happen again tomorrow or the next day. But what does that have to do with "Friends"? When NBC decided to cut scenes of Monica and Chandler waiting for a long time in an airport, what, exactly, did they hope to accomplish vis-à-vis our grief? Sensitivity these days often boils down to just avoiding empty accusations of poor taste.

Exposing the moral or intellectual limitations of the entertainment or advertising industries is usually a waste of time. And now, perhaps more than ever, there are more important things to work on. But in the overanalyzed relationship between mass media and the general public, meaningfulness can still be found. It appears meaningful what Pepsi spokesman Dave DeCecco told the Houston Chronicle recently:

"Our advertising is about joy ... That's not what the nation was feeling, so we pulled the ads."

But the "Joy of Pepsi" ads have since returned -- are we to infer, then, that we're feeling joy again? If we accept the conceit that voices like Pepsi's roughly reflect our own, do we have to heal at their pace, too? Surely, if pressed, Pepsi would concede that most of us are still coming up short on joy. If that's true, these companies have backed themselves into an interesting corner: Whereas they responded to Sept. 11 first as fellow human beings, they must now face their unambiguous identities as commercial enterprises: They want to have their cake and sell it, too.

The impulse to airbrush away anything that might hurt us is understandable. And as grief therapy tells us, do whatever works. But retrofitting all potentially offensive culture borders on pathological. If it's true that videotapes of "E.T." will be modified to exclude that line about terrorism, then we're up against an unfortunate, if well-intentioned, revisionism. The reality is that we did mention terrorism flippantly before Sept. 11. Likewise, the New York skyline did contain the World Trade Center, and popular entertainment did profit from fictional terror plots and digital explosions.

That was our world, in all its dumb innocence; to deny it is to deny our violent expulsion from that world, and consequently to belittle the tragedy itself. We should watch movies, see the twin towers in them and remember yet again the new planet we now live on. Isn't that why we go to art in the first place? Those who instead want to be transported elsewhere needn't be rushed -- they can just watch other movies.

But maybe this is precisely what mass media fears. Blandness sells, or so the purveyors of mainstream entertainment believe. (And don't let ad execs claim exception -- the trend in advertising may be edginess, but that's only blandness with a patina of affectation.) It's a complicated and impressive calculus that makes a successful romantic comedy, for example, at once saleable and forgettable. Messages that haunt the audience days after the film or the billboard or the TV show interfere with our entertainment, or so we've been told. So along comes Hollywood's latest offering, seeking both love and critical invisibility -- another seventh grader looking to blend in at Homecoming -- when suddenly a two-second shot of Manhattan weighs the movie down with unintentional meaning. Instead of slinking off quietly to video like all the rest, the film will be forever linked to one of the most remarkable things to happen in this century. In popular culture terms, this is a catastrophe.

The only way to proceed from a nearly ungraspable horror is to look at it, not away from it. The "sensitivity" we're now getting is well-meaning sophistry, and it's robbing us of genuine aesthetic experience. The emotional responses available to us, in turn, diminish with every pulled punch. There are real reasons for resisting the current inducement of amnesia: Reality -- at least the one under culture's limited purview -- needs witnesses to exist. As buildings fall, we must be sure we hear the sound.

Chris Colin is the associate editor of the Life and People sections at Salon.

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

Aaaaaaaaaay! You got it. Producer Garry Marshall has turned his '70s sitcom about the '50s into a stage show that brings back Richie, Potsie, Ralph Malph, Fonzie and the rest of the Arnold's regulars.

A staged reading of the gala musical, which Marshall hopes will eventually make it to Broadway, will hit the boards at L.A.'s Falcon Theater this Sunday for a three-night run.

The score will feature period classics. Presumably, Richie will continue to find his thrill on "Blueberry Hill," and the show will make much of the sitcom's giddy theme song.

The script will summon back old friends like Pinky Tuscadero and the Malachi Brothers. (Note to Ben and Jerry: cross-promotional opportunity for Malachi Crunch ice cream?) It will also introduce audiences to Fonzie's dad.

