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List of cultural references to the September 11 attacks

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The September 11, 2001 attacks have been the subject of numerous films and other works of art and literature, including:

Film

Initial reaction

Hollywood's first reaction to the September 11 attacks was to alter, delay or even cancel films that unintentionally evoked the disaster.

Films about 9/11

Films specifically about the attacks, reactions and responses to them, and the post-9/11 world, include:

  • 9/11, a documentary made from the footage taken by two French brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who were making a documentary about a rookie fireman when the attacks took place. They were one of the few people to capture the first plane hitting the towers on film and one brother follows the firemen into the stricken structures and narrowly escapes in the subsequent collapse. It was released in 2002 and introduced by Robert de Niro.
  • WTC: The First 24 Hours, released in February 2002, is a documentary shot by Etienne Sauret in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, showing the devastation and the initial rescue efforts. Originally an 11-minute short, later expanded to a half hour, the film includes no narration or music, and almost no dialogue.
  • The Guys directed by Jim Simpson, starring his wife Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia, based on the play by Anne Nelson (see below). According to IMDb, débuted on 2002-09-11 at the Toronto International Film Festival, then had a limited commercial release on 2003-04-04. Plot concerns a firefighter who needs help writing eulogies for his fallen comrades.
  • 11'09"01 — September 11, in which 11 directors present 11 stories (each 11 minutes, nine seconds, and one frame long) of the event’s impact around the world, was released in September 2002. The filmmakers taking part were Iran's Samira Makhmalbaf, France's Claude Lelouch, Egypt's Youssef Chahine, Bosnia'a Danis Tanovic, Burkina Faso's Idrissa Ouedraogo, Britain's Ken Loach, Mexico's Alejandro González Iñárritu, Israel's Amos Gitai, India's Mira Nair, the U.S.'s Sean Penn and Japan's Shohei Imamura.
  • Stairwell: Trapped In The World Trade Center (2002).
  • Spike Lee's 25th Hour is set in post-9/11 New York, and puts Ground Zero in the background of a pivotal scene.
  • Yasmin[2], a German-UK coproduction set in Northern England (filmed largely in and around Keighley). The eponymous character, played by Archie Panjabi, is a Muslim woman who experiences various forms of racism after 2001-09-11. Directed by Kenneth Glenaan, the film aired on British television in 2004, and since then has been playing at film festivals around the world.
  • Fahrenheit 9/11, a June 2004 film by Michael Moore that examined the Bush administration's reaction to the attacks, became the highest-grossing documentary of all time.[3] Rather than replaying the familiar images of the burning towers, Moore evoked the disaster with images of bystanders' horrified reactions.
  • Crash, a multi-character drama about racism in Los Angeles, was set in a post-9/11 country with a few references.
  • The Great New Wonderful[4], directed by Danny Leiner, depicts the anxiety of post-9/11 New York City. Premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival in April 2005.
  • World Trade Center, a film by Oliver Stone, released in August 2006, tells the story of two Port Authority police officers, John McLoughlin (played by Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (played by Michael Peña), who were some of the last two rescue workers pulled from Ground Zero alive.
  • Fernando Zamora, a Mexican film student at Columbia University School of the Arts, managed to get into Ground Zero on September 11, 2001 and made two short films in homage to the victims. The films, Steps and Dust, were aired on NBC and ABC networks on September 12th and 13th respectively.
  • United 93, a 2006 film about the fourth hijacked plane and the terrorists' failure to use it as a missile when passengers attacked the terrorists. Flight 93 (TV film) and The Flight That Fought Back are TV movies also about the fourth hijacked plane.
  • The Empty City, a film starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle follows a man (Sandler) who lost his family in the 9/11 attacks, and the old friendship that starts up again between himself and an old college buddy (Cheadle).

Theater

  • The Guys, a play by Anne Nelson, explores the memories and emotions of a surviving fire captain and a writer who helps him write eulogies for his lost comrades. The play was first performed on December 4 2001.

Literature

  • "In Spirit", a science fiction novella by Pat Forde, published in Analog in September 2002. A moving time travel story about 9/11, in which a form of "spiritual" time travel is perfected in the middle of the 21st century and the aged children of 9/11 victims are given the opportunity to go back in time and be with their loved ones "in spirit" in their final moments. Pat Forde takes many risks, most notably by telling the tale from the point of view of a terrorist who abbetted the hijackers on the ground and is 30-odd years into a life sentence when he's offered the chance to make himself a guinea pig in the time-travel experiments.
  • Pattern Recognition (2003) by William Gibson was the first novel to address the attacks; the main character is a marketing consultant whose father disappeared in Manhattan on the morning of September 11.
  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, follows the narrator, 9-year-old Oskar Schell, whose father was on the upper floors of the World Trade Center when the jets crashed into the Twin Towers. To fight his grief and quell his imagination, Oskar embarks on a quest to find what he hopes is his father's most illuminating secret. In service of this quest, Oskar conquers many of his irrational fears and comforts other damaged souls.
  • Windows on the World, a 2003 novel by Frédéric Beigbeder, is set in the restaurant at the top of the North tower on September 11. It tells the story of Carthew Yorston and his two sons as they try to escape or somehow survive the attack. Each chapter of the book represents one minute in time between 8:30 and 10:30 on 9/11. It also features a parallel narrative wherein the author, a French writer sympathetic to America, discusses the process of writing the book and his motivations for doing so.
  • Dead Air, a novel by British novelist Iain Banks, published in 2002. It is set in London on September 11, 2001. The main protagonist is a left-wing radio "shock jock" attending a wedding when news of the attacks filter through.
  • Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg.
  • Richard Howard's poem "Fallacies of Wonder" deals with the difficult task of trying to remember the Twin Towers as they actually were now that they are gone.
  • Ian McEwan's novel Saturday takes place in London after the September 11th attacks but before the 7 July 2005 London bombings. The novel shows how much the world has changed since the attacks in America.
  • The Good Life by Jay McInerney.

