Reconstruction Vol. 11, No. 4

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The Depiction of Terrorism in 24: The Inescapable Catastrophe / Francesca Negri

Abstract: The TV series 24 was nothing but a filter of the widespread terror and unease unleashed after 9/11, depicting a claustrophobic world in which one’s own family and no-one else is to be trusted. For a decade this “real time” narrative has perfectly represented US paranoia. It depicts what Baudrillard calls the “American fear for self-destruction” which is still enduring today. While 24 underwrote the process of legitimating the use - and abuse - of force on the War on Terror, it also drew heavily on existing cultural archetypes of masculinity, heroism and national identity.

Keywords: 24, TV series, popular culture, American society, catastrophe

<1> Accounting for present-day international relations in terms of biopolitics is relatively novel [1]. It is therefore all the more tempting to board the train early, particularly when dealing with 24, a popular TV show that owed much to the changing international scene. However, before we rush to form an account of 24 couched in biopolitical terms, could it also be wise to consider Jack Bauer's (mis)adventures in terms of the more conventional approaches found in mass communications and film studies? Or, as a non-US citizen looking at a show noted for its development into a worldwide brand, using the tools of what the European academy calls American Studies? Perhaps this could even be a dialogue that starts on an autobiographical note.

<2> Has someone ever told you to spend your time on something a bit more significant than a television series? Since I have pitiless relatives and friends, I have heard this more than once. On each those occasions, I always replied with the following sentence: Well, you would too if you take into consideration what happened on November 11, 2001! (Never let them catch you off guard; believe me, it works great! They never know how to answer you back, for a while, at least.) First of all, because the date arouses a sort of religious respect in people; second – and most importantly - because no one knows what actually happened on November 11, 2001. And ignorance, typically, strikes dumb.

<3>However, nothing extraordinary happened on November 11, 2001. But for people not in the field – that is, who are not TV series addicts– the event I'm referring holds a lot of interest. And then, even my judgemental critics start to give a bit more credence to those useless and frivolous things offered by the world of entertainment (and to those who decide to spend their time on them).

<4>What are we talking about? Nothing but a meeting: a meeting organized exactly two months after the Twin Towers collapsed, between Karl Rove – former George W. Bush political adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff, heading the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives - and all the representatives of major Hollywood studios, including the long-time head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the powerful Jack Valenti. That conference was organized because the Bush administration deemed it highly pertinent to discuss the way the film industry could contribute to the newly declaredGlobal War on Terror, and came after many other meetings that had already occurred between Hollywood and the White House during the period of October-December 2001. Also, on October 17, 2001 the White House announced the formation of an Arts and Entertainment Task Force to harness a massive movement throughout much of Hollywood to do something in reaction to the events of September 11[2]. These meetings, therefore, suggests that since the very beginning of the war on terro, the Government intended to use all types of weapons at its disposal in order to conduct this "new war".

<5> In the meetings the Congress consulted some Hollywood experts on the best way to spearhead an effective war propaganda for the United States and for the rest of the world. John Romano, screenwriter and producer of some popular television series, then underlined how the contents of Hollywood productions were a key factor in the formation of the perception of the USA abroad for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. The following 5th December, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences held a panel entitled "Hollywood Goes to War?" to discuss what the film industry could do in response to September 11.[4] All of this just to demonstrate how seriously the American government took the role of television and cinema in their "war on terror".

<6> Such trends explain why a television series like 24 garnered so much attention since its first appearance. Not just because its riveting narrative concept centred on the national security and on the war against terrorism, but also because the storyline(s) were sometimes seen as prophetic in the way they resembled the events of 9/11 and the rhetoric of "war on terror". The premiere of the series was planned by Fox for the first week of September 2001 and had to be postponed – for obvious reasons - to the following November 6. The pilot of the series, and the whole story on which the first season is based, was written before the World Trade Center attack and, at the time of 9/11, the first twelve episodes had already been shot and edited, and were ready for broadcasting. Not only that, but in the creators' first intentions, the pilot ended its 44 minutes of real time narration with an attempted terrorist attack on a plane. After 9/11, the producers decided to re-edit this final scene to remove the part about the plane blowing up in the air, as a sign of respect for the already shocked American public.

