DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

The attacks of 9/11 had a profound effect on our media culture that will be felt for generations to come. As Phillip J. Chidester says, the media’s quick refocusing into a new information world dominated by terror and its consequences called into question “the value of sports stars’ contributions to the nation’s sense of strength and well-being. In a single, devastatingly violent moment, the relative merits of pinpoint passes and 94 mph fastballs were subordinated to the life-risking efforts of the nation’s emerging hero figures” (2009:353). The public has been introduced to a new world defined by different priorities in government, policymaking, and our personal lives. This has occurred in the midst of the communications’ revolution of our times, a non-stop succession of advances in technology that allow ever-growing audiences to witness and instantly provide feedback on world events.

 

As Bradley Jones says in his in-depth look at disaster documentaries, “Disaster texts resonate with political realities and discourses circulating at this particular post-9/11 moment — the framing of the U.S. as agents in the global spread of capitalism and democracy, reactionary particularism and the closing off of borders, the return of the security state, the rising awareness of the political significance of the evangelical Right and so on” (2006:1). The prevalence of these themes indicates the objectivity and ideological orientation of newspaper coverage while helping us gauge our nation’s heightened self-awareness of its role in shaping world events, and our complex relationship with other cultures and faiths.

 

 

How is the US media portraying the September 11th events? What is the official story enshrined in the Memorial that just opened in Ground Zero, and, are there any alternatives to its portrayal in mainstream media? Jones says that the ideological conflicts of our nation are made evident through specific framing and omission of facts. He classifies documentaries according to the level of agency or passivity played by their subjects. He believes that, “Contrary to a popular understanding of 9/11 as violence carried out on a naïve, innocent and passive American subject, within this fatalistic, predetermined script, the victims are remembered and recast as heroic figures engaged in active resistance” (2006:2). He also suggests that the victims (and viewers) can be cast as passive in the context of biblical disaster documentaries, where, “a weak, emasculated science/nation against the wrath of a vengeful God” (p. 5). Who are the victims and who are the heroes? Are they one and the same? We purport that the answer is in these newspapers and the way they portray the protagonists of that fateful day.

 

If the events of 9/11 have led media to the canonization of victims and the people who helped in the rescue and recovery effort, we must differentiate between the concepts of “sacral” religion and “civil” religion. Hvithamar and Warburg tell us that the idea of civil religion begins with Rousseau’s attempt at understanding “the role of religion within a frame of Enlightment thinking.” Its role “was not to control the beliefs of the people, but to control their loyalty to the state” (2009:2). For the French philosopher, one of the foundations of civil religion was the exclusion of religious intolerance (Bellah, 1967), in sociology of religion, the concept encompasses numerous forms of public discourse, including the veneration of casualties of a nation’s wars and the quotation of religious texts by political leaders (Vandervalk, 2006).

 

This is key to understanding not only the official story, but also media’s perspective and its role of the media in disseminating the government’s message. In the days that preceded the 10th anniversary commemoration, the mayor of New York City, Michael R. Bloomberg, announced that religious leaders would be excluded from the official ceremony, leading to a flaring up of the national debate over the religious nature of the attacks and the confrontation with al Qaeda and Muslim extremists (Saul, 2011). However, the first words of President Obama’s speech in Ground Zero, “The Bible tells us, ‘weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,’” highlight the complex relationship of religion and state and its enduring role in our national debate (Obama, 2011).

 

 

The significance of the events of September 11, 2001 is compounded by its being the first and only attack on US soil where the Internet has played a major role in shaping the perceptions of the public.  Since its inception, we have enjoyed first-row seats to every historical event, both providing us with unlimited access to a virtual repository of memory and (some would argue) desensitizing the public through repeated showings of such content. Carol Schwalbe notes that, in the first weeks of the Iraq War, the percentage of Americans getting related information from the Internet jumped from 17% to a staggering 77% (2006: 265). Her research focused on the visual framing of pictures taken during this conflict and anniversary retrospectives, and on the changes in how news media portrayed it, from the “official U.S. war machine” to the “more personal face of those touched by war.” Schwalbe’s work tells us that the US government and the media have worked in tandem during times of conflict such as the Iraq War in order to reinforce “the prevailing theme of American military might,” and shows that “complex” visual information such as the Iraqi perspective is rare (p. 268).

