Why We Can Never Look Away From 'Catastrophe'

We love a good disaster. OK, maybe not love. But time and again we're drawn to not look away.

Just look at the recent Asiana passenger plane crash in San Francisco. Fatal plane crashes are beyond rare, which likely explains the wall-to-wall cable news coverage tied to the incident. And likewise, though to a somewhat lesser degree (in the US, at least), for the horrific train derailment in Quebec, the gas spillage of which has by today's count killed at least 50 people.

We affirm our own good fortune, or maybe just come to terms with the often random and merciless stamp of mortality, by staring at the wreckage and the remains, by replaying and replaying the end with a sort of grim, reserved fascination. Always have. We did after the Varig Flight 820 crash near Paris in 1973 (123 killed), after the Los Alfaques propylene disaster of 1978 (217 killed, 200+ burned), and after the Mumbai train bombings of 2006 (206 killed). Today marks the anniversaries for all three.

And we did the same for any of the accidents featured in Catastrophe (1978), a shockingly honest and quietly informative tour of what to that point were some of the world's worst, well, catastrophes. Hurricane Camille in 1969; the Hindenburg Disaster the Great Dust Bowl; and the Andrea Doria ocean liner accident. Mount Etna's eruption; the Indy 500 1973 melee; the Xenia, Ohio tornado of 1974; and on and on. It's Faces of Death only real, and that much harder to--goddamnit--not look away.

This goes without saying, but Catastrophe is not for the squeamish, and can still very much be tagged NOT SAFE FOR LIFE.

I'm going to go for a walk now.

@thebanderson