Description
This essay discusses the ten films released between 9/11 and the Gulf War II and how they reflect raging debates about US foreign policy and what it means to be an American. The films discussed are:
Pearl Harbor (World War II),
We Were Soldiers and
The Quiet American (the Vietnam War),
Behind Enemy Lines,
Black Hawk Down and
Kandahar (episodes of humanitarian intervention),
Collateral Damage and
In the Bedroom (vengeance in response to loss),
Minority Report (futurist pre-emptive justice), and
Fahrenheit 9/11 (an explicit critique of Bush's entire war on terror). Cynthia Weber discusses how Americans construct their identity and the moral values that inform their foreign policy in response to these events. This essay will be of great interest to students of American Studies, US Foreign Policy, Contemporary US History, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Film Studies.
Ten films released between 9/11 and Gulf War II reflect raging debates about US foreign policy and what it means to be an American. Tracing the portrayal of America in the films
Pearl Harbor (World War II);
We Were Soldiers and
The Quiet American (the Vietnam War);
Behind Enemy Lines,
Black Hawk Down and
Kandahar (episodes of humanitarian intervention);
Collateral Damage and
In the Bedroom (vengeance in response to loss);
Minority Report (futurist pre-emptive justice); and
Fahrenheit 9/11 (an explicit critique of Bush's entire war on terror), Cynthia Weber presents a stimulating new study of how Americans construct their identity and the moral values that inform their foreign policy. This is not just another book about post-9/11 America. It introduces the concept of 'moral grammars of war', and explains how they are articulated: Many Americans asked in the wake of 9/11 - not only 'why do they hate us?' but 'what does it mean to be a moral America(n) and how might such an America(n) act morally in contemporary international politics? This text explores how these questions were answered at the intersections of official US foreign policy and post-9/11 popular films. It also details US foreign policy formation in relation to traditional US narratives about US identity `who we think we were/are', 'who we wish we'd never been', 'who we really are', and 'who we might become' as well as in relation to their foundations in nationalist discourses of gender and sexuality. This book will be of great interest to students of American Studies, US Foreign Policy, Contemporary US History, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Film Studies.
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