An Event “Like a Movie”? Hollywood and 9/11

Authors

  • Christina Rickli

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.114

Abstract

Footage of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 provoked a wide spectrum of viewers to state that what they were witnessing was “like a movie.“ In a first part, this essay discusses the salience of such a simile by comparing the aesthetics and content of 9/11-footage to the one of Hollywood disaster films. In a second part, Hollywood’s immediate reactions as well as its recent movie representations of 9/11 are analyzed.

Author Biography

Christina Rickli

Christina Rickli holds a full doctoral scholarship (“Forschungskredit“) issued by the University of Zurich, where she graduated in English/American Studies, Film Studies, and Art History. In addition, she is a member of the interdisciplinary Zurich Graduate School “Körper, Selbsttechnologien, Geschlecht: Entgrenzungen und Begrenzungen“ (Body, Technologies of the Self, Gender: Limits and Delimitations). She is currently working on her doctoral thesis on American novels and films post-9/11, supervised by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen.

Downloads

How to Cite

Rickli, Christina. “An Event ‘Like a Movie’? Hollywood and 9 11”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 10, Mar. 2012, doi:10.5283/copas.114.

Issue

Vol. 10 (2009)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.