"In The Shadow of No Towers" (revisited)

I’m actually quite disappointed that last night I had worked for twenty minutes on a follow up post for Art Spiegelman’s “In the Shadow of No Towers” only to have the internet cut off on me and my post go to, well, wherever they go. Anyhow, here’s my post.

How do the images of September 11th figure into our national consciousness differently from those of other nations? Art Spiegelman offers a fine example of this in his book when he writes of feeling “Equally terrorized by Al-Qaeda and by his own Government…” (2). The images chosen to symbolize and capture the events of that day are repeated over and over again in the same way politicians frame “debate”—to keep people distracted, fearful and traumatized so that they are willing to sacrifice their civil and human rights to the illusion of national security. Spiegelman’s illustration of a terrified man with an albatross around his neck that tells him to “go out and shop” and “be afraid” rather than allowing him time to contemplate the constant repetition of the exploited image and its coming to represent the whole is very telling.

Why is it the planes hitting the towers have come to symbolize the “terror threat”?
To be invoked in visceral image again and again the way one might think a preacher would, to stoke fear of Armageddon, perhaps?
Who decided that this image would be the most important/relevant/meaningful rather than the plane hitting the Pentagon or the people standing, ash covered, waiting for any news of a loved ones’ survival?
When did the Bush govt. have plans to attack Iraq? Institute the Patriot Act?
How do all of these questions tie together with the Adorno/Horkheimer essay on “The Culture Industry”?

The purpose of the Culture Industry is to reaffirm the power of the State, as it is controlled exclusively by the State. The purpose of any image it produces is to tell consumers what to want, buy, think, love, desire, fear and hate. Therefore the images of 9/11 (planes hitting the towers, planes hitting the towers, planes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing) are to keep/suspend the public in a state of perpetual fear. Fear mongering. But more importantly than that, they serve to create a national consciousness around that one image. For example, Spiegelman asks in the book, “But why did those provincial American flags have to sprout out of the embers of Ground Zero? What not…a globe?” (7)

Why not a globe? Why the flag? Why? Because in the time leading up to September 11th, the nation was pretty fairly divided (as it usually is following an election or leading up to one) about the new “President.” What followed September 11th were not only increases in fear and flag production, but also almost the entire world united in mourning. Entire nations rallied around the injustice of the attacks and stood in silence and in tears at the sight of such senseless destruction. Yet, this unity was made useless by the unilateral policy of retribution and “justice” that has been ongoing ever since. The “leader’s greatness” has been determined in many American eyes as having been steadfast and taking charge in the face of the terrorist attacks, yet to the world, the leader has simply followed in the footsteps of other “cowboy presidents,” preferring war to diplomacy and unilateral action to cooperation.

As Spiegelman is running and hiding to the Technicolor rainbow of the terror alert, to hide under an American Flag, he says “I should feel safer under here, but –Damn it! —I can’t see a thing!” (7)

Later he writes, “On 9/11/03 “the unmentionable odour of death” still offends as we commemorate two years of squandered chances to bring the community of nations together” (10).

Both of these examples offer extremes of both ends regarding any hint of “national consciousness” among Americans. There is the exclusive and the inclusive. There is the individual and the community/collective. There is fear and hope. Imagine if we could bring nations together to support our policies rather than mass protest against them?
It is ever ironic to me that other people around the world understand that our government is not necessarily concerned or representative of the will of the American people and yet we often fail to extend the same courtesy to others when we say “kill them all” or even “God Bless America.”


Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Cornel West for your enjoyment.
Check out the whole interview on http://www.alternet.org/

Peace!


“There are three fundamental anti-democratic dogmas. The first is the dogma of free market fundamentalism that fetishizes and ascribes magical powers to the unfettered market. Deregulate. Privatize. These are the mantra of the day among the elites. And the result is what?
We end up with one percent of the population now holding 48 percent of the net financial wealth, and 20 percent of our precious children of all colors living in utter poverty in the richest nation in the history of the world. It’s a moral disgrace.
I’m not even talking about workers being marginalized, not even talking about the ways in which our children don’t have access to high quality education, especially in chocolate cities. We’re not even talking about the forty-seven million citizens who don’t have access to healthcare insurance. We can go on and on and on. This is the internal decay that we have to address in relation to this anti-democratic dogma, free market capitalism.
The other two dogmas are the dogma of aggressive militarism and the dogma of escalating authoritarianism.
The militarism is not just the invasion of Iraq, but it’s the notion of being a military power, and feeling that we can revert to raw force as a means of resolving conflict, and in a unilateral way for the most part..
And it’s the militarization of everyday life. Domestic violence. Cowardly brothers of all colors attacking vulnerable sisters of all colors. The militarizing of our minds. How we live and how we are oriented to each other is inseparable from the imperial identity and mentality that’s emanating now out of Washington.
The escalating authoritarianism has to do with the monitoring of our dialogue. I’m sure you’ve heard of brother Tariq Ramadan, who was supposed to teach at the University of Notre Dame. He had his visa cancelled because the US government does not want to have a robust discussion about what’s going on in the Middle East, about what’s going on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So we are unable to be Socratic enough to acknowledge that ordinary Middle-Easterners, be they Israeli or Palestinians or Kurds or Turks or whatever, often have a very different view than their power players, their elites, who are trying to keep them policed as it were. Ramadam’s being able to come to Notre Dame is just the peak of an iceberg. The USA Patriot Act would be another peak.
Free market fundamentalism, the aggressive militarism, and third is the escalating authoritarianism These three dogmas are dangerous. They’re threatening, and it makes democracy matters frightening in our time.”—Cornel West, from “Matters of Justice” By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted September 29, 2004.


"I have earned my disillusionment. I have been working all of my life. I am a patriot and I have been fighting the good fight, but what if there are no damsels in distress? What if I knew that and I called your bluff? Don't you think every kitten figures out how to get down, whether or not you ever show up?" --Ani, from "Not a Pretty Girl"