The amount of deaths after 9/11 meant that finding tragedy in each individual death would be nearly impossibly; the news network showed only a sample of the people grieving afterwards.
Therefore the amount of deaths became easy to understand numbers; around 3000 died on 9/11 (around 2970 if I recall) or 3000 American soldiers are dead in Iraq or 1/2 a million Iraqis have died, etc. It is not only the indiscriminate nature of the attacks, but the arbitrariness of the deaths too.
This is where the television dramas took over. They followed the stories of people, and every deaths mattered again(as death of characters generally do in serials). 24's creators have always insisted that Jack Bauer may always die and he was not immune from the many deaths in the show, they did this surely to reflect 9/11's huge amount of indiscriminate deaths.
Battlestar Galactica takes this numbering idea to the extreme by using the number of human survivors as a part of the plot. Initially the number was simply shown within the narrative of the show, but as the show progressed it started putting the number of survivors straight up front (this change could be attributed to two things, that the chaos and panic from 9/11 had long since passed and the number was now more official and somewhat more distant. Also, it may be due to the developments of the war in Iraq, during which many news programs were displaying a continuously updating number of American fatalities in Iraq).
TV dramas were somewhat the antithesis to the cold hard truth of the impersonal numbers of dead, as they are able to mourn for the important people and completely bypass the mourning or depression when a mass amount of relatively faceless people die (for example a whole ship with thousands of people of may be destroyed in Battlestar Galactica or a nuke can explode in Los Angeles in 24 yet neither one will stop to grieve the thousands of dead in the way that was done after 9/11).
Friday, April 20
Thursday, April 19
Personalising 9/11
9/11 doesn't really have any heros. The closest thing to a hero were the firefighters of New York, or the passengers on United flight 93 who fought back.
The problem was that the victims (those working in the Trade Center), the heros (the firefighters who died en masse) and the terrorist who highjacked the planes all died in the same place at the same time. There was no one to hunt down for commiting the crime,no vallient hero coming out of flames with a 'helpless' pregnant women on his back.
The closest personalisation there was were the pictures of friends and relatives that were stuck up on walls all over the city, and subsequently shown on television news.
When dramas started being based around 9/11 they inevitably had to personalise what they were showing. Terrorists in 24 (at least in the first couple of seasons) were not attacking symbols of the United States' power, or attacking civilians, they would be going after specific targets or people. More often than not that meant the President or another important person. Therefore 24 personalised the victim (the target of the attacks), the 'bad guys' (the terrorists), but also personalised the hero. Jack Bauer was not modeled after the 'true heroes' of 9/11, the firefighters, but as the show wore on Jack came to embodiy many of the characteristics that the firefighters had; he is seemingly always prepared to die for the cause of fighting terrorism and for a time seemed fairly working class protecting a rich elite politician. This was surely a reflection of the relatively working class firefighters protecting the enourmasly rich investment bankers and stoke brokers who worked in the World Trade Center.
Battlestar Galactica too represents the tragedy in human terms. It centers around a group of survivors and focuses on their lives after the attacks (in somewhat similar style to how Lost focuses on its survivors). Battlestar Galactica looks at the mental and physical degredation that came about after the loss of almost everyone they ever knew, as if it was an extension of that intial covergae on the television news in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 of the friends and relatives asking for any news at all about people lost in the towers. Galactica portrays the bleek realisation that no-one would come out of that alive.
[inspired by 'Today Is the Longest Day of My Life' by Ina Rae Hark]
The problem was that the victims (those working in the Trade Center), the heros (the firefighters who died en masse) and the terrorist who highjacked the planes all died in the same place at the same time. There was no one to hunt down for commiting the crime,no vallient hero coming out of flames with a 'helpless' pregnant women on his back.
The closest personalisation there was were the pictures of friends and relatives that were stuck up on walls all over the city, and subsequently shown on television news.
When dramas started being based around 9/11 they inevitably had to personalise what they were showing. Terrorists in 24 (at least in the first couple of seasons) were not attacking symbols of the United States' power, or attacking civilians, they would be going after specific targets or people. More often than not that meant the President or another important person. Therefore 24 personalised the victim (the target of the attacks), the 'bad guys' (the terrorists), but also personalised the hero. Jack Bauer was not modeled after the 'true heroes' of 9/11, the firefighters, but as the show wore on Jack came to embodiy many of the characteristics that the firefighters had; he is seemingly always prepared to die for the cause of fighting terrorism and for a time seemed fairly working class protecting a rich elite politician. This was surely a reflection of the relatively working class firefighters protecting the enourmasly rich investment bankers and stoke brokers who worked in the World Trade Center.
