WI: Pop Culture in a world without 9/11?

[woweed]

According to this video, I don't think pop punk would really be replaced. The '90s punk scene was inevitably leading up to a pop mainstreaming in the '00s. But that itself would inevitable hit critical mass saturation, and as the video chronicles (around the 10:30 mark), by 2004 or so the aged out fans would move on to either hardcore/metal/indie (if they were thorough fans) or rap/pop (if they were normies). And also the kids would just head towards emo. I don't think any of these scenes were really political at all, which means they'd be largely insulated by the cultural effects of the War on Terror. Which brings me to another video-

There was some pro-war jingoist revenge music like Toby Keith during Iraq, the one antiwar act was the Dixie Chicks and they got absolutely cancelled from history, other mildly critical artists (Madonna, Jewel, the Black-Eyed Peas) were either tepid or quickly self-censoring, the Rock Against Bush album was full of obscure unknowns, there was System of a Down but I'd personally just argue they were just the '00s Rage Against the Machine which might be a revolving position, some other major artists did turn out anti-Bush singles were out of the Top 40 mainstream (and often kinda sucked), except for Green Day's American Idiot (at 22:53).

According to this video, American Idiot was like the one major influential antiwar work of art, and then Bush got reelected in 2004 (~29 min. mark), and then there was just a Kate McKinnon doing a cringey overwrought Leonard Cohen impression on SNL in 2016 type deflation in art, and its replacement by resigned defeat counterrevolutionary art like "Waiting on the World for Change" by John Mayer.

Basically the main thesis of the song is that contrary to that meme before 2016, tough times don't always produce great art. So despite the sweeping changes that the War on Terror and the war in Iraq specifically produced in America... there wasn't that much music made in response to it.

So I guess I would just say not much might change on this front, unless someone wants to attempt a counter-narrative, but these are sure some informative videos!

Meh. I generally enjoy both Todd and Lindsey's work, but I think that second video is too narrowly focused. Todd's speciality is Pop, and, like, it's true there wasn't much anti-Bush there, but there was tons of anti-Bush rock and hip hop and the like. And I think calling all the Punk artists irrelevant...Eh. Maybe to the ultra mainstream, but it's not like much protest music hit the top 40 back in the 60s either.

 

[Deleted member 145219]

Some thoughts:

