Post-9/11 Cinema: Through A Lens Darkly - John Markert

Source

Title: Post 9/11 Cinema: Through A Lens Darkly 

Author: John Markert 

Publisher: The Scarecrow Press, INC. 

Year: 2011

Useful Quotations

1. "The connection between culture and society has long garnered both popular and scholarly attention. One prong of this connection is the belief that values within the wider society are reflected on the screen" - Page: Introduction, XV

2. "The collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001 witnessed a potpourri of early films about the tragedy." - Page 1 

3. "Certain events are seared into the collective memory of those who lived at the time the event occurred. Those most affected are those who experienced the event" - Page 22

4. "The visual carnage that American viewers were continuously exposed to through films well after 2001 helped maintain support for the war on terrorism" - Page 23

5. "These films inevitably cast those on the site of the disasters in a positive light - altruistic, self-sacrificing, patriotic" - Page 23

6. "The other feature films that address WTC events, though hardly blockbusters, are given more attention because they approach the subject from an angle not appraised in the documentaries" - Page 25

7. "The terrorist attack of 9/11 made the United States, and her citizens, vulnerable like never before" - Page 45

8. "The media has helped people explore and understand what happened" - Page 46

9. "Films that address 9/11 events are specifically made to calm and reassure people" - Page 46

10. "Films in the United States tended to reflect the popular sentiment, decrying the attack on the WTC and painting the faces of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as terrorists directly responsible for the attack and who deserved their subsequent fate" - Page 57

11. "The films also allowed people to revisit aspects of the events surrounding the fall of the Twin Towers" - Page 313

12. "Film does not reflect what actually happened so much as it reflects what the public wanted to believe took place" - Page 314

13. "Films that depicted events surrounding what took place on 9/11, and those that focused on Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, are peppered with small silences that challenge the notion that films merely reflect events" - Page 316