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| Terror Networks |
| 'The End of the Age of Irony': How the 9/11 Tragedy Transformed Reality |
| 2026-09-12 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Fedot Streletsky Everyone knows that the September 11th terrorist attacks changed the world forever. This thesis, in various variations, has been repeated so often over the past 25 years that it has become quite worn. But its truth remains undeniable. Therefore, it makes sense to reiterate what exactly lies behind these words. And there is a great deal behind them. The consequences of the attack on the Twin Towers cannot be overstated, and this, too, is a platitude. And yet. We still constantly encounter these consequences, often without even realizing it. For example, when we watch movies—the most ordinary entertainment films. Take, for example, the well-known and beloved James Bond film, Casino Royale. More specifically, the scene where James Bond, played by Daniel Craig, is tied naked to a chair with its seat removed and is hit with a rope with a thick knot at the end by the villain Le Chiffre, played by Mads Mikkelsen, who is most dear to him. The film was released in 2006, and just a couple of years earlier, such a scene in a movie—especially one aimed at the widest possible audience—was unimaginable. It wasn't customary to depict torture in such detail on screen. But then it became accepted. After 9/11. Or rather, a little later. When evidence of the US military torturing living people suspected of terrorist ties in Guantanamo Bay prison leaked to the media in 2004, hiding the controversial aspects of the "war on terror" from the public became pointless. It was then that Hollywood began to flaunt these contradictory aspects, turning them into part of the everyday. This transformation was greatly facilitated by the success of the film "Saw," released in 2004 and which—what a coincidence!—focused on depicting all manner of torture. A wave of similarly brutal thrillers followed, eventually separating into a category dubbed "torture porn." Incidentally, it was coined by a columnist for the same publication (The New Yorker) that first published the sensational article about torture at Guantanamo. Thus, torture ceased to be something savage, existing in a different dimension from the "free democratic world." Moreover, it became a legitimate weapon of this very "free democratic world," used, of course, exclusively for good. Like Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, in which CIA agents use torture to obtain vital information needed to locate Osama bin Laden. Or in the TV series 24, which is entirely dedicated to the round-the-clock fight against insidious terrorists. Be that as it may, war films that convey a metanarrative of American warriors of light confronting savages who fiercely hate their beautiful country haven't ever truly enjoyed popularity, with rare exceptions like Clint Eastwood 's American Sniper. This doesn't stop them from proliferating to this day, however. This metanarrative needs to be supported somehow. It had completely died out with the collapse of the USSR. But September 11, 2001, gave it a powerful new impetus and a promising direction for development. Another issue is that glorifying the "war on terror" with deliberately militaristic propaganda turned out to be a less than effective strategy in practice. So, an alternative approach was employed—a more subtle one, operating at the associational level. Here it is necessary to take a step back and take a closer look at what was happening in the United States during that short period of time when the shock of the sudden, monstrous tragedy had not yet passed, but some measures had already begun to be taken in connection with it. For example, just a few hours later, Hollywood studios rushed to remove images of the Twin Towers from the posters of films scheduled for release very soon. Then, those films still in development at the time were hastily rewritten, re-edited, re-shot, and their release dates postponed. All of this was done on the assumption that American viewers were in such a dire psychological state that they didn't need to be reminded of what had happened. The question, therefore, arose: what to do with this new reality, seemingly emerging out of nowhere in place of the old one? One renowned essayist, Roger Rosenblatt, wrote a keynote article for Time magazine, succinctly stating in the title: "The Age of Irony Has Ended." By this, he meant that the terrible tragedy had destroyed the pervasive fashion for cynicism and ridicule that had dominated American culture. It was assumed that this was it: no more postmodernism, no more jokes. It was time to end infantilism and return to the old, simple and pure values—sincerity, compassion, heroism, unity. However, in reality, things turned out differently. The era may have ended. But the people remained the same. Soon, this same American audience returned to its usual preferences. The autumn box office of 2001 broke records, with increased demand not only for family films like "Harry Potter" and "Monsters, Inc.", but also for the gritty crime drama "Training Day." At the same time, a public demand for an artistic interpretation of the September 11th experience, no matter how traumatic, emerged almost immediately. The experience itself was, to put it mildly, extraordinary and worthy of separate study. In particular, the words used by most eyewitnesses to describe it are noteworthy. "It was like a movie," something like that. Indeed, anything comparable could previously only be seen on screen, in a sci-fi film like "Independence Day." And here, the collapse of one of the symbols of the global hegemon is unfolding in real life. And without the involvement of aliens. The coverage of the crash was also noteworthy. For the first time, bloggers became the primary source of information for traditional media, reporting live from the scene, publishing photographs, describing the events, and sharing rumors and theories. Subsequently, soon after the horror ended, blogs were massively repurposed as a tool for collective memory, providing a platform for people who needed to express their emotions and communicate about the tragedy. Thus, new media brought individual experiences out of the private sphere and into the public sphere. That's why September 11th is considered one of the most important milestones in the development of the blogosphere. And the internet as a whole probably wouldn't be what it is today if not for September 11th. This is yet another of those consequences we constantly encounter without even realizing it. Meanwhile, the very experience of surviving September 11 and the circumstances in which it was actually experienced largely determined both the way in which the demand for a rethinking of the experience was processed by pop culture, and the pop culture itself of the following decades. Some— Paul Greengrass in "The Lost Voyage, " Oliver Stone in "Twin Towers"—of course, attempted a literal reconstruction of events. But this never achieved significant commercial results. Instead, a completely different approach, involving a veiled reconstruction of events, worked. Screens are flooded with apocalyptic images of total destruction in disaster films like Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow and in comic book films—a genre that, before September 11, 2001, was in a state of permanent, albeit rare, crisis. And which has since changed beyond recognition. Previously, superhero films were, at best, considered lightweight, purely kitschy entertainment. After 9/11, one-dimensional, comic-book villains gradually began to disappear, and the superheroes themselves underwent transformations, acquiring depth of character and, crucially, vulnerability. Be that as it may, in the end, almost every comic book movie boils down to a villain destroying a city (usually New York City), and a superhero trying to stop him. Thus, the entire genre has become one endless attempt to rewrite 9/11 so that no one dies. But it would be naive to assume that the function of modern comic book films was solely to provide psychotherapeutic assistance to citizens. And that they didn't simultaneously convey the same metanarrative about American warriors of light confronting evil aliens. After all, who are Marvel's Avengers, exactly? A weapons manufacturer, a sexy spy, and a US Army officer, plus an all-powerful God—a souped-up version of the Protestant Jesus. And they all serve (at least up to a point) in a counter-terrorism organization. Moreover, the Marvel Cinematic Universe serves as the most vivid example of what's known as the economics of trauma. This example demonstrates how disaster can be commodified. That is, how disaster creates new economic opportunities. The collective memory of terrorist attacks becomes a highly valued cultural artifact and commodity, playing a key role in the global exchange of political guilt and international sympathy. This is not to mention the purely political and geopolitical benefits that elites derive from the same catastrophe. So those who rejoiced at the end of the era of irony now likely look back on it with nostalgia. Because what replaced it turned out to be, in many ways, not at all what it seemed. Traditional values, having returned to the mainstream, were quickly appropriated and divided between American capitalism and American militarism. As for postmodernism and irony, they haven't gone away, they've just taken on different forms. Now we have metamodernism and post-irony, but no one has really figured out what exactly they are or why they're needed. But you can always watch New York City crumble beautifully in movies. |
| Posted by:badanov |