WI: Pop Culture in a world without 9/11?
- Thread starter woweed
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To name a few things:
- Stories got a lot darker and more cynical in the wake of 9/11 due to the overall mood of America at the time. This is seen as having ushered in a wave of post-modernism in storytelling. Often great detail was shown to the consequences of mass death and destruction. Before that, stories tended to be more lighthearted or optimistic. Just compare Independence Day (1996) to War of the Worlds (2005). So without 9/11, mainstream stories are more likely to be a more natural extension of what was found in the 1990s.
- Without 9/11, the Islamic terrorist as a villainous archetype wouldn't have been so prevalent, for obvious reasons. After 9/11, the Muslim terrorist was as ubiquitous as the generic Nazi or Russian/Eastern European commie as a go-to anti-American villain. But in a world without the US at a constant war with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Iraq, ISIS, following the Twin Towers' destruction, Islamists are a lot less likely to come up.
- There would be no Patriot Act, thus the question about Personal Liberty vs. National Security wouldn't exist. Many stories with a political slant often had some form of the Patriot Act used as analogy, such as Marvel's Civil War event or Grand Theft Auto IV. That would mean such stories either wouldn't exist outright or would be very different.
- The War on Terror was constant and defined the aughts, and the then-contemporary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was a major source for stories in media, often with a modern military angle. Without the US being in an active war, modern military-based stories like that are much less common.
- Also, consider works that were directly affected by 9/11. Movies were heavily edited to remove the WTC or references to it, and some works were even cancelled as a result (notably, James Cameron was planning a sequel to True Lies but decided to pull the plug as terrorism wasn't something that could be taken lightly anymore). So there would be a lot of media that gets made that wouldn't in our timeline, and the WTC remains a pop culture icon seen throughout New York.
Indeed. The lack of the Muslim terrorist as a stock bad guy is likely to have butterflies. I wonder what takes its place...
I remember back 01, dunno if i'm being mandelaed or it was a genuine urban legend, that 911 was done by Serbians in revenge for all the sanctions and meddling in the Yugoslav war and the fear of eastern europeans terrorist was palatable...so them?
Does that mean Call of Duty Modern Warfare wouldn't exist or would be heavily modified ITTL?
There would be less films where large cities are destroyed (Man of Steel, Avengers, Transformers) as America would not have that as a touchstone
Yeah, absolutely.
However post 9/11 the specific visual language changed, cities got turned to rubble, not just a few broken windows, also the clouds of grey dust, the militarised response. Even the way buildings collapsed.
That's not a given - Star Trek Deep Space Nine was post-9/11-ish before 9/11 happened.
Although, that's probably more to do with Gene Roddenberry passing. But my point stands - it's not as if there wasn't plenty of Dark And Edgy(TM) storytelling before 9/11. The Dark Age of Comics started in the 1980s (thanks in part to practically everyone trying to copy Alan Moore, but missing the point).
IDK, that's never stopped plenty of war-based videogames and novels being written before.
IIRC, one of the Spider-Man movies had to be modified because the Twin Towers were reflected in Spider-Man's eyes.
Probably just sticking to Stock Evil British Accents.
Actually, it's a lot more than that. The first trailer of Spider-Man literally had Spidey trapping a group of bank robbers fleeing via helicopter between the Twin Towers... which obviously didn't make the final cut. In fact, the brief scene of firefighters at Ground Zero talking about Spider-Man, and the civilians throwing things at Green Goblin ("You mess with Spidey, you mess with New York!" / "You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!") were added in post-production as a good natured reaction to how America was feeling at the time.
While it made perfect sense to remove the Twin Towers scene from a real world perspective, it did kind of hurt Spider-Man from a narrative perspective. That scene was very likely to be Spider-Man's official introduction that establishes him as a superhero. Instead, Spidey just sort of comes out of nowhere after Peter decides to fight crime when he loses Uncle Ben. It's kind of uncinematic when you think about it. And it's a very good scene if you ignore what happened to the Twin Towers in real life for just a moment, so if 9/11 didn't happen, I imagine this would be a very iconic and beloved part of the movie.
Fun fact: You actually can briefly see the Twin Towers reflecting off of Spidey's eyes in a blink and you'll miss it moment.
True.
Yeah, but no clue what they'd be about. Possibly sticking to WWII, or maybe leaning more into full-on sci-fi?
Even the simpsons parodied that https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/a132c6fa-345f-4083-b48f-1a23e46c0937
I doubt WW2 would stay popular, as the WW2 Renaissance was already fading quickly. Perhaps we could see a Civil War Renaissance concurring with the 125th anniversary of the Civil War, leading that setting seeing a lot of use, until about now by which it would have begun to fade.
I recall that GTA 3 (released October 2001) had an entire mission cut simply because on its cutscene a character mentioned the word "terrorist" once, its dev studio in NYC was located near ground zero, and following the attacks the studio was in a very uneasy and uncomfortable mood to release such kind of video game, they had to change stuff such as the color of police cars, removing the ability to explode airplanes, and etc. it is fascinating to look at how 9/11 changed media that was supposed to have been released near or after it.
Even more edgy pop culture in 00s, less of a reaction against it. Late 2010s OTL saw abortive green shoots popping up culturally so in TTL, I suspect we'd be in early days of 00s edge.
Do you not mean, US pop culture? There wasn't much of a change in the UK, we had near 30 years of terrorist attacks by 9/11. There would not be the pant wetting on TV, that's about it.