Film and television after 9/11

Abstract

In Film and Television after 9/11, twelve distinguished scholars and critics discuss the production, reception, and distribution of Hollywood and foreign films after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and examine how movies have changed to reflect the new world climate. While some contemporary films offer escapism, the bulk of mainstream American cinema since 9/11 seems centered on the desire to replicate the idea of the just war, in which military reprisals and escalation of warfare appear to be both inevitable and justified. Films such as Black Hawk Down, Collateral Damage, and We Were Soldiers reflect 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 in New York and the Pentagon in Washington have galvanized the American public into a call for action and film critics wonder how this will play out in the months and years to come. How will American films shape the perspectives of other nations? What sort of dialogue do post-9/11 films establish? How do we now re-view the films of our shared cinematic past in light of these recent events? And are we about to replay the events of the 1940s and 1950s, albeit in a hyperstylized, MTV edited format? With an introduction by editor Wheeler Winston Dixon and original essays by leading cinema scholars, Film and Television after 9/11 is the first book to offer critical insights to these and other concerns.

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