<7> 24 was not just the result of a political and military strategy planned after the declaration of war, as a pure product of propaganda set up by the American Government with the explicit intent of leading the public opinion to support the fight against the global threat of terrorism, but was developed by film industry, to capture the so-called "spirit of the times" way before the coming of History. As a further example of this, I would finally underline the character of President David Palmer in 24 (Dennis Haysbert), the African American Commander in Chief who colonized the collective imagination, making the path for Barack Obama’s election. Indeed, as sociologist Jean-Michel Valantin points out:

Cinema gives substance and the emotional reality of the cinematic image to the virtual Nature of the strategic thinking, or to the impermanence of collective recall, by creating an alternative history, imagined and transformed into a shared spectacle which establishes a mental universe where strategic current affairs are played out, or replayed, in order to be knocked down or ‘built up’ (XII).

Thanks to these aspects, and to the great narrative power of the story told "in real time", 24 obtained a great success all over the world, until May 24, 2010, when the last episode of the eighth and final season of the series was broadcast in the USA. Needless to say, the culmination of the series does not mean that the United States is finally free from the threat of terrorism. The paranoid fear of the "other" is still alive, and probably will always be, because it's a fear that is older than the television series).

<8> From this point of view, in fact, 24 didn’t invent anything new. The cinematographic imaginary has always been pervaded by the big issues that crossed the American strategic debate, utilizing an interpretative framework of founding legends, such as the "Frontier myth" or the "City upon the Hill" which contributed to legitimise the choice to resort to violence and repeated use of weapons and force in order to fight any possible entity which might threaten the community and its rules. Indeed, the construction of the American identity historically occurred throughout the definition of a "menacing alterity". Therefore, for the creation of a community – and, consequentially, of a political and military strategy in charge of its defence – the presence of a threat is equally needed. According to Michael Rogin, in the specific case of the United States, the threat can either be represented by:

the Indian cannibal, the black rapist, the papal whore of Babylon, the monster-hydra United States Bank, the demon rum, the bomb-throwing anarchist, the many-tentacled Communist conspiracy, the agents of international terrorism – [which] are familiar figures in the dream-life that so often dominates American politics.[5]

For this reason, so that the threat would be such, it cannot be exclusively conceptual. It has to have an affective dimension to be able to arouse true feelings of fear, obsession, paranoid terror for the possibility of one's own suffering or that of one's beloved.

<9> If in the Fifties the threat was clearly circumscribed and represented by the Soviet-Communist universe, with the fall of the Berlin Wall the strange peace that derived destabilized the American security system, which needed now to produce new menaces in order to justify its existence, its identity and, moreover, its budget. It was absolutely necessary to find as quickly as possible an ostensible threat and, for this reason, from 1989-1990 the governmental apparatus in charge of the military defence started to draw up a list of menaces corresponding to an imminent danger. In these lists we can find – sorted in a jumble – different acts of international terrorism, drug trafficking and several others, including the movements of refugees.

<10> The "new threat", however, loses its concreteness, like it was historically intended to be. Anyhow, in a paradoxical way the threat becomes even more frightening, because it ends up having fleeting boundaries which can hardly be drawn. The "new threat" permeates the specific borders of the military management and spreads all around the everyday life of the single American citizen, who is now personally involved in facing a danger that could be everywhere and could break out at any moment without warning. Therefore, the theme of terrorism becomes central even before the events of September 11. In fact, the symbolic shock of the Twin Towers collapsing definitively transforms the former strategic imaginary, which is now perceived as foretelling the event, and loses in this way part of its capacity of producing distance, in favour of an always greater overlap between fiction and reality.

<11> Substantially, as the fear floods and spreads around, cinema elaborates it, feeds it back and changes its forms of representation. So, for example, the horizontal line, however stable, connected to the foundation tales typical of the mythology of the Frontier – according to whom the proceeding of the pioneers corresponded exactly to the perspective of an horizon to build – is replaced with a shaking verticality, an unstable and paranoid culture that constantly fears one precise thing - its sudden fall (symbolically depicted by the World Trade Center collapse). From this point of view, 24 can be considered the emblematic representation of the dizzy verticality that is reflected in its narrative structure, which is so convulsive and anarchic. The same city of Los Angeles – where the first five seasons of the series are set – becomes an ambivalent network, a place that is at the same time ordinary and parallel, where terror propagates and where it is absolutely necessary to keep order and fight the only true and terrifying and subversive threat, whatever the cost.[6]