Comics

  • Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and illustrator of Maus, published In the Shadow of No Towers in 2004, a work that mourns both 9/11 and the political uses to which it has been put.
  • Marvel Comics published books and comics based on the efforts of rescuers and fire fighters who risked their lives to save others during and after the attacks, donating proceeds their sale to relief funds. Among the books they published:
  • Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #36, called the Black Issue for its solid black cover, explores how Spider-Man and other heroes like Captain America and Daredevil help in the aftermath of the attacks.
  • Marvel also produced a book, Heroes, featuring pin-ups by various artists, many of which were oriented toward appreciation and admiration of emergency rescue workers, and patriotism. The cover was illustrated by Alex Ross, and the back cover, which showed a firefighter covered in ash, was illustrated by Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada (whose personal affection for firefighters had been long-established with his own creator-owned superhero, Ash), Todd McFarlane and Richard Isanove, and featured a poem by writer/director Kevin Smith.
  • Marvel also produced an anthology book, A Moment of Silence, featuring several stories, without dialogue or captions, based on the attacks. One of them focused on a real-life relative of a Marvel Comics employee, an engineer killed after deciding to enter one of the Towers to search for survivors. Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada illustrated the cover.
  • A new Marvel series, The Call of Duty, was also produced, which focused on firefighters.
  • DC Comics produced two large books, 9-11: Artists Respond, Volumes 1 & 2, which featured short stories and single-page works of art from a wide variety of artists.
  • Alternative Comics produced 9-11 Emergency Relief, a similar collection of works with a cover by Frank Cho. [5]
  • Brian K. Vaughan's Ex Machina, published by Wildstorm/DC, is set in a world in which a superhero called the Great Machine becomes mayor of New York after intervening in the September 11 attacks--managing to save only one of the towers.

Music

  • American composer John Coolidge Adams won the Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award for "On the Transmigration of Souls", a choral work written in response to the attacks.
  • Bruce Springsteen's 2002 album The Rising focused almost entirely on the disaster, and was widely hailed as one of Springsteen's most profound works.
  • Several songs on Bon Jovi's 2002 album Bounce were inspired by the attacks and its aftermath: "Undivided", "Everyday", "Bounce", and "Love Me Back to Life".
  • Paul McCartney wrote "Freedom" in response to the attacks and the wave of patriotism following them. He first performed it at the star-studded Concert For New York City.
  • Country singer Toby Keith wrote several songs in response to the attacks and its aftermath: "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue", "The Taliban Song", and "American Solider", dedicated to U.S. troops.
  • Creed's song One describes the struggle between anger and relection. The video clip is a montage of news reports and replays.
  • David Bowie's Reality album (2003) is said to be his own personal reflection of the post 9/11 world. The track New Killer Star makes references to "the great white scar over Battery Park" and a new superficial understanding of religion ("Jesus on Dateline")
  • Ani DiFranco's song/poetry Self Evident is about 9/11 and the US reaction.
  • Makeshift Patriot by Sage Francis is a hip-hop song that cynically looks at the post-9/11 world, particularly the threats he perceives to civil rights.
  • Carl Schroeder, a young Midwestern composer, wrote "Christine's Lullaby: An Elegy for Orchestra" in honor of Christine Lee Hanson, the youngest victim of the 9/11 attacks.
  • French songwriter Renaud wrote a song called "Manhattan Kaboul" that describes in parallel the deaths of a Puerto Rican immigrant in the World Trade Center and of a little Afghan girl under U.S. bombings.
  • Italian band PGR wrote a song entitled 11 Settembre 2001.
  • Radiohead's 2003 album Hail to the Thief reflected on a post-9/11 world[citation needed].
  • Eminem made several references to the attacks, beginning with The Eminem Show, released in Spring 2002. His songs "White America", "Square Dance", "My Dad Gone Crazy", and "Mosh" have tackled his--and America's--place in a post-9/11 world. Eminem dresses as Osama Bin Laden in the video clip for Without me.
  • Leonard Cohen's song about September 11, "On That Day", appears on his 2004 album Dear Heather.
  • Alan Jackson's song "Where Were You (When the World Stop Turning)" asks a series of questions about the listener's location when he or she heard the news of the attacks.
  • Anti-Flag, a punk band from Pittsburgh, wrote "911 For Peace" on the day of the attacks, and have since released "Terror State" and "For Blood and Empire".
  • The Beastie Boys' album To The 5 Boroughs, released in 2004, focuses on life in post-9/11 New York.
  • William Basinski was playing back and digitally transferring some old ambient loop tapes that disintegrated when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center in view of his Brooklyn apartment. The altered transfers were later released as The Disintegration Loops.
  • Washington band Death Cab for Cutie recorded a song called "20th Century Towers" which deals with the feeling of loss and regret suffered after the 9/11 attacks.
  • The 2001 Wu-Tang Clan album Iron Flag was released less than three months after 9/11; the track "Rules" opens with a Ghostface Killah verse about the attacks.
  • Neil Young's Let's Roll is about Flight 93, referencing the order to storm the terrorist-controlled cockpit before the plane's crash in Pensylvania.

Design

See also

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