Battlestar Galactica too represents the tragedy in human terms. It centers around a group of survivors and focuses on their lives after the attacks (in somewhat similar style to how Lost focuses on its survivors). Battlestar Galactica looks at the mental and physical degredation that came about after the loss of almost everyone they ever knew, as if it was an extension of that intial covergae on the television news in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 of the friends and relatives asking for any news at all about people lost in the towers. Galactica portrays the bleek realisation that no-one would come out of that alive.
[inspired by 'Today Is the Longest Day of My Life' by Ina Rae Hark]
Tuesday, April 17
Representation of Arabs Before 9/11
Movies and TV shows that represent 9/11 inevitably need to represent the 'evil doers' (a surprisingly useful Bushism). A show like Battlestar Galactica has the freedom that sci-fi gives to change the terrorist characters to Cylons (effectively robotic humanoids). A show like 24 that is (supposedly) realistic finds itself needing to portray Arab terrorists as Arabs. However, it is questionable whether this is a new phenomenon and Arab terrorists on screen is directly related to 9/11.
There were many movies before 9/11 that featured Arab terrorists, so it can be seen that perhaps that this depiction of Arab terrorists stems from earlier political changes (without going overly political, the numerous airline hijackings during the 1970's is likely the genesis of this). A movie like 'True Lies' predates 9/11 by almost a decade but features Arabic terrorists every bit as sinister as those in 24.
Curiously 24 has persisted in using the old Cold War enemies, the Russians, as the 'bad guys' in multiple series. This perhaps suggests that as a program 24 is quite indiscriminate in its enemies (it is certainly indiscriminate in regards to Arabs, whom they treat as all emanating from one country somewhere in the Mid-East). It may not be that the creators of 24 are directly channeling 9/11 in the show to the extent that is generally assumed.
It is plausible that they just need 'bad guys' and are reflecting society insecurities and fears. It could not really be argued that Russia is truly the bad guy in a political sense anymore and the depictions of Russian government officials attempting to detonate nuclear bombs in the U.S. or assassinate the President are most not a reflection of current political tensions. Yet in American society Russia still has connotations of an 'evil empire' (as Ronald Reagan said), therefore the creators of 24 are able portray Russians in the same way it represents Arabs; for in the American psyche they both exemplify of entities fighting against the American way of life.
Therefore, it is possible that 24 could be said to have at least some elements that are entirely non-post 9/11 elements within it, a rather confusing statement since 24 is truly the ultimate show of post-9/11 ideas.
There were many movies before 9/11 that featured Arab terrorists, so it can be seen that perhaps that this depiction of Arab terrorists stems from earlier political changes (without going overly political, the numerous airline hijackings during the 1970's is likely the genesis of this). A movie like 'True Lies' predates 9/11 by almost a decade but features Arabic terrorists every bit as sinister as those in 24.
Curiously 24 has persisted in using the old Cold War enemies, the Russians, as the 'bad guys' in multiple series. This perhaps suggests that as a program 24 is quite indiscriminate in its enemies (it is certainly indiscriminate in regards to Arabs, whom they treat as all emanating from one country somewhere in the Mid-East). It may not be that the creators of 24 are directly channeling 9/11 in the show to the extent that is generally assumed.
It is plausible that they just need 'bad guys' and are reflecting society insecurities and fears. It could not really be argued that Russia is truly the bad guy in a political sense anymore and the depictions of Russian government officials attempting to detonate nuclear bombs in the U.S. or assassinate the President are most not a reflection of current political tensions. Yet in American society Russia still has connotations of an 'evil empire' (as Ronald Reagan said), therefore the creators of 24 are able portray Russians in the same way it represents Arabs; for in the American psyche they both exemplify of entities fighting against the American way of life.
Therefore, it is possible that 24 could be said to have at least some elements that are entirely non-post 9/11 elements within it, a rather confusing statement since 24 is truly the ultimate show of post-9/11 ideas.
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