Document Type
Article
Abstract
In this article, we pair our previous work on the discourse and ideology residing behind, and acting to construct, the "War on Terror" and "9/11"—and their attendant links to matters of race, sexuality, and citizenship within a post-September 11, 2001 United States—with an examination of Hollywood mainstream films as post-9/11 cultural products. In post-9/11 films, we find both an examination of the events of September 11, 2001 and the "American" response to those events, as well as the emergence and reinforcement of "9/11" as a culturally defined and produced lens for the "American" experience in a post-September 11, 2001 world. Our consideration of post-9/11 film keeps with Graeme Turner’s (2006) notion that "the reason we want to examine film at all is because it is a source of pleasure and significance [that is, meaning] for so many in our culture" (61), and with Andrew Schopp and Matthew B. Hill’s (2009) point that "the events of September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror have further tangled the knotted relationship between popular culture, political discourse, and terrorism" (12). We also keep with scholars examining post-9/11 cultural production, in particular the type of film arising in the wake of the September 11, 2001 events, termed "the post-9/11 movie." We employ Jeffrey Melnick’s (2009) articulation of "9/11" as a phrase capturing an event that has been transformed into a discourse, a language, and an ideology that can be deployed to analyze and understand cultural and material production after September 11, 2001. Far from being simply a date, "9/11" has been transformed into an ideological, cultural, and sociological concept.
Repository Citation
Bloodsworth-Lugo, Mary, and Carmen Lugo-Lugo. "9/11 Goes to the Movies: The Mythological Reverberations of the 'Day that Changed America'." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 2, 2011, pp. 1–19. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss2/13