The 'War on Terror' and American Film ─ 9/11 Frames Per Second

Popular cinema is often derided with the epithet 'it's only a movie', but is there any more potent cultural artefact than popular film? Where could one turn for a more effective cultural barometer than to Hollywood cinema?

American film in the first decade of the new millennium became a cultural battleground on which a war of representation was waged, but did these films endorse the 'War on Terror' or criticise it? More than just reproducing these fears and fantasies,The 'War on Terror' and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second argues that American cinema has played a significant role in shaping them, restructuring how audiences have viewed the 'War on Terror' in particularly influential ways.

This compelling, theoretically informed and up-to-date exploration of contemporary American cinema charts the evolution of the impact of 9/11 on Hollywood film fromBlack Hawk Down (2001), through Batman Begins (2005), United 93 (2006) toOlympus Has Fallen (2013). Through a vibrant analysis of a range of genres and films - which in turn reveal a strikingly diverse array of social, historical and political perspectives -The 'War on Terror' and American Film:9/11 Frames Per Second explores the impact of 9/11 and the war on terror on American cinema in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond.

Terence McSweeney is a writer and academic living in London, England. He is the co-editor ofMillennial Cinema: Memory in Global Film (Wallflower Press, 2012). Terence received his PhD in 2009 for his work on the Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky and has subsequently written on a variety of topics connected to film and history. He is currently researching the significance of the zombie as an icon of cultural trauma in contemporary global film and television.