 

Schwalbe’s research provides us with a template of news coverage in time that can be applied to the events related to 9/11, from the “official war machine” (or “master war narrative”) to the “perspective of the ordinary person.” What phase, if any, has been reached by the 9/11 events, and, did they follow this pattern at all? Schwalbe notes that our media coverage of the Iraq War initially focused on our troops and Iraqi civilians, but eventually changed to better reflect internal tensions after our “Mission Accomplished” moment. Does the coverage of the 9/11 anniversary reflect our sense of accomplishment (or lack thereof) of the goals our nation set forth in the aftermath of the attacks?

 

Moreover, Schwalbe differentiates web news articles and printed press, as the links to related news now commonly found in digital media provide us with a context and framing of the news that printed news never did. Ekaterina Haskins has studied the pros and cons of this “archival memory” of our times and pointed to the “paradoxical link” between our modern obsessions with memory and the “acceleration of amnesia” (2007). She believes that digital memory “collapses the assumed distinction between archival memory and traditional ‘lived’ memory by combining the functions of storage and ordering on the one hand, and of presence and interactivity on the other” (2007:401). As museums and cultural institutions collected materials that were representative of our past, they preferred objects to text, thus de-contextualizing the objects “in order to subordinate them to legitimizing narratives of historical progress and national identity” (p. 402). New context is provided by the unending stream of information that we get from the media, which becomes the first source of collective memory.

 

 

This question should be analyzed in the context of the 9/11 events, its new Memorial and the adjacent Museum, which is scheduled to open next year. What are the new narratives that will accompany the objects and images that will define our collective memory? In our time and age, some think that a picture of the falling Towers is more significant than the so-called “9/11 cross.” Can we assess its “significance” by measuring its presence in our media outlets? The context in which the media places the events also defines our collective memory, with its implied narrative, the evidence, and its omissions, too. Katherine Hatfield (2008) reminds us that there was a period when images of the Twin Towers were erased from public culture as a sign of respect for the victims: the postal system and others who did so (e.g., the movie Zoolander) wanted to prevent the American public from reliving the trauma of 9/11 (Lemire, 2011). Hatfield bases her work on the theories of George Latkoff, who suggested that the Towers could be read as representations of the human body, and the planes could be seen as bullets entering the heart of America. She singles out one image, the plane penetrating the second tower, as one iconic image that survived the moratorium. Our media has incessantly replayed this powerful message of the desecration of a nation, and finding it in the coverage of the commemoration would be a telltale sign of its endurance in our collective memories.

 

The images of 9/11 and its role in building a collective memory have been studied by Katrina Clifford, who believes that, “the act of photography — of 'bearing witness' to the tragedy — offered a vehicle by which to move from the personal act of 'seeing' to being part of a collective working through trauma together” (2008:1). Although this may not have been a conscious act of the thousands of improvised photographers — and, by extension, of the thousands more who wrote their impressions in countless blogs and online journals — the increasing role of digital memory is also providing us with ways to channel our traumas with a virtual network of friends and people who were affected by the events, and with the world at large. The Internet creates a collective memory that is linked, but not necessarily equal, to the official story narrated in museums, memorials, and, some would argue, even in the established media outlets.

 

Haskins also supports the rise of digital memory as an alternative to archives, museums, and memorials, which she considers a creation of capitalism and the modern nation-state. For her, until recently, "public memory was constructed and disseminated for the people but not by the people” (2008: 403). Due to its ability to reach wider audiences, digital memory is a more democratic way to preserve the people’s memories and perspectives. She also praises the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for conveying the cost of the war instead of glorifying it (p. 404).

 

 

The War on Terror that followed the attacks has been compared to the Vietnam conflict on numerous occasions. In the 1970s, pacifists, objectors and the so-called “counterculture” collided with war enablers and supporters over its significance in our history. Did our struggle against Communism justify the conflict in Indochina and the death of 50,000 Americans, or was it a pretext to advance neocolonialist goals of corporate America? Throughout the war — and after it was over — our nation has struggled over how it should be remembered, the memory that each generation passes on to the next. In Hollywood, for example, Oscar-winning film Coming Home (1979), which focused on the challenges of a paraplegic veteran trying to readjust in America, was countered by the blockbuster Rambo (1984), whose adrenalin-pumped star, Sylvester Stallone, went back to Southeast Asia to win a last confrontation for our country. In a similar way, the September 11th attacks have brought us The Messenger and 24; the first one is a heartwrenching story about returning soldiers, while the second (a TV show) appealed to our resilience and offered us reassurance in a time of heightened vulnerability.

 

In New York City, the ten-year commemoration of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and United flight 93 focused in the opening of the 9/11 Memorial designed by Israeli-American architect Michael Arad. In Mr. Arad’s original concept, “Reflecting the Absence,” two sunken pools occupy the site of the original World Trade Center towers. Water falls to the pools without ever filling them, symbolizing a void that will never be filled in our hearts. The names of the victims are carved on marble slabs surrounding the pools.

