How to Save...A Nation? Televisual Fiction Post-9/11

To claim that the national tragedy of 9/11 is a defining moment in the

first decade of the tV1renty-first century for the United States is not profound,

nor is the statement that it directly and indirectly influenced the

cultural production within American society throughout these years.

Regardless of the obviousness of these claims, it is exactly upon these

assumptions that this chapter rests. In the years following the attacks

on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, cultural products have been

sites for interrogating and remediating the trauma that 9 /11 caused

for the citizens of a country that believed itself to be untouchable.

Although these cultural concerns were played out in both non-fictional

and fictional spaces across media, this essay argues that televisual narratives

in particular provide great insight into societal concerns during

the start of this century. They do this in a unique space that repackages

these concerns from "reality" and displaces then1 into the safe comforts

of "fiction" where they can· be addressed time and again with more

favourable results.