Film and Television After 9/11
Selected as an Outstanding Title in the Performing Arts for 2004 by Choice
"[A] vital anthology. . . . Uniformly excellent, the informed, closely
argued, and clearly written essays collected here demonstrate how popular
films reflect not just the open issues of their day but its sunken
anxieties. . . . Essential [for] all levels."--Choice
Edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon
Southern Illinois University Press
February 2004
Paperback, 0-8093-2556-X, $30.00
Hardcover, 0-8093-2555-1, $60.00
262 pages, 6 x 9
Film and Media Studies / Pop Culture
"Film and Television After 9/11 contributes to a new understanding both of recent American film and our reaction, as a culture, to the events of 9/11. The contributors consider the question of how these very real events were at the same time media spectacles subject to deliberate reconstruction and ideological slanting, and how this spectacle resonated throughout American culture." -Steven Shaviro, author of The Cinematic Body and Doom Patrols
"No one book, no one movie has ever been able to capture the Holocaust, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, or even such 'small' events as the Hindenburg explosion orthe Lindbergh kidnapping. The same will be true of the events of 9/11. The collection of essays in Film and Television After 9/11, however, presents a series of important reflections about the events surrounding that day. By focusing on two television programs and films in process prior to the event, the authors of these essays present us with 'ways in' to the horrors of the catastrophic event, aspects of its aftermath,and, maybe, most important, readings of our culture that presage and comment on not only the event but threads woven into the fabric of our culture."-Gerald Duchovnay, editor, Post Script
In Film and Television After 9/11, editor Wheeler Winston Dixon and eleven other distinguished film scholars discuss the production, reception, and distribution of Hollywood and foreign films after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and examine how moviemaking has changed to reflect the new world climate.
While some contemporary films offer escapism, much mainstream American cinema since 9/11 is centered on the desire for a "just war" in which military reprisals and escalation of warfare appear to be both inevitable and justified. Films of 2002 such as Black Hawk Down, Collateral Damage, and We Were Soldiers demonstrate a renewed audience appetite for narratives of conflict, reminiscent of the wave of filmmaking that surrounded American involvement in World War II.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon galvanized the American public initially, yet film critics wonder how this will play out in over time. Film and Television After 9/11 is the first book to provide original insights into topics ranging from the international reception of post-9/11 American cinema, re-viewing films of our shared cinematic past in light of the attacks, and exploring parallels between post-9/11 cinema and World War II-era productions.
Contents and Contributors
"Introduction: Something Lost - Film After 9/11"
Wheeler Winston Dixon
"Architectural Nostalgia and the New York City Skyline on Film"
Steven Jay Schneider
"The Shadow of the World Trade Center is Climbing My Memory of Civilization"
Murray Pomerance
"Representing Atrocity: From the Holocaust to September 11"
David Sterritt
"'America Under Attack': Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and History in the Media"
Marcia Landy
"City Films, Modern Spatiality, and the End of the World Trade Center"
Juan A. Suárez
"'Today is the Longest Day of my Life': 24 as Mirror Narrative of 9/11"
Ina Rae Hark
"The How-to Manual, the Prequel, and the Sequel in Post-9/11 Cinema"
Rebecca Bell-Metereau
"The Fascination of the Abomination: The Censored Images of 9/11"
Mikita Brottman
"Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar: Lifting a Veil on Afghanistan"
Philip Mosley
"Reel Terror Post 9/11"
Jonathan Markovitz
"Survivors in the West Wing: 9/11 and the United States of Emergency"
Isabelle Freda
About the Editor: Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Endowed Professor of Film Studies, Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Coordinator of the Film Studies Program at UNL, and with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Editor-in-Chief of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. His newest books include A History of Horror (Rutgers University Press, 2010), Film Noir and The Cinema of Paranoia (Rutgers University Press and Edinburgh University Press, 2009), and A Short History of Film, written with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (Rutgers University Press and I.B. Tauris, 2008). As a filmmaker, his complete works are in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, following a career retrospective at MoMA in 2003.