The Impact of 9/11 on American Society and Film

The September 11th attacks (9/11) were a series of attacks coordinated by the Al-Qaeda terrorist group upon Manhattan and Washington DC. Four passenger airliners were hijacked by 19 members of Al-Qaeda, two of those airliners were crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan and within hours the towers had collapsed. The third airliner was crashed into the Pentagon (the United States Department of Defense headquarters) which led to a collapse in it's western side. The fourth airliner was targeted at Washington DC but the passengers fought and tried to overcome the attackers which caused the plane to instead crash into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

These attacks had an huge impact on society and film, primarily, but not limited to, in the United States as the attacks caused massive security flaws to become identified allowing for countries to strengthen their security and also as it showed that the United States wasn't invincible. The attacks on 9/11 showed the citizens of the United States that they weren't as safe and impenetrable as they presumed which caused a widespread fear of destruction and terrorism amongst them. An offset of the 9/11 attacks was a huge media bias towards people from the Middle East, with sweeping negative generalisations and a large sense of xenophobia.

All of this in turn had a large impact on American film largely in the Disaster genre as they had had an experience similar to what is seen in Disaster films and it also made a lot of film concepts largely taboo for example the film The Towering Inferno (1974) would have been in extreme bad taste and have caused a massive public uproar if it were created post 9/11. The 9/11 attacks also seem to have strengthened the sense of patriotism in American cinema as it has become all about strengthening themselves as a nation seemingly uniting to stand in the way of any threat and largely comes about invoking the sense of 'The American Dream'. Thematically what comes from this is large senses of family orientation, freedom, liberty; pretty much propaganda to keep the American society from fearing any threats and to make them strongly believe in America despite the panic and anxiety initially shown.