Parallel Lines describes how post-9/11 cinema, from Spike Lee's 25th Hour (2002) to Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (2012), relates to different, and competing, versions of US national identity in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The book combines readings of individual films (World Trade Center, United 93, Fahrenheit 9/11, Loose Change) and cycles of films (depicting revenge, conspiracy, torture and war) with extended commentary on recurring themes, including the relationship between the US and the rest of the world, narratives of therapeutic recovery, questions of ethical obligation.
The volume argues that post-9/11 cinema is varied and dynamic, registering shock and upheaval in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, displaying capacity for critique following the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal mid-decade, and seeking to reestablish consensus during Obama's troubled second term of office.
Price: $28.00
Pages: 240
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: WallFlower Press
Publication Date:
21 October 2014
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9780231172035
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Direction & Production, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / General
Parallel Lines is the definitive statement on American cinema's responses to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Countless writers have weighed in on the effects of the 9/11 attacks, often reflexively perceiving them as wholly transformative of American culture, including virtually all activity in US screen industries. Guy Westwell does an end-run around the lazy shorthand that accompanies much of the discursive claims about 9/11 and cinema. Parallel Lines shows us how politicians, filmmakers, and cultural commentators perceived the events of September 11 and how screen texts distilled these attitudes into a narrow set of textual articulations involving unity, vengeance and victimisation. Ranging across mainstream Hollywood film, independent cinema, television documentary, and output from the fringes of the ideological spectrum, Westwell's book rigorously investigates the many cycles of films that appeared in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent Iraq War. With sustained close readings, sure-footed argumentation, and meticulous attention to print news and commentary, Westwell's coverage give us an essential account of how cultural productions respond to monumental disasters and disruptions.
Guy Westwell is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of War Cinema: Hollywood on the Front Line (2006) and co-author of The Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (2012).
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Uncertainty
Unity
Conspiracy
The Return to Ground Zero
The End of the World
The September 11 Syndrome
Torture
The Iraq War
History
Notes
Filmography
Bibliography
Index
