Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship 2012 Televising Memory: The Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 Jennifer Plumlee Scripps College Recommended Citation Plumlee, Jennifer, "Televising Memory: The Tenth Anniversary of 9/11" (2012).Scripps Senior Theses.Paper 34. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/34 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scripps Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TELEVISING MEMORY: THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11 by JENNIFER PLUMLEE SUBMITTED TO SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF BACHLOR OF ARTS PROFESSOR MATT DELMONT PROFESSOR JULIE LISS APRIL 13, 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………. 3- 24 CHAPTER 2: UNITY……………………………………………………... 25- 41 CHAPTER 3: SURVIVAL AND RE-GROWTH…………………………. 42- 58 CHAPTER 4: HEROISM AND SUPERIORITY…………………………. 59- 75 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION…………………………………………….. 76- 88 ENDNOTES……………………………………………………………...... 89- 92 2 Introduction Background: September 11, 2001 and the Role of Television September 11, 2001 remains one of the most tragic and meaningful events in American history. Suicide bombers associated al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, hijacked four planes targeted for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House. Without precedent or preparation, reactions to the attacks unfolded with astonishment and sadness. In New York City, fire fighters, police officers, and civilians sought to rescue the people who were inside the Towers in the midst of unfamiliarity with such a large-scale crisis. With 2,819 deaths resulting from the attacks, the tragedy of 9/11 became a national focus.1 The symbolic targets of the White House, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center implicated the entire nation in an experience of attack on American life, culture, and policy. As new information, images, and video poured into news channels, Americans turned on the television to digest the footage and attempt to grasp the scale of this crisis. For most people, the television was the sole source of updates and information on the attacks and thus the news became the principle form of understanding and consumption about the events of 9/11. Ten years later, television is again the principle source of 9/11 information. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 was memorialized and remembered through television specials. The reliance on media sources during the events of 9/11 translated to a similar reliance on media during the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The images, stories, people, and emotions captured by television sources during and after 9/11 have been re-charged, re-imagined, and re-told by media sources during the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Thus, the fundamental role of television in creating the memory and history of 9/11 is paramount to understanding the process of national memory formation. 3 On the morning of September 11, information about the attacks arrived primarily through televised media sources. The first attack on the North Tower occurred at 8:46 am ET and was quickly witnessed by people all across the nation on news channels using civilian footage of the plane crashing into the Tower. Although no one was completely sure if the crash was an accident or a purposeful attack, the second plane crash into the Pentagon at 9:37 am and the third plan crash into the South Tower at 10:03 am ET confirmed that a deliberate attack had been organized and executed.2 Because television is a unique medium that allows for a constant flow of information and is accessible in most homes and/or public spaces, it served an important purpose on 9/11 to distribute a far-reaching message of crisis and tragedy to the nation. In fact, even federal employees utilized television sources that morning as the primary stream of information about the attacks without the availability of developed intelligence.3 In this way, television channels became a platform for comprehending 9/11. They also served as a uniting experience as all Americans turned to news sources and acquired the same images, facts, and presentations as every other American that relied on the same sources for information. Although online news sources and radio programs provided additional outlets for information gathering, the visual nature of the tragedy elevated television as they key source for minute-to-minute updates and analysis. The role of television on the morning of 9/11, and in the subsequent days, was paramount in forming initial thoughts and understandings about the attacks and the consequences that followed. National Memory and the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, television performed a similarly important role by providing a medium for collective national memory formation. National memory, for the purpose of this research, is defined as a united remembrance of an event or experience 4 that impacts a nation as a whole, speaks to national interests and values, and provides a foundation for placement of the event or experience in a national history. At the same time, national memory is key to individual or personal memory as national memory informs the facts and understandings that underscore an individual’s recollections of an event or experience. National memory is engaged when they have touched individual lives on a local level and at the same time have transcended personal connections to affect the general tone and mood of a nation. National memory complicates personal memory by adding national interests to an individual remembrance of an event. The nature of a collective memory suggests that by focusing on particular interpretations of events or experiences, national goals, character, and position are reaffirmed.4 In this way, the purpose of putting forth a certain way of remembering can be motivated by nationally relevant social, political, and economic aims. If an event or experience is memorialized in a specific and collective manner that serves particular intentions, the ways in which that event or experience is remembered come to include produced interpretations that are framed as fact. Thus, national memory is also inextricably linked to history. The way in which something is memorialized on a grand scale impacts the way that event or experience will be told through history. The creation of a national memory therefore takes on greater meaning, as the formed memory becomes the basis for how people recall and retell the historical importance of the event or experience being memorialized. In this way, national memory actually becomes the framework for personal memory as a collective sense of remembering provides the foundation for the facts and interpretations of the event or experience. While national memory identifies the importance of remembering events or experiences for their personal as well as national ramifications, the formation of national 5 memory is inherently problematic. The process of producing memory involves evaluating facts, images, experiences, and stories about an event or experience. Through this process, certain aspects of the event or experience are inevitably forgotten. In order to produce a memory that serves national political, social, or economic aims, the facts of an event or experience must be remembered and told in such a way that these aims are supported.5 Thus, if national memory formation relies on forgetting, the memory is a representation