World Famous Comics: The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
By: Susan Faludi Publisher: Metropolitan Books Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Metropolitan Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 368 Publication Date: October 02, 2007 Release Date: October 02, 2007
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash—an unflinching dissection of the mind of America after 9/11
In this most original examination of America’s post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country’s psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her acute observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore “traditional” manhood, marriage, and maternity? Why did we react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? Why did an attack fueled by hatred of Western emancipation lead us to a regressive fixation on Doris Day womanhood and John Wayne masculinity, with trembling “security moms,” swaggering presidential gunslingers, and the “rescue” of a female soldier cast as a “helpless little girl”?
The answer, Faludi finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation that in recent memory has been least vulnerable to domestic attack was forged in traumatizing assaults by nonwhite “barbarians” on town and village. That humiliation lies concealed under a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms.
Brilliant and important, The Terror Dream shows what 9/11 revealed about us—and offers the opportunity to look at ourselves anew.
It's time for all of us to wake up This book has arrived just in time for the 2008 election. Along with the PBS program, "Bush's War", this should be required reading for all voters. We can change the future but we must understand the past. Thank you again Susan for your excellent analysis.
Interesting Topic Worth Discussing In "The Terror Dream" Susan Faludi writes, "A culture forges myths for many reasons, but paramount among them is the need to impose order on chaotic and disturbing experience--to resolve haunting contradictions and contain apprehensions, to imagine a way out of darkness." Throughout her book she presents a fascinating argument detailing how from the time of the Puritans, through the age of the wild frontier, to the era of the John Wayne archetype, American mythmakers--journalists and book publishers in particular-- have mythologized the 'heroic' male and consigned women to the role of frail 'victim' amidst the background of national anxiety or tragedy. Faludi skillfully presents a well-researched look into the Puritan view of the importance of being weak before God and how captivity was seen as a way to strengthen that aspect of their faith and character. Faludi introduces the reader to the 'captivity narrative' which was popular at the time and featured such heroines as Mary Rowlandson, who survived and escaped captivy from the Indians.
In the era of the wild frontier, however, the image of the rugged, solitary, independent frontiersman, best embodied by Daniel Boone, who fiercely decried the exaggerated image of him put forth by his contemporaries, become dominant and was made so by an increasing number portrayals of poor, defenseless women. Indians were made out to be the bad guys and I thought it was interesting how Faludi pointed out the similarities between 9/11 and the execution of nearly 300 Native American Indians in 1862. Faludi notes that in each crisis, society reacted in a way that did not allow a discourse to exist. The literary critic Kenneth Burke once wrote that, "History is an endless conversation." In the case of the 1862 execution of the Indians and the days immediately following 9/11, there was only a monologue. I did not know that very few women were allowed to contribute to Op-Ed sections of newspapers right after 9/11. Why? I was surprised to learn that some people reacted to 9/11 by saying, 'Well, this blows feminism right off the map!' Faludi rightfully questions the relation between feminism and the horrific events of 9/11.
It is a shame that people will most likely never know about the heroic exploits of Cynthia Ann Parker or Hannah Duston, but I am glad that there are people like Susan Faludi who will remind us that history and the mythmakers have overlooked figures who play such important roles in rejecting gendered stereotypes.
This is an excellent book and like many good books, it kept me thinking, even when I was not reading it. I am sure some people will not agree with everything she writes, but her argument deserves to be considered.
Creation (of a) myth Being a long-time Faludi fan, I was not quite sure if I wanted to read a book about 9/11, not because I had been traumatized by the event or anything, but I was unsure that I would find a book that looked at all of the complex views of such a complex event. However, I found, as usual, Faludi's insight into the propagation of the Male-as-Hero Myth and the Female-as-Victim/Weak Myth to be an intriguing lens through which to look at 9/11. This books continues, in a way, the material that the author brought to BACKLASH, that women in a certain context can be subjugated or oppressed, depending on the need of those in power (in tis case, the media, and by extension, politicians). Faludi adds to the age-old paradigm of women as either virgins or whores; now they are also victims, even when they really aren't. Clearly there were heroines of 9/11, but why have they been obscured? One reviewer of this book actually proves Faludi's point about blaming feminism for being crybabies rather than being "Americans". I hate to be the one to burst anyone's bubble, but women are Americans, too, and they have every right to assert their position as participants in this Great Experiment, especially when they are purposely being erased by conservative pundits and the sexist media. I cannot wait for this book to come out in paperback so that I can put this as required reading on my college syllabus.
