Customer Reviews

Film and Television After 9/11

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When I saw the title of this book and ordered it, I thought (as implied by the title) that it was using 9-11 to mark off a time period, and would offer some essays about television and film since then. This is not really what this text is. Published in 2004, but probably written mostly a good deal earlier, the event of 9-11 itself weighs very heavily in virtually all of the essays. I would say 'Film and Television in light of 9-11' would probably be a better title. A couple of the essays in fact deal with how films (specifically 'Manhatta' and 'King Kong', as well as Holocaust documentaries) made before 9-11 appear afterward.

Most of the essays subvert the aura of American exceptionalism (i.e. the mentality that this is the most awful thing to happen to anyone) that surrounds 9-11. Some look at the ways 9-11 was projected into culture, for example the effort to cut the Twin Towers from several projects in the pipeline on 9-11. Whether the towers were cut (incurring the wrath of those who claimed that therefore 'the terrorists won') or not (and thereby eliciting disruptive cheers from audiences when they appeared, as in Glitter) their presence was deeply felt. Another essay describes the way the most disturbing footage filmed on 9-11 has not been screened, and how this footage is slowly emerging on the internet. The author suggests that this will help demystify the event. Relevant, but relatively unknown, foreign films, such as the European collaborative film 9'11''01 (which compared 9-11 to a number of events around the world, practically a taboo in the US) are also described. In the aforementioned essay discussing Manhatta, the way in which the twin towers embodied a sort of monumental modernity that quashed what stood in its way, replacing it with a flat, mathematical order, is noted. This sort of modernity produces targets of terrorism (we might add it finds its opposite in the geography of Afghanistan, where, as Donald Rumsfeld noted, the US military quickly ran out of targets to bomb). The now almost forgotten thriller 'The Sum of All Fears' shows up in several essays, since its depiction of a nuclear bomb detonating in Baltimore makes it relevant. This film made little lasting impact on American culture, suggesting the perils of trying to produce this sort of book so quickly after the event in question. An essay on Malkmalbaf's 'Khandahar' makes an odd reference to NATO troops in Afghanistan as 'peacekeepers' (they are not, by practically any definition of that term), suggesting unintentionally possible complicity of this film with this liberal imperialist mission. One essay describes 24, but only the first season. The show really focused more aggressively on 9-11 themes from the second season on, although the writer's suggestion that the alliance between Jack Bauer and presidential candidate David Palmer echoes the alliance between fire fighters and upper middle class financial workers in the offices attacked on 9-11 is intriguing. The essay comparing the mythology of King Kong-the return of the repressed of the third world, coming to Manhattan, and, in the 1970s version, scaling the Twin Towers--and its relation to Bin Laden was quite good.

The essays in this book are generally interesting. This is a topic it would be worth returning to, now that a good deal of time has past and more perspective can be brought to bear.

and he took finalist honors in the state competition....this book is very impressive with it's breadth and depth of study....definitely worthwhile reading