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Social Memory and the Representation of 9/11

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SPIEL 24 (2005) H. 2, x–x Douglas Kellner (Los Angeles) Social Memory and the Representation of 9/11 in Contemporary Hollywood Film _______________________________________________________________________ Machtvolle Medienspektakel formen soziales Gedächtnis und beeinflussen die individuellen perspektiven von Geschichte und gegenwärtige Realität. Über Images interpretieren und konstruieren Menschen ihre Sichtweisen der Welt, wie die allgegenwärtigen Bilder der in die Türme des Word Trade Centers stürzenden Flugzeuge am 11. September 2001 verdeutlichen. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit den Modi der Repräsentation der Attacken vom 11. September im Hollywood Film und deren Gebrauch als politisches Instrument am Beispiel der Filme „United 93“, „World Trade Center“ und „The Path to 9/11“. _______________________________________________________________________ The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. were shocking global media events that dominated public attention and circulated spectacles of terror that generated fear and even panic. These media spectacles were intended to terrorize the U.S., to attack symbolic targets, and to promote Jihad against the West, as well as to undermine the U.S. and global economy. The World Trade Center (WTC) is an apt symbol of global capitalism in the heart of the New York financial district, while the Pentagon stands as an icon and center of U.S. military power. 1 Powerful media spectacles help shape social memory, constructing individual’s views of history and contemporary reality. 2 Resonant images help construct how people see and interpret the world, and the oft-repeated images of airplanes hitting the World Trade Center, the buildings burning and then collapsing, and piles of rubble left in their wake were among the most compelling images ever witnessed by global media culture. This 1 The contextualization of 9/11 in this analysis draws upon Kellner 2003a and 2005. 2 On media spectacle, see Kellner 2003a and 2003b and 2005. The concept of “social memory” refers in this analysis to the socially constructed images of the past and present in a given society. In a media-dominated society, social memory is often constructed in terms of signi-ficant media spectacles, and the discourses, resonant images, and narratives that frame the spectacle. This is arguably so with the 9/11 terror attacks that continue to be a highly resonant and contested phenomenon in the contemporary moment. “Social memory” might be contrasted with “popular memory”, in which people’s memories of struggle, resistance, and historical traditions are counterposed to existing cultures of domination and repression and constitute a resource for potential resistance and struggle. The notion of “popular memory” was associated with Foucault in France from the 1970s (see Foucault 1989), and during approximately the same period with radical historians in the United States and elsewhere who published in the Radical History Review. “Social memory”, by contrast, is constructed in part by media images, dis-courses, and spectacles that are parts of a dominant apparatus of power and domination.Douglas Kellner chapter relates the mode of representation of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. to the earlier wave of Hollywood disaster films, and the use of spectacles of terror as a political weapon. Focus is then on representations of 9/11 itself in some contemporary Hollywood films including United 93, World Trade Center, and The Path to 9/11. At stake is how cinematic culture deals with a catastrophic event like the 9/11 terror attacks, the politics of its modes of representation and effects, and how popular media shape social memory and perceptions of the recent past and present that are still alive in struggles of the day. 9/11 as Disaster Film and the Spectacle of Terror While the Al Qaeda group had systematically used spectacles of terror to promote its agenda, the 9/11 attack was the most deadly strike on U.S. targets in its history, and the first foreign attack on the continental U.S. since the war of 1812, showing the vulnerability of the US to lethal force and the kind of indiscriminate violence suffered by much of the world. Spectacles of terror use dramatic images and montage to catch attention, hoping thereby to catalyze unanticipated events that will spread further terror through domestic populations. These made-for-media events become global spectacles that create fearful populations more likely to be manipulated by reactionary forces who give simplistic answers to contemporary anxieties and problems. The live television presentation of the September 11 attacks and continuous replay of the spectacle in the following days made it appear like a disaster film, leading Hollywood director Robert Altman to chide his industry for producing extravaganzas of devastation that could serve as models for spectacular terror attacks. Indeed, was Independence Day (1996) the template for 9/11 in which Los Angeles and New York were assaulted by aliens and the White House was destroyed? The collapse of the WTC also had resonances of The Towering Inferno (1975) that depicted a high-rise building catching on fire, burning and collapsing, or even Earthquake (1975) that within the system, in portrayed the collapse of entire urban environments. For these two Hollywood disaster films, however, the calamity emerged from the case of the first, and from nature itself in the second. In the September 11 terror spectacle, by contrast, the assumed villains were foreign terrorists obviously committed to wreaking maximum destruction on the U.S., and it was not certain how the drama would end or if order would be restored in a “happy ending.” The 9/11 terror spectacle unfolded in the cities of New York and Washington, that were among the most media-saturated in the world. For days, it played out a deadly drama live on television, capturing a global audience. The images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center


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