Baudrillard and the Prophetic: Reimagining the Twin Towers in Avengers: Infinity War

Abstract

After 9/11, Jean Baudrillard proclaimed that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (the Twin Towers) in New York City, would enter the imaginary space, that: “Even in their pulverized state… No one who knew them can cease imagining them …Their end in material space has borne them off into a definite imaginary space…” ( Spirit of Terrorism 36-37). This can now be considered a prophetic statement, not just in the realm of the human memory, a geographical imagination, but in the imaginary spaces of film. The Twin Towers are reimagined and revealed in presence and absence (maps and territories of the Real). They are present and have an origin story in Robert Zemeckis’ resurrection narrative The Walk , where the high-wire walk by Philippe Petite was credited with “giving them a soul.” They are present in their absence in the New York City skyline in Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion . However, it is in Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War that the ruined and ghostly remains of the Twin Towers are reimagined, returning to haunt audiences on the screen, associated with one of the key plot elements, the Soul Stone, and its need for sacrifice. Avengers: Infinity War reimagines the Twin Towers as an architectural marker for the Soul Stone. To receive the stone, a sacrifice must be made of the beloved other, consistent with the history of the Twin Towers. What is the metaphoric transmission that their inclusion serves? This paper seeks to demonstrate the transmission of real-world trauma through Baudrillard’s works and his prophetic utterance on the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers that is fulfilled in the psychoanalytic geography of New York City through the filmic medium. In the film, Avengers: Infinity War , the