of a particular myth in service of national aims rather than a true recollection of unadulterated facts. In this way, personal remembrances of national occurrences become mediums through which national myths are evoked and preserved. Television and the Formation of National Memory Television plays a significant role in creating and spreading the seeds of national memory. The media formed the basis for information collection and distribution during the unfolding events of 9/11. Because the majority of Americans could not observe the destruction of the attacks or witness the efforts to deal with the devastation in New York City and at the Pentagon, television served as the medium of observation. In this way, the media became a storehouse for the factual representation of 9/11 material. During the tenth anniversary, a similar reliance on media positioned television specials to transmit national memory. While personal memories of the morning of 9/11 may have weakened over the past 10 years, by replaying footage and images of that day, television sources provided Americans with renewed access to 9/11. Thus, the position of the media to distribute this information exemplifies the importance of television in forming personal memories of 9/11. At the same time, the unified circulation of nationally televised specials suggests that national memory was being distributed and infused into personal memory as well. By presenting specials about 9/11 on national news channels and other 6 national channels such as The History Channel and PBS, television allowed for the formation of personal memories that were also demonstrative of a collective memory. However, news and other specials produced specifically for the tenth anniversary of 9/11 invariably created a particular narrative that served specific goals. During the process of production, the television specials formulated the facts, images, and stories of 9/11 into a cohesive narrative. By highlighting certain aspects and leaving out others that did not fit into the narrative, these specials forged a national memory that is produced. In other words, the nature of creating a narrative, or an engaging story for a television program, involves manipulating the facts into a cohesive story rather than simply relating unfiltered footage and information. If the media provides a limited framework to remember and Americans are reliant on their presentation to construct personal memories, then the ability to form individual memory is undermined by forgetting certain facts and highlighting others. Therefore, manufactured representations of 9/11 become personal memories and, in a greater sense, a collective, national memory. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 provides a unique opportunity to observe the formation of national memory- making. Anniversaries of monumental events in American history offer time or reflection. With the passage of time, major events are remembered in how those events have impacted the American life and national outlooks and actions. The formation and propagation of national memory about those events therefore peaks at anniversaries as heightened moments of attention to those events. In this renewed state of reflection and commemoration, national events become remembered in ways that serve current motives and circumstances.6 Because anniversaries are commemorated outside the immediate aftermath of an event, they are situated in different national climates. Thus, the anniversary itself, and the way in which the event is 7 remembered, comes to represent the long- term impacts of the event more than the initial memories of and reactions to the event. National memory creation at anniversaries responds to remembrance of events in service of current national goals derived from the event’s effects. In the case of 9/11, the tenth anniversary is the first major anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Although previous anniversaries, such as the fifth anniversary, are significant, the tenth anniversary is the first opportunity to gain true perspective on 9/11 in terms of how the consequences have played out in a long term way. This historic moment offers the first major opportunity to evaluate the way 9/11 has impacted American life and policy in a long term way. National memory of 9/11 is just starting to form in the wake of social and political consequences directly linked to collective reactions to 9/11. By evaluating the ways in which this tenth anniversary is being remembered, the process of national memory creation unravels. Specifically, the forms of commemoration of 9/11 and the way in which narratives of 9/11 are being retold will reveal what kinds of memories are needed to support current and on-going consequences of 9/11 in American foreign and domestic policy. If national memory serves current national goals, then the formulation of national memory actually exemplifies the role the commemorated event plays in modern issues. To understand the process of national memory creation for 9/11, television specials remembering 9/11 provide a foundation for analysis. Around the tenth anniversary, major television channels provided specials and documentaries. Approximately forty major, nationally televised specials aired from the end of August up through the 11th of September 2011 on traditional news channels, including NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox, as well as on entertainment channels dedicated to specific forms of entertainment and education, such as HBO, PBS, Nickelodeon, The History Channel, 8 National Geographic, TLC, and Discovery Channel.7 For the purpose of this research, eleven specials, taken from the above-mentioned networks, provide the basis for analysis. These specials are particularly relevant because they represent programs aired on the most wide-viewed news stations, represent a range of political perspectives, and speak to different age groups and interests. In addition, the eleven specials discussed come from channels that continue to provide public access to the specials through purchase or the Internet. By selecting specials that are still available to viewers after the original air- date, this research relies on narratives that initiated national memory on the tenth anniversary and carry on distribution of that memory forward. Thus, these specials remain the most continually accessible specials and the narratives they produce are likewise the most accessible. While the specials cover different angles of remembrance of 9/11, they each served specific goals of national memory and provided clear directions of commemoration. The wide accessibility of television translates to wide distribution of these specials, and the national narratives they produce. The Function and Structure of 9/11 Memory The national memory of 9/11 produced through television specials involves the creation of a myth about American character that serves current social and political purposes. Despite the stylistic and content differences amongst the specials, certain themes remain consistent. These themes manipulate the facts of 9/11 into a cohesive narrative about how 9/11 has impacted American life, culture, and people. Specifically, the television programs frame 9/11, and the consequences of 9/11, in a way that celebrates American superiority, strength, and perseverance in the face of tragedy and aggression. The terrorist attacks by nature revealed a weakness in American security and forced America into the role of the attacked. This role contrasts sharply to a telling of 9