According to the show's spokesman, the elder Mr. Fonzarelli is a "tough merchant marine" who also has a sensitive side and is in his 40s.

In other words, if Henry Winkler were to take a role in this thing, he'd be old enough to play his own grandfather at this point. Nevertheless, I will refrain from saying anything mean about the musical, for fear of later having to say I was wrrr-rrr-rrr ... I was wrooo ... I was wro-woo-woo ...

Oh, Fonzie ...

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Another TV show takes to the stage

Scooby-dooby-doo, where are you?

Headed to Broadway, too, apparently. According to Wireless Flash News, Warner Brothers is fixing to launch a stage show featuring Scoob, Shaggy and the rest of the g-g-ghost-hunting gang.

Just don't let Velma get too close to the Fonz. Partnership for a pimple-free America

And while you're getting all nostalgic about TV shows from your youth, spare a thought -- won't you? -- for Peter Brady.

Christopher Knight, who played Peter on "The Brady Bunch," has apparently just taken a job as a spokesman for an acne education campaign directed at teenagers called "Healthy Skin, Healthy Outlook." And while the 44-year-old actor admits he himself didn't suffer from acne as a teen, he knew a lot of people who did.

Um ... OK, Scoop.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Oh, Master!

He dreamed of Jeannie ... and a giant octopus?

Larry Hagman, of "Dallas" and "I Dream of Jeannie" fame, has decided it's time to let the world know about his dalliances with LSD.

In his new memoir, "Hello, Darlin'," co-written with Us Weekly's Todd Gold and excerpted in the New York Daily News, Hagman recalls the night Peter Fonda took him to a Crosby, Stills and Nash concert back in 1967.

"After the show we went backstage and visited David Crosby," who handed Hagman a "handful of tabs."

The man who would later shoot into the world's consciousness as J.R. Ewing tried the superpure acid and promptly saw "the entrance to a cave … guarded by octopus-like creatures with long, writhing tentacles. There were also two other creatures that looked like lions with feathers. Then I turned and saw my grandmother, who'd died when I was 12."

Whoa.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.

Amy Reiter is a senior writer for Salon People. For more columns by Amy Reiter, visit her column archive.

Got a hot tip or a bit of gossip you'd like to share? Tell Amy!

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."

From: sss@artdoc.com (New York)

To: rwd@sn.com (India)

My friend, my lover, Friday morning and the skyline is still amputated. As I write this, I am looking out my window, facing west, the first blush of dawn creeping into my room. Smoke billows out over the East River. I keep my windows closed even though it promises to be a glorious day. The smell is still very bad. I tried calling you earlier, but I screwed up the time difference, you must've been sleeping soundly. Dreaming of me? My skin, perhaps, caught in your ruby lips, your white teeth grinning at my surprise? Despite everything that has happened, I dreamt of you last night; your indigo eyes, your jet hair streaming down your back like a plume, like a feather. "Oh, my love, thou art fair. There is no spot in thee."

I am determined today to get on the train and go into the city. No, don't protest. I have to get on with my life although I am haunted to the core of my being by the pictures of the missing on every tree limb, every mailbox, every store window. Snapshots of family picnics, of sunny vacations, glorious smiles. We now are a city with the souls of thousands floating over our heads. At times I feel it is not the smoke that stings my eyes, but the ghosts of people ruthlessly ripped from their lives.

And I really can't be persuaded to fly to Paris. Yes, I will miss kissing you in the Fifth Arrondisement beneath grinning gargoyles, sipping hot coffee at the café. And then the train trip south to Cote D'Azure. What happy times we have had there! Thick omelets oozing butter, warm croissants and white cubes of sugar for our coffee set in a white bowl, while we sat on a white terrace overlooking the blue Mediterranean. Remember the restaurant on the beach in Juan les Pins? Yes? First, five hours of making love followed by lunch under the yellow and black striped awning. I do. I remember. I remember how ruthlessly you bit off the heads of the shrimp, then popped their pink bodies in your mouth, how the grease from the butter made your face shine in the hot light. How your dark skin got even darker as we sat on the beach, your head in my lap, your tongue tickling the inside of my thigh. We like to eat and we like to make love.

