'Going Backwards in Time to Talk about the Present':Man on Wireand Verticality after 9/11

Abstract

In recent years, Philippe Petit's wire-walk between the Twin Towers thirty years prior to 9/11 has been the object of several literary and visual texts. In this article, I argue that these texts, in particular the documentary drama Man on Wire, are in fact directed as much at the events of 11 September 2001 as they are at those of 7 August 1974. I consider the way in which Man on Wire equates Petit's act with 'harmless' crime and assumes the tenor of comedy films in an effort to displace the association of verticality with terrorism. Examining the film's visual echoes of the Ground Zero site and its allusions to the 1920s 'city' film genre, I consider a longer tradition of anxiety surrounding the skyscraper and how this informs post-9/11 narrative. I conclude that Man on Wire recuperates the trepidation that is both historically associated with verticality and has also returned after the events of 2001. This strategy reveals the film's attempt to provide a palliative to the memory of 11 September by making Petit's walk stand in for a transcendent, and sublime, moment.

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