Page 204 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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The politics of banality: the ob-scene as the mis-en-scéne 189
even consulted by US intelligence services for their views as to the
likely nature of further attacks and its influence continued to be a
constant factor in the post-9/11 political response. Ronald Reagan’s
Star Wars sounding Cold War ‘Empire of Evil’ was replaced by an
‘Axis of Evil’ often discussed in colloquial terms borrowed liberally
from the Western film genre.
The media thus played a major role in constructing not only the
public’s perceptions of the tragic events of 9/11 but also the
conditions necessary for the maintenance of an alarming conceptual
deficit in which discussion of possible causes was overruled by a rush
to produce a military response (the war on terror). Rather than
dwelling upon the causes of previously simmering and then overtly
violent anti-American discontent, US television and media coverage
of the tragedy was immediately, and thereafter persistently, domi-
nated by the constant repetition of iconic images and soundbites.
There was repeated, stand-alone footage of the second plane crash-
ing, while camera crews camped at the dramatically sounding
Ground Zero provided constant (but largely unchanging) visual
updates from the smoldering wreckage. Blanket coverage at Ground
Zero was quickly supplemented with images of world leaders express-
ing sorrow, and shortly afterwards celebrity-based benefit concerts
involving a surfeit of emotion-laden soft-focus close-ups and candle-
strewn sets. Detailed considerations of the tragedy’s historical and
political context were displaced illustrating the US media’s pathologi-
cal over-reliance upon images and sentiment.
Both US and UK coverage of the 9/11 terrorist act was dominated
by a spate of human interest interviews with emergency workers,
survivors, and relatives of the deceased still hoping against the
available evidence that their loved-ones were still alive. Emotionally
vampiric interviews familiar to regular viewers of disasters around
the world were mixed with stentorian but ultimately vacuous com-
mentary, similar in tone and placatory, uncritical purpose to the
commentary that accompanied Princess Diana’s death and mass
floral response. In both media events, ‘why?’ was a frequently uttered
question only in the sense of a lament rather than a critical
observation. Despite the constant coverage, there was no significant
attempt to address the question in a structured and non-emotional
fashion because the media’s self-serving interpretation of the ‘new
mood’ of the country deemed this to be appropriate. In the case of
Princess Diana’s death, the underlying complicity of the television
anchors with the paparazzi directly involved in the actual accident
meant that the reasons behind the ‘why’ could not be examined too
closely. In the case of 9/11, irrespective of any potential political

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