<12> 24 showed up at a quite delicate time, dealing in such a direct way the theme of national security, right in the middle of the Bush administration and, moreover, right in the middle of the process of the elaboration of an effective international strategy with the aim of legitimizing the counter-attack against Afghanistan (and, at the same time, the consequent concept of"preemptive war"). Therefore, it is quite comprehensible why the series tends to align itself with the rigid conservative trends set by the Republican strategy. In saying this, however, we must be careful. As underlined here, 24 is not just a simple instrument of the right-wing propaganda machine. On the contrary, it carefully refrains from explicitly rallying in support of a conservative project, creating numerous characters that a common audience would connect – politically speaking – to the Democrats, or even left-wing oriented positions. For example, President David Palmer is in fact a Democrat and, moreover, an African-American candidate to lead the United States. The character is depicted in such a way so that he actually embodies the heroic characteristics which make him a self-made man, strong and determined, truthfully devoted to the common good and to the welfare of the country, as well as having a great-looking, well-shaped body and a calm attitude and being an honest and resolute man, who has to be able to choose for himself and for all the people of United States. During the first few seasons he is shown to be a co-protagonist (along with federal agent, Jack Bauer), preceding his assassination in the opening moments of Season 5, we never see him acting directly. However, all the crucial decisions directing the CTU agents and their actions depend on him, and on him falls the absolute responsibility for any decision taken decisions that involve upholding the moral values of justice and honesty, and that are often in conflict with his personal interests. We can say that Palmer symbolizes "The Choice", with all its baggage of renounce and sacrifice, while Bauer symbolizes "The Action", with its corresponding baggage of sufferings, since the "bone-breaking-machine" Bauer is far from being a disciplined and diplomatic agent, and usually pays for the consequences of his unorthodox manners. Palmer and Bauer, therefore, are just two faces of the same coin of the war on terrorism.

<13> Even as Palmer is shown as an excellent leader given his moral rectitude, and tries more than once to follow the path of negotiation in his attempt to overcome the terroristic violence (and even his own antagonists' plots against him), he is also forced in many situations to resort to similar violence - if not even more exaggerated. The violence he perpetrates is more psychological than physical. Compromise, as Bauer states more than once during the whole series, does not reward and is always unacceptable; moreover, it doesn't solve anything. Violence, whether right or wrong, appears to be the only solution and the series showcases violence in all its forms, from Bauer's physical violence to the psychological type authorized by Palmer. The Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) presides over a kind of jungle warfare, making 24overflow with gunfights, murders and torture, inflicted not only on presumed terrorists in possession of crucial information, but also upon and by the agents and political actors themselves who are in charge of the national security. For example, Jack is often put on the spot by his colleagues, deterred in his attempts to carry out certain actions and often delegitimized by the different representatives of the centre of political power (the various District Directors that come one after the other in command of the CTU). And for this reason, he is often forced to resort to illegitimate violence, in spite of himself. Not only that, but in order to pursue the common good, he is often called to incur huge personal sacrifices, without the expectation of personal benefits of any kind, neither monetary nor of social or professional recognition. On the contrary, most of the time Bauer risks even further legal sanctions for his actions, for example, in the instance when he was asked by the President of the United States to sacrifice his life for the country by turning himself over to an enemy (in the prologue to Season 6). Therefore, through the figure of Bauer the series seems to promote the concept of "self sacrifice", to which every American, and every"western man", is called in this battle against international terrorism.

<14> If the use of force in24 is an inevitable choice, it is because only in this way can the hero save himself, his beloved, the entire nation. In other words, however inconvenient and unacceptable, by merely resorting to violence, torture, even if apparently unjustified, one can free America from any threat of death. This reasoning is naturalized by the i.e. without any explicit declaration of a leading ideology. Democrats or Republicans, federal agents or ordinary civilians, everybody has to agree that the safety of the nation (and the restoration of a political and social order) passes through violence and sacrifice, practices which are connected with the conditions of contemporary history and do not admit any alternative, being universally recognized in spite of any political belief. Moreover, with the advent of the terrorist narrative, the ideological aspect actually loses any meaning of value. As sharply noted by Jean Baudrillard, with the threat of terrorism we are now facing a substantial change:

It is terror against terror – there is no longer any ideology. We are far beyond ideology and politics now. […] Terrorism, like a virus, is everywhere. There is a global perfusion of terrorism, which accompanies any system of domination as though it were its shadow, ready to activate itself everywhere, like a double agent. We can no longer draw a demarcation line around it. It is at the very heart of this culture which combats it.[8]

The threat is everywhere, being undefined and indefinable, therefore even more dreadful because of the typical human terror of the unknown. The world, the outside, becomes dangerous. There is nothing left than one last hope, that is folding into the safe embrace of one's own family. Hence, the theme of the family and of its reconstruction becomes fundamental to the series. The family too has been contaminated by the plague of terrorism, and the incertitude, foreboding and mistrust inherent in such conditions. It is no longer a safe place, but where green-eyed monsters hide, along with betrayals and ruptures.[9] In order to survive this threat, it is necessary to restore a solid basis to the family, to purify it, and doing so also bring back a pact of mutual trust. The entire American nation becomes one big family, corrupted by an interior disease that has to be defeated. The only ones who should be saved are those who will prove to be useful to the country in a way that is calculated following the parameter of efficiency. Measured thus, Jack Bauer is undoubtedly the personification of competence. He is the performer par excellence.

