 You've heard it: September 11 changed us forever. The media harp on it, web sites sport little US flags, friends and strangers speak of it in hushed tones. Everyone, everywhere, seems to agree that, somehow, life changed forever on September 11, 2001. But how? If one believes the pundits, we now live in fear, we have had to face the powerlessness of democracy to adequately protect its citizens, we have been living in a fool's paradise of individual rights, we have lost our innocence. We have heard this before: when the Death Camps were liberated, the world lost its innocence; in the 50s, authorities insisted that individual rights had to take second place to the rights of society to protect itself against the communist conspiracy. In the 60s, the US media said that the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of their President, marked America's loss of innocence, that we had to acknowledge the threat a determined terrorist posed to public order. Then, hippies threatened anarchy in the streets. When the US lost the war in Viet Nam, that, too, marked the loss of American innocence. Every time we turn around, someone is pontificating about hidden threats, the need for us to give up our democratic freedoms to ensure security, and this loss of innocence. Yet, every time, we have survived, and innocence seems to grow back. Ah, you say, but this is different: 2,400 private citizens died. Well, yes, that's true, and terrible, but how many died in India's floods in 1999? But, you reply, that was a flood, this was a deliberate attack. Okay, what was the final death count in Rwanda? But, you say, these deaths were all at once! True -- and the Dresden firebombing took 135,000: Hiroshima and Nagasaki took at least 120,000, maybe twice that number. While those attacks were spread over some days, at an average a great many more that 2,400 died on any given day. Yes, you say, but that was far away, and in another land, and no one showed us continuous coverage. Well, yes. September 11 was an attack on the US. It isn't the scale of the disaster: it's that the US, and its allies, thought that massive loss of life happened to someone else, somewhere else, in some other time. In fact, for most of the world, September 11 did happen somewhere else, to someone else. Nonetheless, the entire world appears to have jumped on the bandwagon: why? Continuous coverage. The same clip, looping endlessly, the same words, chanted repeatedly, until the event might have happened in the front room. It unsettles the viewer, not merely out of fellow feeling, or even tragic catharsis, but because, if one is watching it on television or the internet, the chances are good one is living in an advanced industrial nation that looks very like the one on TV, with buildings not unlike the one burning. I wonder what the average Rwandan made of it, or the person in the streets of Sao Paolo, Ho Chi Minh City, or Dushanbe. But, these are poor people in poor cities in poorer nations. They don't have even a small proportion of the media power that the more advanced industrial world does, especially the United States. So we will never know. The changes I have noted since September 11, 2001, have little to do with awareness of the frailty of life or the loss of innocence. First, there is the unholy rush of governments to cram through legislation to limit the rights of their citizens under the guise of fighting terrorism. Second, there is the acquiescence of citizens in the loss of their rights. Third, there is the blantant and public posturing of the world's authorities behind the masks of American popular culture. Any of these deserves an essay in its own right, and, at first blush, the threat to democracy, both from the government and from the citizens' acquiescence seems the most important. However, the third seems to me, in the long run, to be the more insidious, since it is the most formidable tool in forcing through this loss of liberties and guaranteeing this lack of dissent. In the media-rich democracies, we can see what the government is up to pretty quick. Even if most of the populace is apathetic, the concerned can mobilise and fight, and, if they fight long and hard enough, can swing the public behind them. But, when the world has been divided into black and white, and frontier justice has been declared, what room is there for other approaches, other faces? Suddenly, the populace is under the bed, and those who might disagree with their government's approach must keep very, very quiet, lest they be branded terrorists, and dealt with accordingly. The expropriation of cultural stereotypes deprives dissenters of a powerful means of communication. In extreme cases, it can make it difficult even to formulate dissent. Not for nothing did George Orwell fear Newspeak:
Orwell limitted his fears to the manipulation of words. He did not foresee the full power of movies and popular culture to form people's thoughts and expression. But it is from the movies, and their brother medium, television, that people today learn how to think and act. One may laugh at the exaggerated acting in soaps -- until one talks with someone who is using exactly those expressions and postures to frame their communication. One might think situation comedy harmless, until one is confronted with family after family interacting exactly as they have seen on TV. One might believe that the infotainment offered as news is silly, until one understands that men, and women, in positions of authority model their entire presence on that of the anchors. One might think that old westerns are hokey, until one hears the President of the United States tell the world, "If you are not with us, you are against us." With that sentence, George Bush appropriated the stereotypes associated with America's most enduring myth, the lone Hero, and slapped them over any debate that might have arisen about why the US was attacked, and how best to prevent future attacks. He divided the world into white hats and black hats, and declared all not in unconditional support