Reel fallout cinema: space to mourn in Hollywood’s war on terror, 2007-2018; grief, trauma and disillusionment on the endless frontier

Abstract

This thesis identifies the emergence of a new cycle of Hollywood films concerning the war on terror which has succeeded films designated as “post-9/11 cinema,” initiating a displacement of the discourse that, on that fateful September day in 2001, “everything changed.” I will maintain that the effects of 9/11 on Hollywood cinema were not fully realised until the development of a post- post-9/11 era which I term Reel Fallout Cinema. Released between 2007 and 2018, these films create space to mourn both the events of 9/11 and subsequent wars and terrorist attacks. In comparison with post-9/11 releases such as Black Hawk Down (dir. Ridley Scott, USA, UK, 2001) which displayed U.S. military intervention as benevolent, and United 93 (dir. Paul Greengrass, USA, 2006) which directly portrayed the attacks, Reel Fallout Cinema depicts war and terrorism in more sombre, mournful ways, foregrounding grief, trauma and disillusionment with American foreign policy in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
My research focuses on nine subsequent releases with war on terror narratives: The Kingdom (dir. Peter Berg, USA, Germany, 2007), The Hurt Locker (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, USA, 2008), Green Zone (dir. Paul Greengrass, USA, 2010), Zero Dark Thirty (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, USA, 2012), Captain Phillips (dir. Paul Greengrass, USA, 2013), Lone Survivor (dir. Peter Berg, USA, 2013), American Sniper (dir. Clint Eastwood, USA, 2014), Patriots Day (dir. Peter Berg, Hong Kong, USA, 2016) and The 15:17 to Paris (dir. Clint Eastwood, USA, 2018). All based on real events, they portray lost missions and American sacrifice without the victories typically associated with World War I and II films, or 1980s and 1990s action thrillers. Heroes are replaced with traumatised American protagonists, evocative of Vietnam War films of the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, but the Reel Fallout films were made and released during rather than post-war. They also feature non-American characters with agency whose deaths are grieved as well as foregrounding disillusionment with endless war on the United States’ global frontier. Many anti-war Vietnam films were political and explicitly critical, for example, The Deer Hunter (dir. Michael Cimino, USA, UK, 1978) and Born on the Fourth of July (dir. Oliver Stone, USA, 1989) depicting overt manifestations of trauma. Reel Fallout’s disillusionment with conflict is more subtle, the narratives imbued with sadness, powerlessness and vulnerability. Through focusing on the damage of never-ending wars, this study will establish how the Reel Fallout cycle intervenes into debates concerning “a failure of mourning” following 9/11 and generates space to mourn.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Olivia Mary Flint: orcid.org/0009-0008-5653-3013

ORCID for Shelley Cobb: orcid.org/0000-0003-1153-8482

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