American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11

Author: Terence McSweeney
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474413838
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11 is a ground-breaking collection of essays by some of the foremost scholars writing in the field of contemporary American film. Through a dynamic critical analysis of the defining films of the turbulent post-9/11 decade, the volume explores and interrogates the impact of 9/11 and the 'War on Terror' on American cinema and culture. In a vibrant discussion of films like American Sniper (2014), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Spectre (2015), The Hateful Eight (2015), Lincoln (2012), The Mist (2007), Children of Men (2006), Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), noted authors Geoff King, Guy Westwell, John Shelton Lawrence, Ian Scott, Andrew Schopp, James Kendrick, Sean Redmond, Steffen Hantke and many others consider the power of popular film to function as a potent cultural artefact, able to both reflect the defining fears and anxieties of the tumultuous era, but also shape them in compelling and resonant ways.

Touching History

Author: Lynn Spencer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 141657946X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
On the azure blue morning of 9/11 the skies were pronounced "severe clear," in the parlance of airline pilots; a gorgeous day for flying. Nearly 5,000 flights were cruising the skies over America when FAA Operations Manager Ben Sliney arrived at the Command Center for his first day on that job. He could never have anticipated the historic drama that was about to unfold as Americans who found themselves on the front lines of a totally unprecedented attack on our homeland sprang into action to defend our country and save lives. In this gripping moment-to-moment narrative, based on groundbreaking reporting, Lynn Spencer brings the inspiring true drama of their unflinching and heroic response vividly to life for the first time, taking us right inside the airliner cockpits and control towers, the fighter jets and the military battle cabs. She makes vital corrections to the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report, and reveals many startling, utterly unknown elements of the story. As a commercial pilot herself, for whom the attacks hit terribly close to home, she knew that the true scope and nature of the response so brilliantly improvised that morning by those in the thick of the action -- with so little guidance from those at the highest levels -- had not at all been captured by the news coverage or the 9/11 Commission. To get to the truth, she went on a three-year quest, interviewing hundreds of key players, listening to untold hours of tapes and pouring through voluminous transcripts to re-create each heart-stopping moment as it happened through their eyes and in their words as the drama unfolded. From the shocking moment at 7:59 a.m. that American 11 fails to respond to a controller's call, until the last commercial flight has safely landed and military jets rule the skies, all Americans will find themselves deeply moved and amazed by the grace and fierce determination of these steely men and women as they draw on all of their exquisite training to grasp, through the fog of war, what is happening, put their lives on the line, and mount an astonishing response. This beautifully crafted and deeply affecting account of the full story of their courageous actions is a vital addition to the country's understanding of a day that has forever changed our nation.

Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story

Author: Nora Raleigh Baskin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1442485078
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
Includes a reading group guide with discussion questions.

Three Rings

Author: Daniel Mendelsohn
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681376393
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
A memoir, biography, work of history, and literary criticism all in one, this moving book tells the story of three exiled writers—Erich Auerbach, François Fénelon, and W. G. Sebald—and their relationship with the classics, from Homer to Mimesis. In a genre-defying book hailed as “exquisite” (The New York Times) and “spectacular” (The Times Literary Supplement), the best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own—works that pondered the nature of narrative itself: Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler’s Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul; François Fénelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey, The Adventures of Telemachus—a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Europe for a hundred years—resulted in his banishment; and the German novelist W.G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home. Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn’s struggle to write two of his own books—a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father—that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life.

Reflecting 9/11

Author: Heather Pope
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443896640
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
In over fifteen years, the cultural and artistic response to 9/11 has been wide-ranging in form and function. As the turbulent post-9/11 years have unfolded – years that have been shaped and characterized by the War on Terror, the Patriot Act, the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 7/7, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay – these texts have been commemorative and heroic, have attempted to work through collective and individual traumas, and have struggled with trying to represent the “terrorist other.” Many of these earlier domestic, heroic and traumatic works have so often been read as limitations in narrative. This collection, however, challenges the language of limitation and provides re-readings of earlier work, but also traces the emergence of a new paradigm for discussing the artistic responses to 9/11 – one that frames these narratives as dialogic, self-conscious and self-reflexive interventions in the responses to the attacks, the initial representations of the attacks, and the ever-shifting social and geopolitical continuities of the 9/11 decade. These texts widen the conversation about the lasting impacts of 9/11, and incorporate strands of discussion on American exceptionalism and imperialism, torture, and otherness, whilst still remaining invested in the personal and collective traumas of the attacks. The authors included here ask crucial questions about the way 9/11 is being historicized: will it, for example, be read as a moment of rupture or epoch? Will it inevitably be attached to the War on Terror or the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? As they trace the emergent patterns of reflexivity, politicization and dissent, the contributions here are also implicitly invested in asking how far they extend.