But I really can't be persuaded to get on a plane. You must understand that the whole world has changed for me. The whine of an ambulance, the roar of an F-15, the smell of smoke signal danger, disaster. It is personal, private. It is global. I cannot be persuaded to get on a plane, not even for you, my darling. I feel I must continue to pay respect to my city, my home. So, right now, we will have to content ourselves with our letters, our words, and the odd phone call until I can get to you or you can get to me. It will be alright. Don't you think? That's what I tell myself, it will be alright.

Here, let's walk through our first morning in the South of France. Read this and then close your eyes:

We arrive in Nice by train at 8 in the morning. We settle into a gleaming silver Mercedes, and haggle over the price to Juan les Pins, the driver finally agrees to 350 francs. While we speed south, you are nestled against me and your hair smells like sunlight. The Mediterranean to our right is a blue bowl of water. I turn and rest my head on your shoulder, suddenly the car swerves and you admonish the driver, in fractured French, to slow down. He pretends he doesn't understand you. Then you relax, hand your fate over to the gods, kiss my earlobe, blow softly in my ear because you know how much I like that. And I do like that. My spine tingles ... wait, momentarily distracted by a fighter jet flying overhead, my God ... that was low. Shit. OK, where was I? Oh, yes, my spine is tingling because you have just kissed me. But my spine is tingling, though not from pleasure, from fear. I've lost it. I will have to try again tomorrow. Sorry. I'm just so sorry about all this. I'm feeling very sad now, and don't think I can continue. Let me try again tomorrow, my love. Let me try again. Date: 9/16/01 2:00:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time

From: sss@artdoc.com (New York)

To: rwd@sn.com (India)

You must explain Islam to me, the Middle East. What have I missed? Am I so out of touch with the rest of world? This is what I know of Western culture, this is what I know of New York City: Before September 11, when I rode the subway, I would look around me, at the faces, yes? And before I would bury my nose in my newspaper, I would give a little sigh of satisfaction surveying the diversity around me. There is the thin Korean man wearing black leather sneakers carrying a worn briefcase, his eyes closed but not sleeping; and there a woman, gleaming, her skin the color of onyx, her head wrapped in multi-colored kenta cloth, a choker of shells and leather around her regal neck; a trio of young boys from Guatemala; a well-dressed couple from Park Slope, and me. This is my New York, this is Western culture as I know it. It is diverse, pluralistic. The shopkeepers, the green grocers, the car services, are all run by men and women from the Middle East, Muslims, these are my neighbors, my friends, so what have I been missing?

You know this city, you do, you've spent many months here in my small apartment in Brooklyn Heights. And you must understand, darling, that this is the supreme irony to me, to attack this city, above all cities. It continues to be incomprehensible. And here is the further irony, we are all so far from the world of politics, even you, halfway around the world in New Delhi. For the most part, we just live our lives, we just fall in love, we just go to work to pay our cable bill and then eat dinner at the little Dominican restaurant on the Lower East Side.

So don't try to poke holes in my resolve to get on a plane, to fly to Paris. There is no half-way now. Listen, I am afraid. My classes are cancelled, perhaps permanently, and to make matters worse I am running out of money. And to make matters worse, more than 5,000 people are still missing, they stare at me, accost me on the simplest of tasks: mailing a letter, shopping for tomatoes, they are always there.

I confess that these days I am seized by a desire to cradle the head of a fireman on my shoulder. If we are to be completely honest with each other, as you entreat me, then this is what I am feeling as I write you. I want to cradle the head of a fireman on my shoulder, I want him to shower in my bathroom, illumed by the morning sun pouring in from the skylight. I want him to feel safe, redeemed. This is my simplistic, perhaps clichéd response when I see their anguished faces on the evening news. This is what I feel -- an almost atavistic desire to offer comfort, succor. A hot cup of coffee, a hot shower, my warm body, my life. Don't let this hurt you. I love you, but you are so far away ... and they are here, standing at the fire station, one block from my house. I see their mute faces, standing in the open doorway, talking softly to each other. I long to go up to one of them, enfold them in my arms, kiss their tired eyes.