• A LOT less anti-Muslim sentiment. Before 9/11 most North Americans hardly knew what Islam was. Afterwards Islamophobia was absolutely everywhere and it took many years for there to be any significant level of push back. To this day it is still far more common than it was before 9/11. I have a hard time imagining it will ever go back to pre-9/11 levels in my lifetime. The Muslim terrorist stock villain would be less common in pop culture.
• A bit more sympathy for various Muslim groups around the world. In the 2000s all sorts of nasty stuff going on in Chechnya, Palestine, Xinjiang, Kashmir, etc was justified as counter-terrorism and a lot of westerners were inclined to accept all that without question and dismiss any criticism out of hand.
• A bit more anti-China sentiment. Before 9/11 pop culture was starting to put a lot of energy into building up China as the new enemy. I remember there was a big furor over that crashed spy plane in 2000. Pundits were saying it was the end of the thaw in US-China relations, that it would cost China the olympics, etc. All of that was quickly forgotten after 9/11 and focus didn't really shift back to China until the Obama years, and even then it got sidetracked by conflicts in the Middle-East. Also criticism of China's treatment of Uighurs has only really become common in the last few years, without 9/11 it may come sooner.
• A bit more anti-Russia sentiment. Before 9/11 the post Cold War honeymoon with Russia seemed to be coming to an end. There was the dispute over the 1999 Kosovo war. Around 1999 is also when Russia was starting to complain about Nato expansion, something it had been open to as recently as 1996. There was a lot of western criticism of Russian war crimes in the 2nd Chechen war. Then 9/11 happened and overnight everyone decided that Putin was a cool badass and Chechens were all evil terrorists. Suspicion of Russia didn't return to pre-9/11 levels until the Russia-Georgia war, and arguably not fully until the 2014 conflict in Ukraine. Russian mobsters and disgruntled ex-Soviet politicians/soldiers/KGB were sort of becoming stock villains in the 90s and this would probably continue through the 2000s.
• Before 9/11 there was this growing pop culture preoccupation with white male ennui. Movies like the Matrix, Fight Club, and American Beauty all tapped into. Stories about people who didn't face any particular oppression, were doing ok in a material sense, but were still dissatisfied and unfilled with their lives. This stuff mostly went away after 9/11 when the sense of ennui was replaced with constant anxiety about real dangers.
• 9/11 changed the way building explosions looked in movies, with giant dust clouds becoming a lot more common.
• There were plans for an Independence Day sequel but after 9/11 they decided it wasn't the right time to continue a cheesy light-hearted series that was full of landmarks getting blown up.
• There were also plans for a Forrest Gump sequel that the creators said they abandoned because of 9/11.
• Others have mentioned the removal of the WTC from the first Spider-Man movie. The movie also probably wouldn't have that cheesy shot of Spider-man under the gigantic flag that was shown in all the ads.
• 24 would be very different and a lot less popular on televison.
• Homeland probably never exists at all.
• The second half of Star Trek Enterprise is completely different. The 3rd season was all about a 9/11 allegory and much of the 4th season was about dealing with the consequences of the 3rd.
• The entirety of Battlestar Galactica is completely different. The show is less preoccupied with debating freedom vs security, torture etc. No Iraq war allegories on New Caprica, no Saddam trial allegory with Baltar.
• A lot fewer shooter games set in the Middle East.
• No Command and Conquer Generals as we know it. Westwood might still experiment with a new game and a different style gameplay in the C&C series but the tone of the new game would be a lot different, and it would not feature the Global Liberation Army.
• In comics Marvel doesn't do the Civil War storyline and that will have repercussions for a bunch of later storylines and the Marvel movies. My recollection is that X-Men was Marvel's biggest franchise from the 80s into the early 2000s, but around the time of Civil War and House of M the main franchise shifted from being X-Men to the Avengers. Not sure if that would still be the case without Civil War, I guess it might depend on what alternate storylines Marvel does in its place.
• Frank Miller and his comics probably remain widely popular, after 9/11 he became a lot more vocal about his politics and that turned a lot of people off of him.
• American flags wouldn't be plastered onto absolutely everything. Every news anchor wouldn't be wearing a flag pin in the 2000s.
• The worship of the military wouldn't reach such extreme levels. The constant "thank you for your service" stuff wouldn't be a thing.
• News, especially 24 hour news channels, are not as popular in the 2000s. They already existed for years before hand but after 9/11 everyone was watching them constantly.
• Before 9/11 there was a big chunk of the population that didn't pay much attention to politics or world events at all. After 9/11 everyone had an opinion on everything going on.
• In OTL a number of journalists who criticized the Iraq War and other actions of the Bush admin had their careers derailed because of it. These people would stay around without 9/11 and the news media landscape would look different.
• The Daily Show wouldn't become as popular, and it was the primary source of news and political commentary for a lot of young people in the OTL 2000s. The Daily Show might also just stick to pure comedy more, the shift to real commentary and news already started with the 2000 election but after 9/11 and the Iraq War it really kicked into high gear. The show might be less blatantly partisan too. It was always socially liberal but on other issues it still tried to be somewhat outside of partisan politics in the early 2000s. From the mid-2000s onwards the show no longer made any effort to hide the fact that it was rooting for Democrats over Republicans.
• Politically Incorrect wouldn't be cancelled, and would provide a more Libertarian-ish counterbalance to the Daily Show.
• There might be less of a backlash against South Park too which was another early influence on Millennial politics. Or at least the backlash would be delayed.
• The popularity of the New Atheists might be a bit lessened in the 2000s. A lot of their popularity can be attributed to backlash against the influence of the Christian Religious Right, but that wasn't the only cause. A lot of people who didn't identify as right-wing still hated Muslims and were looking for a "rational" justification for their views, and that drew them to people to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. While the New Athiests might be a bit less popular in the 2000s, the backlash against them in the 2010s would be lessened as well if they didn't get so intertwined with Islamophobia and the Alt Right. The Alt Right itself might be a bit less popular too.

This is a pretty good assessment.

 

[arrowiv]

I now wonder if any of the pro-Bush artists such as Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood now have any regrets on supporting the Iraq war? You would think any of them now have any shame about it and those young lives being lost and wasted in that war. As much as I do respect those guys' patriotism, I have to think if they do have regrets and shame looking back on it.

 

[Somedevil]

I now wonder if any of the pro-Bush artists such as Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood now have any regrets on supporting the Iraq war? You would think any of them now have any shame about it and those young lives being lost and wasted in that war. As much as I do respect those guys' patriotism, I have to think if they do have regrets and shame looking back on it.

neither of those two acts regret it I am sure.

