Post-9/11 Cinema: Through a Lens Darkly
John Markert
Language: English
Pages: 392
ISBN: 0810881349
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In contemporary society, cinema has become a primary way in which people gain knowledge about events taking place in the world. Films often go beyond news reports by showing in-depth, behind-the-scenes footage, whether in a documentary or recreated in fictional features. More than fleeting scenes of events shown on the nightly news, a film can influence people's feelings about war and what our political leaders should do about it. This has certainly been the case since the attack on 9/11 and the subsequent incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Post-9/11 Cinema: Through a Lens Darkly, John Markert takes a close look at the films depicting these events. Covering cinematic portrayals of 9/11 and the attacks that followed, this book examines both dramas and documentaries that depict what some have termed "Bush's war," as well as rebuttal films, films about terrorist activities, and films seen from the vantage point of journalists and military personnel. Post-9/11 Cinema not only shows how motion pictures reflect societal values but also how such works can influence social attitudes and thus promote change. In addition, Markert appraises the film industry and critiques how images are manipulated to sway the viewer to appreciate the side being advocated.
Examining such dramas as The Messenger, Stop-Loss, The Lucky Ones, In the Valley of Elah, and The Hurt Locker, as well as documentaries including Fahrenheit 9/11, Soldiers of Conscience, and Taxi to the Dark Side, Post-9/11 Cinema is a valuable read for professors of media and mass communication, popular culture, and film studies, as well as cultural sociologists.
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tirelessly to do what they could to help: men and women. Or, more accurately, if it does not “gloss over” them, it enshrouds them in a heroic halo by default. But by focusing exclusively on the men on the ground—policemen and firefighters, in particular—it ignores the role of women as active social agents and pushes them into the background where they are passively relegated to remembering their men.36 This, as will be shown later in this section, is the only time women move to the foreground in
mountain of contradictory data are also glossed over. Similarly, the problems of communication that are intrinsic to complex organizations is glossed over: “Tape after tape,” the commission learns from one witness, “showed communication between FAA, its air traffic control center, and the military—was a mess.” The fact that all this was going on within a frantic and very narrow time frame, and that air traffic on any given day is fraught with errors and problems of tracking, tends to be forgotten
United Airline pilots going off to work in the early morning of 9/11, one kissing his sleeping wife and baby good-bye. The next ten minutes is filled with buildup: passengers, including the hijackers, going through airport security; people boarding their flights; airplanes in queue for takeoff. The next twenty minutes is spent at the American, United, and FAA Command Centers as air traffic controllers frantically track the flights, then the visual of three of the four missing planes hitting their
One of the more trenchant aspects of the film that is hard to get across in a visual medium is the olfactory dimension. Images of rubble always arise when the WTC is shown or thought about, but View figuratively Book 1.indb 43 6/30/11 5:30 AM 44 CHAPTER 1 introduces the smell of carnage. Eric sometimes opens the windows, coughs, and slams it shut; he is often wandering around the apartment with an aerosol air freshener. On one visit by Josie, Eric lights a cigarette and, offended by the
change toward Americans involved in Vietnam.13 Public disenchantment toward America’s involvement in Vietnam, which had been percolating among young people on the streets before Tet, decidedly turned after Tet. The time when the public mood shifted is clearly demarked with Vietnam. It is not as clear with American involvement in the Middle East. After all, Bush swept the 2004 presidential race, an indication not only of his popularity at the time but a message from the American people to “stay