 

Maya Lin’s work is one of the most obvious models for Mr. Arad’s 9/11 design. Ms. Lin was 21 years old when she won the competition for the design of the Vietnam Memorial, which became an immediate success, with its long list of names that suggests the nation won’t forget our lost ones while steering away from the controversies of its day. In his review of Ms. Lin’s work, Harry W. Haines talks about “sight sacralization,” the process by which “attributes formerly reserved for holy places are ascribed to tourist attractions in the modern world” (1986:3). He also refers to the “ambiguity” of Ms. Lin’s design, which “makes it particularly susceptible to administrative power’s attempt to use it in a mediated reconstruction of the Vietnam experience.” As with every other object or place that attracts public attention, opposing views struggle to define its purpose and meaning. Haines explains how the Vietnam Memorial is placed near the Washington and Lincoln monuments, hallowed ground and places that signify sacrifice and martyrdom; the similarities with the 9/11 Memorial here are evident (Haines: 6).

 

J. DeRose and E.V Haskins (2003) describe three stages in the development of a collective memory and its crystallization in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, each representing the phases of public grievance:

 

 

  1. The ephemeral (i.e., the 40,000+ votive candles, flowers, and messages left in the WTC right after the attacks);
  2. The reframing of memory, which the author describes as the passing of the collective memory from the street to museums, e.g., the Smithsonian’s September 11 exhibit of 2006, whose representation of the events “address the role played by the mass media in shaping collective memory,” a “clear case of appropriation of an image, insertion of it within another textual whole…” (pp. 10, 12); and,
  3. The preserving of multiple voices. The authors’ think that the final memorial must reconcile the utopian view of the ephemeral grievance with the critique offered by the reframing phase. DeRose and Haskins suggest that the new memorial and rebuilding process should address shortcomings of the original design, e.g., the aloofness and symmetry of the towers and its elevated plaza, which should now be imbued with postmodern design ideas of an architecture that fosters a civic dialogue.

 

An ephemeral memorial: Mourners at the Apple store on 5th Avenue after the death of Steve Jobs.

 

“Creating a connection between an idealized past and the promised future of the community, and imbuing it with meaning, is the function of collective memory,” says Carol Schwalbe in her study on the visual representation of the Iraq War. Retelling historical events is like applying a new coat of meaning and form, with current data being used to reconstruct the past (p. 265). Langenbacher and Shain (2010) warn us that collective memories may turn into influential factors of decision-making in unexpected ways. For them, “the George W. Bush administration did not intend that its attempt to monopolize the construction and valuation of memory of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and its channeling of this memory as a justification for the global war on terror, and for the invasion of Iraq, would generate a substantial counteraction — which made the candidacy of Barack Obama so powerful” (p. 213). Clearly, collective memory is constructed day by day, and our research on the media coverage of the 9/11 commemorations should tell us of these forces at work, the official story, and the dissenters.

 

 

“By solely presenting the attacks as "senseless" violence, journalistic reporting depoliticized the attacks,” says Patricia Leavy (2007). “By referring to the attacks as world altering, but then failing to present any substantial analysis about the root causes, the event was placed outside of political discourse.” Where, then, is the center of commemoration in the coverage that is the subject of our research?

 

Emile Durkheim described man’s development of totems in his vivid description of Australian clans, medieval coats of arms and relations of kinship. “They are used during religious ceremonies and are part of the liturgy,” said the French sociologist. “Thus, while the totem is a collective label, it also has a religious character. In fact, things are classified as sacred and profane by reference to the totem... the very archetype of sacred things” (1912:21). For him, totems are material representations of what he calls “totemic principle” (or “god”) and the clan itself, and ultimately, of the same thing, a “transfiguration” of our ideals into a material realm.

 

The commemoration is marked by the march of our society towards that perfectly choreographed ceremony (as in a liturgy) where we meet the totem of our nation and the notion of “patriotism,” and which the media dissects with amazing dexterity through a parade of victims and heroes, and the feelings that were inflamed on that fateful day, particularly fear and vulnerability, as these bring us closer to primal questions of life and death. As our development of collective memories focuses in the “civil cathedral” of this totem, we pause to reflect, neglecting issues such as politics and economics. The media provides us with an incomplete picture of the events and its context, thus preventing the public from engaging in a much-needed discussion about our role in world events and considering possible ways to avoid another 9/11.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.