 

[Twiggierjet]

According to this video, I don't think pop punk would really be replaced. The '90s punk scene was inevitably leading up to a pop mainstreaming in the '00s. But that itself would inevitable hit critical mass saturation, and as the video chronicles (around the 10:30 mark), by 2004 or so the aged out fans would move on to either hardcore/metal/indie (if they were thorough fans) or rap/pop (if they were normies). And also the kids would just head towards emo. I don't think any of these scenes were really political at all, which means they'd be largely insulated by the cultural effects of the War on Terror. Which brings me to another video-

There was some pro-war jingoist revenge music like Toby Keith during Iraq, the one antiwar act was the Dixie Chicks and they got absolutely cancelled from history, other mildly critical artists (Madonna, Jewel, the Black-Eyed Peas) were either tepid or quickly self-censoring, the Rock Against Bush album was full of obscure unknowns, there was System of a Down but I'd personally just argue they were just the '00s Rage Against the Machine which might be a revolving position, some other major artists did turn out anti-Bush singles were out of the Top 40 mainstream (and often kinda sucked), except for Green Day's American Idiot (at 22:53).

According to this video, American Idiot was like the one major influential antiwar work of art, and then Bush got reelected in 2004 (~29 min. mark), and then there was just a Kate McKinnon doing a cringey overwrought Leonard Cohen impression on SNL in 2016 type deflation in art, and its replacement by resigned defeat counterrevolutionary art like "Waiting on the World for Change" by John Mayer.

Basically the main thesis of the song is that contrary to that meme before 2016, tough times don't always produce great art. So despite the sweeping changes that the War on Terror and the war in Iraq specifically produced in America... there wasn't that much music made in response to it.

So I guess I would just say not much might change on this front, unless someone wants to attempt a counter-narrative, but these are sure some informative videos!

Pretty cool videos. It's a shame the creator of the second one stopped making content.

 

[JCC the Alt Historian]

I know a few things about South Park that would change with 9/11 never happening. I meant to add this a while back, but got completely sidetracked and forgot all about it.

• The episode Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants doesn't get made since Osama bin Laden gets killed in 1998. There will probably be another Season 5 episode that takes it place in the altered timeline.
• The episode Free Hat has a different ending (assuming the episode is still made) since without 9/11, the original film copies of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark won't be going to the Red Cross 9/11 Relief Funds.
• The episode A Ladder to Heaven won't have country singer Alan Jackson singing a parody of Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).
• The episode My Future Self 'n' Me won't have the 9/11 references. Apart from that, I don't think the episode will change that much.
• I don't know if Red Sleigh Down will exist or not.
• The episode Cancelled will be changed slightly since without 9/11, the Iraq War probably won't happen either.
• The episode I'm a Little Bit Country probably won't be made since without 9/11, the Iraq War probably won't happen either. There will probably be another Season 7 episode that takes it place in the altered timeline.
• The episode Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow get altered slightly to remove reference to Al-Qaeda.
• Cartoon Wars Parts 1 and 2 either don't get made or are significantly altered.
• The episode Mystery of the Urinal Deuce obviously doesn't get made since the plot revolves around 9/11 and 9/11 Truther conspiracies' theories. There will probably be another Season 10 episode that takes it place in the altered timeline.
• The plot of the episode The Snuke probably gets altered if not getting butterflied away in its entirety.
• The Imaginationland Trilogy gets altered due to the terrorists that appear in it.
• The episode It's a Jersey Thing has a different ending since Osama bin Landen has been dead since 1998. The town of South Park will have to find a different source of help that's not Al-Qaeda to prevent New Jersey from taking over the town.

Well, that's all I can think of for South Park getting altered in a No 9/11 World.

 

[Gillan1220]

I know a few things about South Park that would change with 9/11 never happening. I meant to add this a while back, but got completely sidetracked and forgot all about it.

• The episode Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants doesn't get made since Osama bin Laden gets killed in 1998. There will probably be another Season 5 episode that takes it place in the altered timeline.
• The episode Free Hat has a different ending (assuming the episode is still made) since without 9/11, the original film copies of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark won't be going to the Red Cross 9/11 Relief Funds.
• The episode A Ladder to Heaven won't have country singer Alan Jackson singing a parody of Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).
• The episode My Future Self 'n' Me won't have the 9/11 references. Apart from that, I don't think the episode will change that much.
• I don't know if Red Sleigh Down will exist or not.
• The episode Cancelled will be changed slightly since without 9/11, the Iraq War probably won't happen either.
• The episode I'm a Little Bit Country probably won't be made since without 9/11, the Iraq War probably won't happen either. There will probably be another Season 7 episode that takes it place in the altered timeline.
• The episode Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow get altered slightly to remove reference to Al-Qaeda.
• Cartoon Wars Parts 1 and 2 either don't get made or are significantly altered.
• The episode Mystery of the Urinal Deuce obviously doesn't get made since the plot revolves around 9/11 and 9/11 Truther conspiracies' theories. There will probably be another Season 10 episode that takes it place in the altered timeline.
• The plot of the episode The Snuke probably gets altered if not getting butterflied away in its entirety.
• The Imaginationland Trilogy gets altered due to the terrorists that appear in it.
• The episode It's a Jersey Thing has a different ending since Osama bin Landen has been dead since 1998. The town of South Park will have to find a different source of help that's not Al-Qaeda to prevent New Jersey from taking over the town.

