American Culture Transformed—Dialing 9/11

The bombing of the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001, marked a major turning point in modern American culture. Priscilla Walton and Bruce Tucker examine critical moments in the aftermath of 9/11 – the Enron scandal, the trial of Martha Stewart, the capture and rescue of Jessica Lynch, the torture at Abu Ghraib prison, the widespread popularity of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Tim LeHaye's "Left Behind" series, Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11, and former president Ronald Reagan's funeral. The authors argue that commentators on the American scene abandoned complexity, seeking to reduce events to their simplest signification. They ask how the singularity of meaning came to dominate American cultural consciousness, and they seek to theorize the critical cultural and political movements of the post 9/11 period.