Don't let this hurt you! What else have I to offer? Don't worry, I won't do this. I am too shy, but I wish I could. I wish I could open my mouth to them, my legs, enfold just one of them within myself. But again I am too shy, so instead I offer them coffee, I offer them a smile, a "good morning," and then I move on, feeling horribly hopeless, unable to offer anything of real substance.

Don't give up on me after reading this. I am still yours, body and soul. You have my heart. I love the cinnamon taste of your dark skin, the feel of your warm tongue trailing up my legs, the way you grip my hips as you enter me, your habit of humming Hindu music, just under your breath, after you slide off my body, covered in sweat. I love your mind, too, the way words pour from your mouth, so eloquent, so impassioned and so intelligent. The way we have not cared about cultural differences -- your God, my God, in the end we know they are the same God, and how we always find redemption and connection in the act of making love. This is the highest form of worship I know, to open up to another human being so completely, and this is what we have, you and I.

But there has been a shift in the paradigm here, so profound and so tragic, I feel I have lost my way. I get off the train in Times Square and cannot for the life of me discern east from west, even by looking at buildings that I have known for 15 years. What does that mean, do you think? Will I ever find my home again, in a home so utterly changed? And will we ever find our way back to each other, now that jumping on a plane and flying across the Atlantic, even to Paris, seems impossibly remote, filled with hidden danger. "Oh, my love, thou art fair to me." Date: 9/27/01 10:20:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time

From: sss@artdoc.com (New York)

To: rwd@sn.com (India)

Your continuing silence really hurts me. I have set my alarm for the middle of the night to call you, but you must turn your phone off because I get your machine time and time again. Listen, I cannot help what I feel! It was just a desire, a wish, abstract. Surely you get a glimpse of a dark-haired woman, her sari drifting luminously from her shoulders, like a cloud of yellow silk, and desire her? Want her? All the more so because she is flesh, because she is palpable, standing in front of you at a cocktail party, her lips just inches from yours, your resolve lessened by a couple of scotches. Perhaps you have wanted to invite her to a dish of curried lamb at the café that stays open all night, where you listen to music you both can hum along to, sing to?

And her eyes are infinitely warmer because they are gazing straight into yours, and not just a photograph because photographs are cold, they are. I have often kissed your photograph, and it is cold, it is flat, and not at all real. If you say this isn't so, then I don't believe you. You are lying to me, and we have always promised to be honest, no matter what the cost. Don't you see, this is the price we pay for falling in love with people who live on opposite sides of the world. And this is the price we pay for living in an age of terrorism, where 19 people armed with box-cutters massacred 6,000 people. What can I say? This is not something either of us asked for, yet this is what we are given, and we have to struggle along somehow, learning new rules, new ways to soothe our broken hearts.

Darling, please listen to me! I promise to not make love to a fireman. Just writing these words makes me laugh, because the sentiment is so naive. And trust me, there isn't a red-blooded American woman alive right now who doesn't have this desire, this attraction. This, too, is atavistic. They represent strength and courage, they are 100 per cent masculine, a glorious sea of testosterone. In truth? They are probably just as wounded, they cry as much or more as anyone walking the streets of this city. In truth, they probably go home to their beds at night, to their wives, too broken, too tired to do more than just roll over and fall into dreamless sleep.