Well, that's all I can think of for South Park getting altered in a No 9/11 World.

Any satire involving Arab Terrorists such as South Park, Achmed The Dead Terrorist, American Dad, or Rucka Rucka Ali's parodies will simply not exist.

That said, the enemies in these episodes of political satires will probably be Saddam, Khomeini, Kim Jong-il, or Hugo Chavez.

 

[Pyro]

I now realize that without 9/11 there's no Ultimates comic and hence no MCU at all.

I vaguely recall a Wizard magazine article announcing the Ultimates pre-9/11, however, Mark Millar mentioned a vastly different storyline compared to the one we received IOTL. It involved Tony Stark crash landing in China with the Chinese reverse engineering the Iron Man tech and equipping their army with it.

I believe it was this issue...

 

[unclepatrick]

From what I gathered in @Iwanh 's story:

• Spider-Man (2002) would probably feature that scene with the helicopter stuck in the WTC.
• Resident Evil (2002) might be titled as Resident Evil: Ground Zero (its original working title) and might have featured the scene where Alice and Matt drive to a zombie-infested New York with guns on their vans. The outer establishing shot shows a ruined New York City with the WTC still standing. Also worth to note RE was released just less than a year after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Then there's also 28 Days Later, which kicked on the fast zombie trend.
• Speaking of zombies, 9/11 did have an impact on the genre, especially on the genre of bioterrorists. The later releases of Resident Evil games focused on this. I think it would just be slightly modified from OTL.
• Collateral Damage (2002) might have been released in late 2001 instead of early 2002.
• GTA III (2001) might feature that level with a terrorist.
• Lilo and Stich would have that plane-hijacking scene as well.
• We would have also seen more movies about plane hijackings.
• American Idiot would not be released.
• Where Is The Love by Black Eyed Peas is either butterflied away or would come in a different form, instead focusing on famine, disasters, or another regional conflict.
• South Park and the controversial rapper Rucka Rucka Ali will still make parodies, without the stereotypes of Arabs and the Bush foreign policy.
• American Dad would probably be a parody of Tom Clancy's techno-thrillers instead of Arab terrorists as the main opponents.
• The enemies shown in most movies and video games might be the stereotypical renegade Russian, Chinese, Saddam-like figure (Saddam himself is portrayed as the villain in The Simpsons, as in the case of Metal Slug), or Val Verde type of Latino villain. Consider that in the 1990s, techno-thriller novels had China as the villain since the USSR was now gone. While we did have Arabic characters as villains in True Lies and Executive Decision, they were still overshadowed by rogue Russian generals, Eastern European terrorists, or Latino drug cartels during this period.
• The sequel to Forrest Gump may have been made here.
• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs might take a different route, as with most U.S. Special Operations fictional media.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare might still be made, but it might not have that level that was a carbon copy of Iraq. It might be like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear in which operators would need to stop a renegade general of some sort.
• True Lies probably gets a sequel.
• Brickmania and Brickarms do not produce the terrorist LEGO minifigure.
• The song Empire State of Mind by Jay Z and Alicia Keys might not include the lyrics "Long Live the World Trade".
• We would probably not have seen the Doomsday/Apocalypse Craze in the 2000s-early 2010s.

The reason there was no sequel to Forrest Gum had little to do with 9/11 .
It had a lot to do with Winston Groom selling just the right to the first novel and Hollywood Accounting .
He was not getting any money from the movie .
When he talked to the studio accountants , they claim the movie had not made money .
A few days latter , one of the producers called to purchase the second book rights.
Groom refuse to sell it.

 

[TheKennedyMachine.]

I vaguely recall a Wizard magazine article announcing the Ultimates pre-9/11, however, Mark Millar mentioned a vastly different storyline compared to the one we received IOTL. It involved Tony Stark crash landing in China with the Chinese reverse engineering the Iron Man tech and equipping their army with it.

I believe it was this issue...

So, it’s possible we still get the MCU even without 9/11 — only difference being that Tony winds up in some China analogue country rather than Afghanistan

 

[SodaMan1996]

That said, the enemies in these episodes of political satires will probably be Saddam, Khomeini, Kim Jong-il, or Hugo Chavez.

