Terrorism in 21st Century American Cinema

Abstract

Present-day America finds its citizens more preoccupied with the dreadful reality of terrorism than they have ever been. The 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the new war on terrorism around the globe have frightened most of the Americans who began to imagine the most far-flung and unlikely of scenarios instead of looking for more plausible explanations. As a reaction to this  attitude, serious directors, aware of the gravity of the moment, have made films over the last decade or so that lucidly examine how the obssession of terrorism and the particularities of capitalism’s current form influence each other, with dangerous consquences for the nation’s future.