FEMINIST DROOL JUST WHAT THE TITLE SAYS. AMAZING HOW THE FEMINISTS ARE UPSET ABOUT 9/11 AND WHAT HAPPENED "TO THEM" INSTEAD OF WORRYING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO US AS IN U.S
Precognition and Paranoia Susan Faludi begins her latest book `The Terror Dream' with an account of how she dreamt of being aboard a hijacked aircraft the night before the 9/11 attacks.
This astonishing claim to precognitive powers is not out of character with the rest of Faludi's book as her claims are based upon the same magical thinking that results from the minds tendency to infer patterns of meaning from the flimsiest of evidence.
Astrology, tea-leaf reading, augury and the reading of goat entrails gain credence by believers selecting evidence based upon coincidentally accurate predictions and the suppression (conscious or unconscious) of more significant evidence of failure.
So it is with paranoia.
Faludi makes two basic claims: that there has been a recent assault on the freedom and independence of American women; and that this assault has been a reaction to the 9/11 attacks.
Neither claim stands up to much scrutiny.
Faludi claims that images of womanhood in the USA have reverted to `Doris Day' or `Betty Crocker' stereotypes. They are 'demonised' if they do not behave in `undemanding, uncompetitive, and most of all dependent' ways. However, Hilary Clinton is currently neck and neck with Barack Obama in the race to the White House, Condoleezza Rice is Secretary of state and women are in prominent roles in the both the media and on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Faludi also seems to inhabit an America where TV series such as `Alias', `Cold Case', `Lost', `Standoff', `The Closer', `Damages', `Bones' and the `CSI' franchise are not populated by strong, independent women.
The position of women in American society has never been more powerful, and the images of women in the media have never been more positive - part of the reason, in fact, for the USA becoming the target of attacks by misogynistic fundamentalists.
(Not surprisingly, the misogyny of the 9/11 attackers and their supporters is ignored - but that would involve widening the scope of the book to address global concerns beyond Faludi's ethnocentric focus. Like most social critics she has little to say about the thousands of deaths which occurred on 9/11, only the way she believes the issues have been represented.)
Since the first part of her thesis - that the position of women has taken a significant downturn - does not stand up, it's hardly worth examining the second claim - that this is a result of 9/11 - but I'll try.
If there *had* been a `backlash' against women due to America's weakened self-image this would contradict her earlier book `Backlash', which `found' an identical situation for American women when America was at it's strongest: an imperial power basking in it's victories over the Soviet Union.
It's illogical to claim exactly the same result from opposite causes and it casts further doubt onto the usefulness of her previous work.
Nor is her argument that the `rescue narratives' presented in the media worthy of serious consideration. The view that these hark back to a myth of the frontier in which white women were kidnapped by native population essentialises these narratives as uniquely *American* when in fact such rescue myths are almost universal and date back many thousands of years. Faludi's claim seems to rest almost entirely on a cod-psychological analysis of the 1956 John Wayne film, `The Searchers' which doesn't even do justice to that one film, let alone give profound insights into the psyche of 21st Century America.
Faludi came into much feminist criticism over her previous book, `Stiffed', which wallowed in male victimhood. Here Faludi is attempting to reposition herself once again as champion of the *female* cause; but this book exploits the uncertainties of 9/11 and systematically devalues the genuine gains of the feminist movement.
It will sell well - paranoia and self-pity are a powerful combination - but from Faludi's claim of precognitive powers onwards this book inhabits the same fantasy world as do the internet conspiracy theories circulated in the wake of 9/11 which claimed that the Americans blew up the World Trade Centre themselves using pre-planted explosives or invisible rockets made from alien technology retro-engineered from the Roswell UFO crash.
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