<15> After all, Jack Bauer is a hero who does not have time to lose. He does not have time to sleep, or eat, or go to the bathroom. Above all, he doesn't have time to think. Jack has to be instantly reactive, at all times. His actions need to take place right away, one after the other, and their effects must be immediate. Jack is a perpetual motion hero, totally restless, capable of just one battle cry, yelled and constantly repeated: "Do it, now!". Jack is a prescriptive hero, who doesn't forgive himself or any one else for a mistake. A rational paladin, who's programmatic but mostly programmed, just like or even more than a computer, whose heroic characteristic can be summed up just (if not totally) by his performance skills. To sum up, as I already said, aside from being a hero, Jack – like the other characters in the series – is mainly a performer. The principle of performance is a central theme in 24, because on that precise principle is based not just the condition of life and death of the various characters (an aspect which is quite common in political thrillers), but also the bases of their identities. In 24, every character's value is based entirely on their function. Their efficiency is constantly being tested and they have to prove their authenticity, being exactly what they are and, in so doing, being reliable.

<16> The murky and claustrophobic offices of the CTU, where most of the interior scenes of the series take place, are similar to a dungeon built for control and mutual accusation, rather than a place where the operative practices of the federal police are carried out. Inside the terrifying microcosm of the base camp there are no colleagues, only a bunch of antagonists fighting one another for survival, which is first professional, and then existential (although the two aspects tend to overlap in the series). Each character has to prove him or her self; the final judgment is based not so much on what they say or think, but mainly on their ability to be efficient. A judgmental public eye is ever present, which decides whether an action or a character is worthy of their sympathies or not. Their sympathy is not empathic or directly instinctive, but is an arranged subject to prior verification of competence. While Jack is hardly a likeable character, third season character agent Chloe O'Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) was inserted with the intention of portraying an obsessive and unpleasant figure. The audience hardly warmed to her, especially at the beginning, but over time she turned out to be fundamental to the development of the plot, ransoming herself off thanks to her unquestionable competencies.

<17> From this point of view, terrorism does nothing more than further dig into the ever present issue in the United States of the necessity of finding means to create societal cohesion. Quoting again Jean-Michel Valantin:

Terrorism is an extremely sensitive strategic subject for Americans because it poses the twin problem of societal subversion and cohesion inside a society which has the greatest difficulty accepting its own unity(49).

After all, the paranoid xenophobia which stands beneath the reasoning just described has very deep roots in the American contemporary culture, and goes hand in hand with the rise of the United States to the status of a world superpower. With the establishing of an empire which wants to present itself as a definitive and globalizing force, the breaking out of a widespread and exacerbate willingness to destruct the order is inevitable, since "the rejection of any system, including internal rejection, [grows] stronger as it approaches perfection or omnipotence" (Baudillard: 45). The American power is well conscious of this threat of subversion that it has to face and of the possible change of those conditions that determined its supremacy. For this reason, it unleashes its response on the outside - but first on its inside - a prophylactic reaction against this threat, arousing inevitable autoimmune consequences, such the construction of a regime of fear and the diffusion of a sense of paranoia coming from the belief in an omnipresent conspiracy.

<18> By doing so, the United States is - more or less consciously - a party to its own destruction. And it reasonably fears it, as a sort of inevitable divine punishment. Again in Baudrillard's words:

When the two towers collapsed, you had the impression that they were responding to the suicide of the suicide-planes with their own suicides. It has been said that: "Even God cannot declare war on Himself". Well, He can. The West, in the position of God (divine omnipotence and absolute moral legitimacy) has become suicidal, and declared war on itself (46).

The numerous disaster movies made towards the end of last century, with a certain features similar to the events on the fateful day of 9/11 - films like Independence Day (1996), Armageddon (1998), Deep Impact (1998) – bear witness to this fantasy. But the collective imaginary still retains a contradictory and self-destroying death instinct to avert, which is pervasive and unstoppable, and of which terrorism becomes the perfect representation of its being a total threat, omnipresent and primarily attempting to destruct the nation.

