US Popculture without 9/11

xie323 · May 16, 2013

What will US pop culture resemble if 9/11 never occured? What would the media be like? What would TV and movies and gaming be like?

I think TV will be more darker and the line of "darker and edigier cartoons" of the 90s might continue. There might be a larger anime boom in the US. I think things became lighter and softer due to 9/11 and the changing norm of what is acceptiable in TV. We might not see the appearance of teen/tween drama on TV and movies, as I feel they "filled" up the niche left over by the "toning down" of things in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

zoomar · May 16, 2013

I'm probably too old to answer this, but I wouldn't see much change.

xie323 · May 16, 2013

zoomar said:
I'm probably too old to answer this, but I wouldn't see much change.

Why not? Also we might not see shows or movies with middle eastern terrorists as the main antagonists for instance.

oshron · May 16, 2013

there would be fewer ambiguous Muslims/Middle Easterners as antagonists in fiction in general, and terrorism wouldn't be as prevalent a theme; terrorists would be more associated with McVeigh types than al-Qaeda.

one more specific change i can think of is that Spider-Man's big reveal in the first movie of that series would be that thugs on a helicopter get stuck in a web suspended between the Twin Towers. there would probably also be a less patriotic theme in that series in general. i think it's also likely that Team America wouldn't be made, thus we have neither their iconic song nor the notion of "'Murica, fuck yeah!" in both overly patriotic/nationalist pop culture and in politics (so alot of wind is taken out of AH.commers' sails when it comes to misunderstanding Assassin's Creed III based on trailers that are admitted blatant lies

)

LtNOWIS · May 16, 2013

Eh, Muslim terrorists were still pretty prevalent before 9/11. True Lies in 1994 is a good example. Since the Second Intifada will still happen, that'll still be prevalent in the culture without 9/11, although there will be a lot of generic white terrorists as well.

24 probably wouldn't go for 8 seasons.

Whanztastic · May 16, 2013

mattep74 · May 16, 2013

DanielXie said:
What will US pop culture resemble if 9/11 never occured? What would the media be like? What would TV and movies and gaming be like?

I think TV will be more darker and the line of "darker and edigier cartoons" of the 90s might continue. There might be a larger anime boom in the US. I think things became lighter and softer due to 9/11 and the changing norm of what is acceptiable in TV. We might not see the appearance of teen/tween drama on TV and movies, as I feel they "filled" up the niche left over by the "toning down" of things in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Springsteen wouldnt make the Rising

Time slip · May 16, 2013

I agree that there wouldn't be as big of an audience for something like 24. Without 9/11, I can see it drawing less viewers. Maybe it joins the list of shows cancelled too soon by Fox.

If there are no wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, you won't have movies using those wars as backdrops. The most noteworthy of these would be Best Picture winning The Hurt Locker.

A lot depends on how things turn out politically and economically, because entertainment will be affected by those things (obviously). I think a show like Person of Interest is a clear example of 9/11 affecting popular culture. In the show, a machine with the ability to predict violent crimes before they happen is invented for the purposes of counter-terrorism. Basically, the post-9/11 desire for increased security and surveillance and fears of something like 9/11 happening again taken to a Sci-Fi extreme. You won't necessarily have the post-9/11 atmosphere of fear and paranoia in a timeline without 9/11, and by extension it wouldn't be reflected in the popular culture.

phx1138 · May 16, 2013

Time slip said:
I agree that there wouldn't be as big of an audience for something like 24. Without 9/11, I can see it drawing less viewers. Maybe it joins the list of shows cancelled too soon by Fox.

If there are no wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, you won't have movies using those wars as backdrops. The most noteworthy of these would be Best Picture winning The Hurt Locker.

A lot depends on how things turn out politically and economically, because entertainment will be affected by those things (obviously). I think a show like Person of Interest is a clear example of 9/11 affecting popular culture. In the show, a machine with the ability to predict violent crimes before they happen is invented for the purposes of counter-terrorism. Basically, the post-9/11 desire for increased security and surveillance and fears of something like 9/11 happening again taken to a Sci-Fi extreme. You won't necessarily have the post-9/11 atmosphere of fear and paranoia in a timeline without 9/11, and by extension it wouldn't be reflected in the popular culture.

I agree with most of that. "PoI", I'm not so sure. There was (is) a strong tendency to like surveillance as a defense against crime (even tho it patently doesn't work

), & the (stupid

) "war on drugs" has created enough violence to make increases credible. I can readily believe a government agency wanting to create The Machine, only to have Finch steal it: so, a small change in the premise. I imagine a smaller focus, too: say, just to New York, rather than USG. (Without 11 Sept, maybe another city, since Manhattan would be less paranoid.)

As for bad guys, IMO you'd readily see "drug kingpins" substituted.

Some of the "origin stories" of "Golden Boy" & "White Collar" would end up different, but you'd have to be a fan to notice...

