Reframing 9/11 Film, Popular Culture and the "War on Terror"

by Birkenstein, Jeff; Froula, Anna; Randell, Karen

• ISBN13: 9781441119056
• ISBN10: 1441119051
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-05-13
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

September 11th, 2001, remains a focal point of American consciousness, a site demanding ongoing excavation, a site at which to mark before and after "everything" changed. In ways both real and intangible the entire sequence of events of that day continues to resonate in an endlessly proliferating aftermath of meanings. Presenting a collection of analyses by an international body of scholars that examines America's recent history, this book focuses on popular culture as a profound discursive site of anxiety and discussion about 9/11 and demystifies the day's events in order to contextualize them into a historically grounded series of narratives that recognizes the complex relations of a globalized world.

Author Biography

Jeff Birkenstein is an Associate Professor of English at Saint Martin's University in Lacey, Washington.
Anna Froula is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at East Carolina University.
Karen Randell is a Principal Lecturer in Film at Southampton Solent University, UK, where she is Programme Leader for Film and Television.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Foreword	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
(Re)creating Language
Fear, Terrorism, and Popular Culture	p. 11
The Aesthetics of Destruction: Contemporary US Cinema and TV Culture	p. 23
9/11, British Muslims, and Popular Literary Fiction	p. 35
Left Behind in America: The Army of One at the End of History	p. 45
9/11, Manhood, Mourning, and the American Romance	p. 57
An Early Broadside: The Far Right Raids Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	p. 69
The Sound of the "War on Terror"	p. 83
Visions of War and Terror
Avatars of Destruction: Cheerleading and Deconstructing the "War on Terror" in Video Games	p. 97
The Land of the Dead and the Home of the Brave: Romero's Vision of a Post-9/11 America	p. 107
Superman Is the Faultline: Fissures in the Monomythic Man of Steel	p. 117
The Tools and Toys of (the) War (on Terror): Consumer Desire, Military Fetish, and Regime Change in Batman Begins	p. 127
"It Was Like a Movie": The Impossibility of Representation in Oliver Stone's World Trade Center	p. 141
The Contemporary Politics of the Western Form: Bush, Saving Jessica Lynch, and Deadwood	p. 153
Prophetic Narratives
Governing Fear in the Iron Cage of Rationalism: Terry Gilliam's Brazil through the 9/11 Looking Glass	p. 167
Cultural Anxiety, Moral Clarity, and Willful Amnesia: Filming Philip K. Dick After 9/11	p. 183
Prolepsis and the "War on Terror": Zombie Pathology and the Culture of Fear in 28 Days Later...	p. 195
Afterword	p. 209
Contributors	p. 215
Bibliography	p. 219
Index	p. 239
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