Come now, don't pout. Let me tell you about the river I walked into this evening. Since you have refused to speak to me, I called an old friend from high school who lives in the East Village. We agreed to meet for dinner. I took the 4 train to 14th Street, half asleep, still very numb, disoriented, displaced. I walked up the stairs and took in the memorial at Union Square, the posters, the half-burnt candles, the dried flowers, and just let it wash over me. I couldn't take it anymore. I can't take it anymore. So, resolute, I turned away and walked east to Avenue A. I fell into step with the myriad of people sauntering along, the air still warm, the smell of smoke still lingering in the air, but now almost familiar. As if the air always smelled this way, dark and sulfurous. Soon I was walking beside a well-dressed couple. I admired her gray felt hat, its flourish of feathers at the brim, her elegant skirt, her trim legs encased in silk stockings, the cut of his jacket, the bright flash of his tie. I deliberately matched their step with mine, why I don't know.

At the crosswalk we were joined by a group of men and women in their 20s, also dressed up, their skirts shorter, their hair longer, but still elegant, still somber, dignified. When the light changed, we crossed the street together, but now I felt I was walking in a river, the water warm and sweet. Then in flash I remembered that it was Yom Kippur. I was walking in a river of Jews on their way to synagogue. Soon, the whole of 14th Street was flowing with Jews, accompanied by scores of others. And it seemed we were all walking in step with each other: Jew, Christian, Muslim, agnostics, drug dealers, kids on skateboards, teenagers with yellow and pink hair, hip-hop blaring from speakers. And, as if by mutual consent, we all stopped in front of the fire station, and reverently gazed at the names of the missing. After a moment, we all started to process again.

Finally, the procession stopped in front of the synagogue. Where, I confess, I touched the hem of the jacket of the woman with the gray felt hat, silently wished her love, and continued walking east.

Date: 10/1/01 5:20:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time

From: sss@artdoc.com (New York)

To: rwd@sn.com (India)

Well, darling, I'm afraid I have done the unforgivable. I slept with my old friend from high school. No excuses. I am tired of begging you to write me, to call me. So I won't proffer excuses. I will just tell you the story. You be the judge of whether or not I am an immoral woman (though I don't think I am).

We sat at a tiny storefront restaurant, there couldn't have been more than 10 tables. The waitress set down a plastic bowl of homemade salsa, fresh chips and then sangria filled with peaches and apples, wine-colored. I had one glass, then two, then three. I ordered chicken fajitas, he ordered a vegetarian burrito. Midway through our meal, someone lowered the window because the smell of smoke had become intolerable. It made a loud noise, everyone in the room jumped. It sounded like gunfire; then a collective laugh at our panic, then back to the business of drinking sangria and eating Mexican food.

After dinner, without saying a word, I followed him home to his one-bedroom apartment. Without saying a word, he closed the door behind us, didn't turn on the lights, took me in his arms, and kissed me. Yes, I kissed him back. I hadn't a thought in my head. I didn't think of you, I didn't think of the amputated skyline, I didn't think of the 5,000 souls floating in the air over us, I didn't think of a single thing except how good it felt to have a warm body next to mine. He continued to kiss me. Then we both silently and slowly took our clothes off, still standing, still kissing, still not talking. Then we lay down on his red leather couch and quietly, silently he entered me. I rose up to meet him.

When it was over, he poured me a glass of wine and turned on the news. We haven't spoken of it since, and I don't suspect we ever will. It was totally in the moment, stuck between the pages of history like a footnote, like a maple leaf picked up from the sidewalk and pressed between a forgotten book of poetry. Nothing more, nothing less.

So there you have it. My story. Write me and tell me that you have done the same thing. Write me and tell me that you also felt compelled to take a stranger to bed, an elegant woman clad in yellow silk, delicate gold filigree dangling from her ears. Tell me that as you unwound your lustrous black hair, she kissed your back and your shoulders. Tell me that you caressed her nipples as if they were spun sugar. And that when it was over, you still didn't know her name. That you will never speak of it again. That it meant nothing. Then call me and tell me you love me.

Lillian Ann Slugocki is coauthor, with Erin Cressida Wilson, of "The Erotica Project."

All articles must be reprinted with the following words "Originally Published on Salon.com. Reprinted with permission. Copyright Salon Media Group 2001."