How Hollywood Failed to Respond to the 9/11 and the War on Terror

Ludicrous, it is. No, not the semi-literate rapper, but ludicrous as modifier used to describe the suggestion that Hollywood films have not throughout history serve to reinforce the structural foundation of the America's ruling ideology. Notwithstanding the incessant battering of Hollywood filmmaking as debasing and subversive authority, and regardless of the embarrassment that was the HUAC witch hunt, the undeniable actuality is that Hollywood has always been a leader in touting pro-American viewpoints even when the prevailing view has been distinctly unenlightened and illiberal.

Few would be able to make a credible case that film and television have been anything other than the primary method for transmitting ideology. The proceedings of September 11, 2001 and the consequent retort by the Bush administration and his rubber-stamp Congresses trail along in the tradition of such other defining moments in American history as Pearl Harbor and the collective turbulence more commonly known as the decade of the 1960s. Twentieth-century American history was one in which all the great watershed events in the real world influenced Hollywood's output. The movies made during those periods were the result of the necessity of confronting the striking shock upon society