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

Traditions in American Cinema

by Terence McSweeney

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 from Black Hawk Down (2001), through Batman Begins (2005), United 93 (2006) to Olympus 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 - this book explores the impact of 9/11 and the war on terror on American cinema in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond.

Genres: War, Politics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2014

About the author

Dr Terence McSweeney, writer, film-maker and academic who works in Southampton and lives in London, is a senior lecturer in film and television studies at Solent University (Southhampton). He is widely recognized as one of the leading writers on contemporary American cinema. He is the author of The War on Terror and American Film: '9/11 Frames per Second' (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), Avengers Assemble! Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Wallflower Press, 2018), The Hurt Locker (Auteur Press, 2019) and The Contemporary Superhero Film (Short Cuts) (Wallflower Press, 2020). He is the editor of American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11 (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), co-editor of Millennial Cinema: Memory in Global Film (Wallflower Press, 2012) and co-editor of Through the Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) with Dr Stuart Joy, which features contributions from renowned scholars such as Henry Jenkins, Sean Redmond, Steffen Hantke, M. Keith Booker and many others.
Terence's newest book, Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon (2021), is the first in a new series he is the co-founder of at Mississippi University Press (alongside Dr Stuart Joy) called Reframing Hollywood.

Reviews

[yk]

read for work. colour me generally unimpressed

[Julianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my History and Film class. Not a bad book, but some of the arguments are quite a stretch. May add to this review later if I have time.