Flying planes can be dangerous

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 129-147

  Weber, Cynthia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0142157806     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298020310010701     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), 21.
2. Chomsky's example is discussed in Elizabeth Wright's book Speaking Desires Can Be Dangerous, which itself tropes off of Chomsky's illustration in its discussions and applications of psychoanalytic theory.
3. See Elizabeth Wright, Speaking Desires Can Be Dangerous (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999).
4. Dick Crepeau, 'Lost and Found' [http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/ printerfriendly/2001-10-01-innocences.html] (11 November 2001).
5. Fareed Zakaria, 'The Real World of Foreign Policy', Newsweek, 8 October 2001, 15.
6. Lance Morrow, 'The Case for Rage and Retribution', Time, 11 September 2001, inside back cover.
7. Thomas Doherty, speaking on Four Corners, BBC Radio 4, 5 November 2001.
8. There is no unified notion of America or singular American imaginary. What interests me is how cultural self-representations of America-in popular films and in foreign policy rhetoric-produce and reproduce a hegemonic American national mythology of itself, as if America were unified and singular. It is to this hegemonic mythology that the term 'America' refers in this essay.
9. Pearl Harbor, dir. Michael Bay, Touchstone Pictures, 2001. The movie was originally released in the US on Memorial Day, and it was then generally re-released after 11 September, when Americans flocked to cinemas in record numbers for that time of year.
10. A good example comes from the case of Pearl Harbor and Pearl Harbor itself. History now popularly records Admiral Yamamoto's response to his attack onPearl Harbor with the quote: 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant', a quote repeated in the film Pearl Harbor. This, however, is not something the Admiral actually said after the attack; it is what his character was scripted to say in the film Tora! Tora! Tora!. That Americans so readily confuse what the Admiral said with what his character says tells us something about the investment of a popular American imaginary about itself in relation to the events of Pearl Harbor, which is important to our understandings of both America and of how America politically and historically situates itself. For a general discussion of films and IR theory, see Cynthia Weber, International Relations Theory (London: Routledge, 2001).
11. Tin Man-5, 'An Insult and a Travesty', 11 September 2001 [http://us.imdb.com/CommentsShow?213149/20] (24 April 2002).
12. The script is dotted with romantic and military subplots, the most developed of which is the story of Doris 'Dorie' Miller, an African American sailor who shot down Japanese planes during the Pearl Harbor attack and who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism. Miller's story makes little impact on the film's overall narrative because his character never meets or is involved with any of the central characters.
13. Memorable Quotes from Pearl Harbor [http://us.imdb.com/Quotes?0213149] (24 April 2002).
14. Pearl Harbor functions in the American imaginary as a feminised figure: first, as a former American colony turned state that functions as a playground of pleasures for tourists, everyday Americans, and service people stationed at Pearl Harbor during the Second World War prior to its attack; and, second, as the unlikely location of America's feminine homefront, which is how it is scripted in America's hegemonic imaginary. For a more nuanced reading of Pearl Harbor, see Kathy Ferguson and Phyllis Turnbull, Oh Say Can Yon See? (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
15. Memorable Quotes from Pearl Harbor.
16. Ibid.
17. The hypermasculinity of an American enemy is always a complicated business, one that replies upon racial and ethnic stereotypes and that simultaneously feminises the enemy while it hypermasculinises it. See L.H.M. Ling, Postcolonial International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
18. Memorable Quotes from Pearl Harbor.
19. Even if one queers the Pearl Harbor narrative, reading Rafe and Danny's desire for one another as mediated through Evelyn, the result is the same. For, ultimately, both Rafe and Danny conform to heterosexual codes of gender and sexuality, one as father and husband, the other as son.
20. See Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
21. The popular representations of these discourses have little to do with what they see themselves as standing for. Leftist discourses would claim to be not immoral but offering alternative moralities. Postmodern discourses claim to make room for moral choices by critiquing moral universals, thereby placing moral responsibility squarely back in the hands of everyday people. And the valuation of humor often has less to do with whether or not it is funny than with timing, as American comedian Bill Maher, the host of the US comedy show Politically Incorrect learned when he quipped about 11 September: 'We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building-say what you want about it, it's not cowardly'. Bill Maher, Politically Incorrect, ABC, 16 September 2001 [http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20011108/re/leisure_maher_dc_1.html] (23 April 2002).
22. For a general overview of 11 September in a critical context, see Theory and Event 5, no. 4 (2001)
23. and for a historical overview of the situation see Fred Halliday, Two Hours that Shook the World (London: Al Saqi, 2002).
24. At the time of this writing, there was no publically available evidence that al Qaeda had any responsibility for the circulation of anthrax through the US post. Even so, my point is that the anthrax incidences, like al Qaeda's terrorist attacks, used America's own circulatory systems - the federal mail and US domestic air travel - against the US, making the question of where to strike an enemy a confusing one.
25. Mark Duffield, commenting at the meeting of the Critical Practice Unit, POLIS, University of Leeds, 21 October 2001.
26. Also see James Der Derian, '9.11: Before, After, and In Between' [http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/der_derian.htm] (24 April 2002).
27. See Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)
28. and Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars (London: Zed Books, 2001).
29. Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).
30. J.K. Gibson-Graham, 'Queer(y)ing Globalization', in Places Through the Body, eds. Heidi J. Nast and Steve Pile (London: Routledge, 1998).
31. These reports circulated in the British press in late October 2001. By late November 2001, they were retracted when the missing fighters were spotted in Afghanistan.
32. Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974).
33. Cynthia Weber, Faking It (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
34. Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), 109.
35. It is possible to argue that Americans hold a positive view of the market, with the market functioning in an American imaginary not as morally neutral, but as morally good. While this may be how an American imaginary views the market itself, it is important to keep in mind that the moral goodness of the market as a whole is an effect of the moral neutrality of the market mechanism. Put differently, it is because the market mechanism is morally neutral that the market itself is good.
36. What this means is that even though the US defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan and even if they capture and/or kill Osama bin Laden, they will not necessarily achieve their goal of defeating and containing international terror.