Khomeini died in 1989.

Ali Khamenei has been the dictator or Iran since then.

 

[Gillan1220]

Khomeini died in 1989.

Ali Khamenei has been the dictator or Iran since then.

Oh right, I kinda forgot. Khamenei would still be the villain figure in a world with no 9/11 though.

 

[Mister Abbadon]

I'm thinking that a lot of trends that took until the mid-to-late 2010s to hit probably come around earlier.

The Iraq War belligerent douche era of country was a deeply phyrric victory for the genre despite briefly being mainstream. Between crap like (name any Toby Kieth song) and canceling the Dixie Chicks in the long run it cemented the idea that country was stupid music for stupid people. You could plausibly see country go through its rap crossover in the 2005-2009 time frame and actually being good in the early 2010s.

 

[TheKennedyMachine.]

I'm thinking that a lot of trends that took until the mid-to-late 2010s to hit probably come around earlier.

The Iraq War belligerent douche era of country was a deeply phyrric victory for the genre despite briefly being mainstream. Between crap like (name any Toby Kieth song) and canceling the Dixie Chicks in the long run it cemented the idea that country was stupid music for stupid people. You could plausibly see country go through its rap crossover in the 2005-2009 time frame and actually being good in the early 2010s.

It'll be fun to see the Dixie Chicks last longer.

 

[SodaMan1996]

Oh right, I kinda forgot. Khamenei would still be the villain figure in a world with no 9/11 though.

Definitely.

Plus, without the Iraq War, Saddam continues to be a villain figure in this alternate timeline.

 

[Lothal]

There exists a fun argument that the 90s ended in 2004, with the last vestiges of 90s/Y2K culture ending and giving way for fresh culture. I think 9/11 led to many elements of 90s/Y2K culture holding on, as people searched for normalcy and healing after the emotional scars of 9/11, the cultural production of society halted to a pre 9/11 state.

 

[JCC the Alt Historian]

Any satire involving Arab Terrorists such as South Park, Achmed The Dead Terrorist, American Dad, or Rucka Rucka Ali's parodies will simply not exist.

That said, the enemies in these episodes of political satires will probably be Saddam, Khomeini, Kim Jong-il, or Hugo Chavez.

Since Saddam Hussein already appeared on several episodes of South Park and the movie, we'd probably see him appear more often on the show.

 

[SodaMan1996]

Without 9/11, Monsters Inc. (released in November 2001) would have shown Harryhausen's being blown up instead being contained in a plasma dome.

Plus, the Friends episode "The One Where Rachels Tells Ross" (aired in October 2001) would have shown Chandler joking about airport security.

 

[Gillan1220]

Definitely.

Plus, without the Iraq War, Saddam continues to be a villain figure in this alternate timeline.

There exists a fun argument that the 90s ended in 2004, with the last vestiges of 90s/Y2K culture ending and giving way for fresh culture. I think 9/11 led to many elements of 90s/Y2K culture holding on, as people searched for normalcy and healing after the emotional scars of 9/11, the cultural production of society halted to a pre 9/11 state.

Some say the 90s ended around 2003-2004. Even after 9/11, vestiges of the 90s or Y2K aesthetic was still there. I still remember watching reruns of Nickelodeon's Teen Nick and Games and Sports segment. This would drastically change as by 2004, most of the GaS was already removed from the network.

Cartoon Network rebanding to the City Era was the best for me. Here in the Philippines, it took until 2005 for that. The City Era remained on air until August 31, 2008.

Since Saddam Hussein already appeared on several episodes of South Park and the movie, we'd probably see him appear more often on the show.

He'd appear as similar dictator-like figures such as the one in Metal Slug.

One episode in The Simpsons also had an assassination attempt on Saddam but Krusty the Clown ruined it.

I remember too there was this bumper in Nickelodeon after 9/11 but also before Iraq about a fictional character called Agent Green being deployed to Iraq to fight Saddam Hussein. Sadly, I could no longer find archive footage of this bumper.

Without 9/11, Monsters Inc. (released in November 2001) would have shown Harryhausen's being blown up instead being contained in a plasma dome.

Plus, the Friends episode "The One Where Rachels Tells Ross" (aired in October 2001) would have shown Chandler joking about airport security.

Any pop-culture involving the WTC, plane crashes, plane hijackings, airport security, and terrorism would go ahead instead of being cancelled or reshot.

 

[TickTock The Witch's Dead]

The song "Desert Rose" by Sting would remain popular. 9/11 meant that anything associated with Arab/Muslim culture was off-limits. And the Arab singers for the song refused to play it because the political environment was too toxic for them.