Come from Away

Author: Genevieve Graham
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501142925
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Tides of Honour and Promises to Keep comes a poignant novel about a young couple caught on opposite sides of the Second World War. In the fall of 1939, Grace Baker’s three brothers, sharp and proud in their uniforms, board Canadian ships headed for a faraway war. Grace stays behind, tending to the homefront and the general store that helps keep her small Nova Scotian community running. The war, everyone says, will be over before it starts. But three years later, the fighting rages on and rumours swirl about “wolf packs” of German U-Boats lurking in the deep waters along the shores of East Jeddore, a stone’s throw from Grace’s window. As the harsh realities of war come closer to home, Grace buries herself in her work at the store. Then, one day, a handsome stranger ventures into the store. He claims to be a trapper come from away, and as Grace gets to know him, she becomes enamoured by his gentle smile and thoughtful ways. But after several weeks, she discovers that Rudi, her mysterious visitor, is not the lonely outsider he appears to be. He is someone else entirely—someone not to be trusted. When a shocking truth about her family forces Grace to question everything she has so strongly believed, she realizes that she and Rudi have more in common than she had thought. And if Grace is to have a chance at love, she must not only choose a side, but take a stand. Come from Away is a mesmerizing story of love, shifting allegiances, and second chances, set against the tumultuous years of the Second World War.

Metamorphoses

Author: Mary Zimmerman
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810119803
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 115

Book Description
This play is based on David R. Slavitt's translation of The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Monologues.

Radio Drama

Author: Martin Grams, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476608261
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 585

Book Description
The free-standing radios of the middle decades of the 20th century were invitingly rotund and proudly displayed--nothing like today's skinny televisions hidden inside "entertainment centers." Radios were the hub of the family's after-dinner activities, and children and adults gorged themselves on western-adventure series like "The Lone Ranger," police dramas such as "Calling All Cars," and the varied offerings of "The Cavalcade of America." Shows often aired two or three times a week, and many programs were broadcast for more than a decade, comprising hundreds of episodes. This book includes more than 300 program logs (many appearing in print for the first time) drawn from newspapers, script files in broadcast museums, records from NBC, ABC and CBS, and the personal records of series directors. Each entry contains a short broadcast history that includes directors, writers, and actors, and the broadcast dates and airtimes. A comprehensive index rounds out the work.

Firestorm

Author: Stephen Prince
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231148704
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
It was believed that September 11th would make certain kinds of films obsolete, such as action thrillers crackling with explosions or high-casualty blockbusters where the hero escapes unscathed. While the production of these films did ebb, the full impact of the attacks on Hollywood's creative output is still taking shape. Did 9/11 force filmmakers and screenwriters to find new methods of storytelling? What kinds of movies have been made in response to 9/11, and are they factual? Is it even possible to practice poetic license with such a devastating, broadly felt tragedy? Stephen Prince is the first scholar to trace the effect of 9/11 on the making of American film. From documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) to zombie flicks, and from fictional narratives such as The Kingdom (2007) to Mike Nichols's Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Prince evaluates the extent to which filmmakers have exploited, explained, understood, or interpreted the attacks and the Iraq War that followed, including incidents at Abu Ghraib. He begins with pre-9/11 depictions of terrorism, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936), and follows with studio and independent films that directly respond to 9/11. He considers documentary portraits and conspiracy films, as well as serial television shows (most notably Fox's 24) and made-for-TV movies that re-present the attacks in a broader, more intimate way. Ultimately Prince finds that in these triumphs and failures an exciting new era of American filmmaking has taken shape.

The Shock of the News

Author: Brian A. Monahan
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814796125
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
How did the events of September 11, 2001 come to be thought of as 9/11? The Shock of the News is an authoritative account of post-9/11 political and social processes, offering an in-depth analysis of the media coverage of this momentous event. Brian Monahan demonstrates how 9/11 has been transformed into a morality tale centered on patriotism, victimization, and heroes. Introducing the idea of “public drama” as a way of making sense of how media processed and packaged the 9/11 attacks for their audiences, Monahan not only illuminates how and why the coverage took shape as it did, but also provides us with new insights into the social, cultural, and political consequences of the attacks and their aftermath. Monahan explains how and why 9/11 became such a potent symbol, exploring how meanings and symbols get created, reinforced, and disseminated in modern society. Ultimately, Monahan offers an important new understanding of this singular event of our time, and his compelling narrative brings the momentous events back into focus.