Remembering 9/11 With Those Who Don’t Remember 9/11

Some thoughts I have that were inspired by my realization that I was teaching classrooms of students who only have second-hand memories of 9/11:

Thus, the emerging national vision of 9/11 is not the product of a unitary vision of the event, characterized by a relatively coherent government or media narrative. Rather, it is as shattered and incoherent as the rest of our social landscape, the product of a 200 million different stories about how we managed to get through that day. These stories themselves are shaped by and filtered through the multi-faceted media landscape that we now live in, such that the stories that one person tells about 9/11 will differ dramatically from the stories another person tells.

I talk a bit about United 93 (which I recently re-watched), Zero Dark Thirty, 24, and a few of the other bits of media that refer directly or obliquely to 9/11. Having thought about it a bit more I think it would be worthwhile to mention Superman Returns, which is quite clearly about 9/11 without really being about 9/11, and Phase One of the MCU, which begins with a military contractor’s visit to Afghanistan and ends with a massive surprise attack on New York City.