<19> 24 elaborates those atavistic fears, which are rooted into the American social tissue and displays a form of terrorism similar to the forms of catastrophe. A terrorism that is, even before being anti-American, is all American. In fact, although being foreigners (usually Middle Eastern people), terrorists are often supported by a wide network of American collaborators, such as spies or traitors who undermine the union of the Family-Nation. Moreover, the terrorists depicted in 24 rarely operate using kamikaze methods. (In fact, the series will wait until its sixth season before screening Islamist antagonists with suicidal intent.) On closer scrutiny, 24 shows us a sort of "purged" terrorism, because the true power of real terrorists (those, for example, who hijacked the airplanes that destroyed the Twin Towers) rests on their possession a fatal weapon: the symbolic power of their own death. In the series, instead, there is no symbolic death, and subject and anti-subject are on the same level. On the contrary, the true and unique source of terror on 24, concerning everyone without exception, is Death as such. Nevertheless, the series hides Death, transforming it into an invisible monster and, by doing so, amplifying its fear. Despite the violence shown in some scenes, 24 exercises significant censorship, particularly in scenes regarding Death. It is a series with more than its fair share of characters dying during the course of events, but one that is lacking the figure of the Death in its proper destabilizing meaning. Scores of people die, but the show goes on. It's likely almost no-one cries for anyone's death throughout the entire eight seasons, because there's no time for mourning in 24, or for useless tears. Death – and its emotional and devastating consequences - doesn't exist for Bauer and his team. For this reason, despite all the torture we have to watch, and the fights and shootings, the series is almost devoid of blood: we see the dreadful pain of torture, but we are not shown the ferocity of blood.

<20> Beyond some occasional parenthesis, the series keeps staying at a level of denial and exorcism of Death, and by doing so makes it a concept even more frightening. That is, paradoxically, even though it tries at the same time to re-enable a new vision of sacrifice: as universal cooperation and spontaneous fight for the safety of the country (involving all civilians), and not as an obedient answer to a superior command (regarding just the military soldiers). It gives rise to a vision that wants to lighten the American strategy from the ideology of the "zero losses", a strategy aroused after the loss of more than 50,000 American soldiers during the Vietnam War, which – as everybody knows – unleashed a huge protest movement that put in danger the national and social cohesion. For this reason the ideal of the "zero losses" was formulated with the intent of creating a distance between soldier and combat, notably by an over-reliance on technology. This new ideal necessitates the urgency of reviving belief in the collective imaginary of the usefulness of sacrifice, even of one's own life.

<21> In addition to this, the evil that has to be fought is a "Total Evil" i.e. an Evil intended to be absolute and universal and which, at a closer look, involves both Americans and the terrorists of geographically vague origins. If Jack Bauer and David Palmer are both victims of a sophisticated conspiracy plot by an unknown artificer, even the same terrorists depicted in the series are often puppets in the hand of an unknown "Great Controller". Each character in the series, in fact, is victim of blackmail, forced to move in a claustrophobic labyrinth. The net of the conspiracy is so thickly woven that it twists together both the good and the bad, marking them as equal targets for the same intrigue which does not end and does not have a known origin. Fromthis point of view, the series really presents itself as the apotheosis of the "inescapable catastrophe" that no one can avoid. Because although it is true that Bauer always survives and saves the national interest, it is also true that he never gets to reach the real perpetrators of the different terroristic attacks, and the timer's clock is always ready to re-start its countdown again.

<22> Where does this "Great Controller", which decides the destiny of everyone (civilians, federal agents, terrorists, even of the President himself), come from? We could catch in it a glimpse of the famous Hobbes' Leviathan, the Government as an autonomous entity provided of its own will, existing ahead of each individual civilian, self-feeding and avoiding any kind of control. This aspect is connected to the ancient fear strongly enduring in the American culture of the threat of political power (for this reason, the necessity of a triad of competing institutions such as the White House, Congress and the Pentagon to keep each other in check). Otherwise, it could give rise to the "Total Evil" mentioned before, whose origin could be explained just in a mystical or catastrophic way. So, from this point of view, terrorism itself appears as an "Inescapable Catastrophe", an enemy who doesn't look for a plunder and is not interested in reaching the power, but only in taking revenge. The aim of terrorism is the total fight and, along with that, the definitive annihilation of the counterpart, that is the USA.