Time slip · May 16, 2013

It's entirely possible that a show with a similar basic premise (people use something to stop crimes before they happen) could still be made, but I think 9/11 and the reaction to it is influential in terms of how Person of Interest was written. Maybe it wouldn't have been written at all.

Emote Control · May 16, 2013

In 2000 there was a superb SF show on Fox, Dark Angel, that took place in 2015 -- after America has been reduced to a third world country, in both social conditions and international influence, by a terrorist EMP attack. (Though the supposedly depressed economy was able to afford lots of flying robots and lots of hip-trendy nightclubs).

After the 9/11 attacks, the network altered the show to remove the third-world-America aspect. Without 9/11 the show would keep its edge, I think.

Andrew T · May 16, 2013

Here's an easy one: without 9/11, Sam Harris never publishes The End of Faith, and you probably don't have a "New Atheist" movement of any sort. (And, of course, without a popular "New Atheism" movement and without Bush's Iraq War, virtually no one will have ever heard of a quirky Vanity Fair columnist named Christopher Hitchens.)

But what would the no-9/11 2000s actually be like? Here's one thought: if GWB is a one-term president (and you limit the damage he can do in his single term -- no No Child Left Behind, no Iraq War, no Patriot Act), then the 2000s might just sort of continue the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years.

The kinds of pop culture TV shows, movies, and music that appeal to people in an environment where, say, 20-year-old kids can drop out of college and get millions of dollars in venture capital to start an online ice-cream delivery service -- is, to put it mildly, quite a bit different than the sort of shows, movies, and music that appeals to people in an environment where 28-year-olds with multiple degrees are returning home to live in their parents' basements because they can't find jobs.

In other words: without 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the collapse of the U.S. economy, I highly doubt that people would be listening to, say, Macklemore or Nicki Minaj.

vultan · May 16, 2013

Stuff like Fight Club and American Psycho would be a lot more popular.

Pesterfield · May 16, 2013

without 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the collapse of the U.S. economy,

If Bush is in office would Iraq be avoided or just another excuse found?

Will the housing bubble just keep growing, or was it due to pop soon anyway?

alaric112 · May 17, 2013

Pesterfield said:
If Bush is in office would Iraq be avoided or just another excuse found?

Will the housing bubble just keep growing, or was it due to pop soon anyway?

I think they would have tried to find an excuse for the Iraq War, but I doubt it would have had nearly the popular support it did in the post-9/11 US. While the bubble was probably going to burst eventually, having a more robust economy might allow us to prevent the worst of the Great Recession from happening, at least if the Republicans and Democrats can work together long enough to get it done.

I do wonder what would happen to, say, Fox News. If Bush ended up a one-term president whose only major contribution was not crashing the US economy and possibly trying to fabricate a war, would there be such a rabid conservative base for them to draw on, especially if history is as kind of Clinton as it has been in the present?

Hadley · May 17, 2013

oshron said:
one more specific change i can think of is that Spider-Man's big reveal in the first movie of that series would be that thugs on a helicopter get stuck in a web suspended between the Twin Towers)

Just want to point out that that scene was only shot for the trailer (which did get airplay in the few weeks before 9/11) and wouldnt have been in the film, 9/11 or not.

oshron · May 17, 2013

Hadley said:
Just want to point out that that scene was only shot for the trailer (which did get airplay in the few weeks before 9/11) and wouldnt have been in the film, 9/11 or not.

fair point

my secondary point, though, is that there's a patriotic theme going on in all of the Spider-Man films. Doug Walker pointed it out in one review with recurring American flags in the latter two movies, the presence of which is apparently rather annoying and unnecessary

JVM · May 17, 2013

War in the Middle East won't be a regularly featured aspect of movies and television.

Kind of a "no shit sherlock" but a bit overlooked here.

oshron · May 17, 2013

JVM said:
War in the Middle East won't be a regularly featured aspect of movies and television.

Kind of a "no shit sherlock" but a bit overlooked here.

i wonder what setting would replace the Middle East where it's not exceptionally important (like in Iron Man, for instance). the former Eastern Bloc, maybe? Southeast Asia? or perhaps it would be a more domestic setting?

Whanztastic · May 17, 2013

oshron said:
i wonder what setting would replace the Middle East where it's not exceptionally important (like in Iron Man, for instance). the former Eastern Bloc, maybe? Southeast Asia? or perhaps it would be a more domestic setting?

He can still be abroad selling US weapons to an ally and be ambushed.

The US is never gonna be 'untangled' from the Middle East in a no-9/11 world. We're still engaged with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, Qatar, mostly for the sake of Iraqi/Iranian containment.

Instead of no terrorists, any references to them will likely be backed by either Iraq or Iran.

Probably a good deal more fiction involving Russian ultranationalists like Air Force One, or an earlier focus on Korean?Chinese enemies.

Collateral Damage was about drug war terrorism, maybe more about that too. That release wouldn't be delayed.

Zoolander does better, probably gets an earlier sequal.