of his position the black hats. He has acted accordingly. To quote John Wayne, "Out here, due process is a bullet." Personally, I don't think he realised what he was doing. But his handlers did. In grabbing the metaphor of the American hero, they were imposing a limited set of roles -- of masks -- not only on Americans, but on the world. These masks are familiar to everyone who has ever watched American movies or television. Their attraction, their power, is in their Manichean simplicity: Good versus Evil, one or the other, no middle ground. The masks we learn from the modern media are the masks we use in life, to communicate our meaning in a culture no longer able to read a complex sentence, or write a full page of text. We learn, instead, to act in certain approved ways, to manipulate accepted stereotypes, to get our message across. Advertisers were the first to use this power on a mass scale: today, in the wealthier countries, it is used by all groups and individuals to get their message across, in public and in private. From the girl using the latest pop icon's hairstyle to signal her willingness to conform to group norms to the wise old professor with his prop pipe and Einsteinian hair, to the environmental celebrity imposing Henri Rousseau images on a northern forest, we have become manipulators of roles and wearers of masks. Since 11 September 2001, the adoption and imposition of a limited range of masks has torn through the world. No one dares be without an approved role, lest they be relegated to a disapproved one, and incur the wrath of the righteous and the due process of the frontier. These masks are seen most clearly on the faces of the politicians and people of the US, but their power is almost world wide. Years of ruthless trade practises have seen to it that American movies and TV dominate wherever movies and TVs are readily watched, except in China and India, two large nations with their own movie industry and mythology, and, tangentially, two nations that have not forsaken their own interests to join the hysteria. The United Kingdom, having its own set of masks, has had the amazing spectacle of Tony Blair wearing the face of Winston Churchill, or maybe Field Marshall Montgomery. But most of us have had to contend with John Wayne, in the US President, the Congress, the Senate, in Parliaments and Diets around the world, if not on the government side, then in opposition. Parties compete to see who can sound tougher. A vast number of private US citizens have donned the American Hero mask, too, especially in dealing with other nations who appear to be, maybe are, reluctant to give the United States a completely free hand to run the world. This is the kind of behaviour that, if your children tried it at home, would earn a severe reprimand. I am reminded of one Washington State politician who went on record accusing Canada of having harboured the terrorists involved in the attack. When told that this charge had long been disproven, and asked where she had got the idea, she replied, "I saw it on television." Don't try this at home, kids. There are other masks, too, donned by those who are not suited to the Hero role. There are the doomed heroes that prevented the fourth highjacking: in the movies, it is often the death of one of these that brings the Hero to town. Lisa Beamer has been notable in her portrayal of the Noble Widow. Many New Yorkers have given fine performances as plucky victims, toughing it out in a renewed spirit of community, like the townsfolk in Shane. There are the solemn faces reading the nightly news, behind the mask of the wise commentator, perhaps the old man who can no longer shoot, but comes out with the rusty old piece and has to be sent home for his safety. Or the salt of the earth frontier woman who tells the city slicker the reality of life on the frontier. Or the townspeople, small roles, smaller nations, usually first seen in a town meeting, decrying the danger to their homesteads, their women and children, but unable to stand up to the evil that besets them. Good people, but without the necessary moral authority or freedom from ties that would allow them to confront and defeat the enemy. They usually disappear from the movie once they have hired the Hero, to reappear, cheering, at the end, as he rides into the sunset. We should be so lucky. Then there are masks imposed. Good requires evil. So, out comes the devil mask, to be slapped on Osama Bin Laden. Rather than being an American-trained fanatic, he becomes a force of monstrous evil: he has to be, for the more evil he is, the more good his opponents. His followers are all psychopaths, the Evil Ringleader's twitchy sidekicks, who must, it seems, be especially condemned by good Muslims the world over -- that's how you recognise a good Muslim, nowadays, by the pious, non-violent mask -- like the wise old Indian in those movies, the one we can afford to admire because his people are already dust. And, there are the weak-willed and wimpy nations, like, apparently, my own. These are cast as the venial shopkeeper or cowardly neighbour, who scuttles off, leaving Gary Cooper alone in the streets at High Noon. Of course, the fact that the neighbour or shopkeeper might think the Hero is an armed lunatic who needs to be placated without being provoked never figures in the stereotypes, does it? Mask upon mask, paraded for people who have forgotten how to read and write, but are still acutely aware of cultural stereotypes. The Hero face is taken, you must grab a suitable mask and fall in behind, or you will be left with nothing but black hats, and we know what happens to the black hats in the end. You are either for us or against us. There is no room for debate, no language left to debate in. Hesitation is weakness. Refusal is a crime. Due process is a bullet. Newspeak can only limit what you say. You can still stand, speechless, holding a picture of your disappeared, and someone will see the message, in your face, or theirs. But, when all the faces are allotted, who will you be then? |
