When Pop Culture and Tragedy Collide

In 1994, Tom Clancy’s book “Debt of Honor” ended with a stolen Boeing 747 crashing into the U.S. Capitol building — a plot that eerily foreshadowed 9/11 and prompted some to ask Clancy if he worried that he’d inspired the terrorists.

In 2014, Stephen King’s “Mr. Mercedes” began with a deranged man stealing a car and plowing into a crowd waiting to enter an auditorium, killing or maiming numerous victims.

Time and time again, stories will have a link to reality.

No one has asked King if he thinks “Mr. Mercedes” inspired Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s horrific massacre in Nice, France, earlier this month, in which he similarly drove a truck into a crowd.

And such questions might seem silly. Tom Clancy certainly seemed to think so: When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him about parallels between 9/11 and “Debt of Honor” during an interview in 2003, Clancy’s reply was a tart, “I haven’t got any fan mail from Osama bin Laden.”

Pop culture could always use a larger dose of self-awareness and civic responsibility.

At the same time, its efforts in that direction usually seem more condescending than respectful. And so we’re served with tacked-on, clumsy attempts to pander to sensibilities artists clearly view with disdain as immature, provincial blindness — the sense they’re resentfully kowtowing to political correctness.

For that reason (and others) it’s probably best to consume movies, music, and other pop cultural offerings with a hefty dose of salt and skepticism. Because time and time again, stories will have a link to reality. Writers draw from real life, but in some cases, real life imitates art — and when it does, the collision between story and reality can be, to put it mildly, uncomfortable.

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Take Stephen King’s short novel “Rage,” published in 1977 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It describes a troubled student who brings a gun to school, murders his algebra teacher, and holds the class hostage. King yanked “Rage” from print after four school shootings between 1988 and 1997 were linked to it.

King, who wrote “Rage” in 1965 while still in high school himself, discussed his decision in his 2013 e-book “Guns”:

“I suppose if it had been written today, and some high school English teacher had seen it, he would have rushed the manuscript to the guidance counselor and I would have found myself in therapy posthaste. But 1965 was a different world, one where you didn’t have to take off your shoes before boarding a plane and there were no metal detectors at the entrances to high schools.”

King didn’t believe “Rage” had provoked the shooters all by itself — rather, he was concerned it provided just the wrong catalyst for the disturbed teens who might have committed crimes in its name.

Related: Hollywood Loves to Rewrite History

“They found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken,” he wrote. “Yet I did see ‘Rage’ as a possible accelerant, which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it.”

While King was concerned about inadvertently contributing to tragedy, the movie and music industries have always seemed to be more afraid of reminding audiences about tragedy.

The 1986 movie “Space Camp,” for instance, which involved a Space Shuttle accident, was supposed to be released early in the year but 20th Century Fox decided to delay release until June 6 following the Challenger disaster on Jan. 28. The movie was a dud, earning barely half its budget back at the box office.

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The events of 9/11 prompted delays of numerous movie and music releases.

Hip-hop group The Coup, for instance, found themselves scrambling for a new cover image for their album “Party Music,” scheduled for release in November 2001. The original cover for “Party Music” featured band members DJ Pam the Funktress and Boots Riley posing in front of the World Trade Center, with an enormous fireball erupting from its upper floors that could have been pasted in from news coverage of the plane crashes.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie  “Collateral Damage,” scheduled for release in October 2001, featured a firefighter seeking revenge after losing his family when terrorists blow up a government building.

Warner Bros. quickly revised the movie’s marketing — especially its tagline: “What would you do if you lost everything?” — and delayed release until February 2002, while key scenes were edited, including a hijacking scene and other moments producers feared might seem unpatriotic. Like “Space Camp,” “Collateral Damage” was a flop.

For 2002’s “Spider-Man,” on the other hand, Sony Pictures took a refreshing step in the opposite direction, deliberately evoking 9/11 by adding a scene in which angry citizens throw trash and rocks at the Green Goblin to capitalize on the nation’s renewed patriotism. “You mess with one of us, you mess with ALL of us!” one outraged New Yorker bellows, brandishing a tire iron at the supervillain.

And that time, they got it right and didn’t kill the story.