<23> The fact remains that America had been living for the past decades in a condition of paranoid mistrust and the imaginary, fed by both cinema and television, which has kept on interpreting it. No surprise, therefore, to find similar reasoning made so far into the sharp analysis that Franco La Polla wrote more than a decade ago about the popular television series X-Files. Although 24 wouldn't seem to share much with it – as different concepts and very different characters are portrayed – actually the deep structure holding the science-fiction stories of agents Mulder and Scully has numerous contact points with Bauer's fight against time. As La Polla noticed:

The general formula of the series could be summed up in this way:

Nothing is what it seems, but you won't ever know what that is for sure. […] However, there's an important difference, somebody is well aware of that incertitude, he distils it, he manages it and controls it. We couldn't be more distant from the Fifties: […] today, that same suspect boomerangs on that authority who once used to feed it and, as a consequence, boomerangs on us too (Trust no one!).[10]

Suspicion and mistrust of authority are both attitudes that come from a state of tension which can be reconnected to the (relatively) recent events of American history: first of all the Kennedy assassination, then Watergate, Iran-Contra, up to the farcical impeachment effort of "Zippergate". Therefore, 24can be seen as nothing more than another product of the widespread sentiment of diffidence that poisons the contemporary USA.

<24> Against this backdrop, the conflict becomes unsolvable, the battle is continuous and, what is worse, never-ending. "I's not over, yet…", says terrorist Ira Gaines in the first season of the series, while Jack desperately tries to stop the destroying machinery that is threatening his life, along with those of his entire Nation. You are not the winner. Not yet, and more than likely you will never be. If you get over an obstacle, there's another one to overcome. Behind a master of puppets, there is always a bigger and meaner one. There is little chance of understanding the reason behind the threat or the chance of grasping its logic. With the constant seasonal reset of the timer, it starts back again over and over, becoming a Sisyphean task. With no aim or purpose,24 screens the form of pure anguish, in an echo of Olivier Joyard:

The eternal reset to zero of timer opens to paranoid fictions, the tabula rasa is an identity or traumatic shock, and the treachery becomes a key figure. The danger of the coming back to zero enables a process of anguish (loss, interior emptiness, death).[11]

The lack of meaning denies the possibility of an end and, by doing so, forces one to a state of blind and paranoid alarm. The lack of a defined enemy denies the possibility of a sanction, the chance to ascribe the guilt and to have winners and losers. If no-one can actually be blamed for a catastrophe, the responsibility has to be shared between every single person. If there is no sin, there is no redemption, no forgiveness and, above all, no salvation.

<25> So, for the American people there is nothing left then to get back their union and solidarity, in order to re-conquer that strength, physical and psychological, needed to withstand this terrible, never-ending task, where unity can be found just amongst one's own loved ones."Let's try to remember we are a family", is what a father says to his two daughters in the first episode of Season 2. A call addressed to the entire Nation: "Let's try to remember we are a country": a desperate plea towards an America that is no longer able to sleep, and keeps moving in a foolish manner for 24 hours, as an organism having an unstable equilibrium, too alive, too anxious, too threatened and maybe too paranoid.

Endnotes

[1] E.g. see David Chandler, International Statebuilding: The Rise of Post-Liberal Governance (Oxon & New York: Routledge Critical Issues in Global Politics, 2010).

[2] Hollywood Enlists Online, Variety online, posted Wednesday, October 17, 2001 at www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=print_story&articleid=VR1117854476&categoryid=18.

[4] Jean-Michel Valentin, Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington: The Movies and National Security from World War II to the Present Day< (London: Anthem Press, 2005), p.xii.

[5] Michael Rogin, Ronald Regan, The Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p.xiii.

[6] Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).

[7] Jean Baudrillard (trans. C. Turner), The Spirit of Terrorism: And Other Essays (London and New York: Verso, 2003), pp.14-15.

[8] Here the authors of the series seem to be quite misogynist, showing treachery to be a feminine prerogative.

[9]The American Government pursued such a strategy during the second Gulf War, recording upwards of 4350 deaths and over 44,000 injuries amongst the American Army in the first seven years. (Figures taken from www.newsmeat.com put US Military Deaths in the second Iraq War at 4,229 as of January 21, 2009, according to an Associated Press count, (accessed July 22, 2009).

[10] F. La Polla, L'età dell'occhio. Il cinema e la cultura Americana(Torino: Lindau, 1999), p.244.

[11] J.-S. Chauvin, "L'Amérique ne dort jamais, in L'âge d'or de la série américaine", Cahiers du Cinéma 581 (July-August 2003), p. 21.

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