Post 9/11 World and Harry Potter

[Stravo]

I was reading an article in Entertainment Weekly that was discussing JK Rowling and how the last few Harry Potter novels were dealing specifically with a post 9/11 world and making a statement about it.

What struck me after a moment of thought was that Rowling is British and as such can we really say that 9/11 had a direct effect on her so that she is writing in response to a "post 9/11 world" and let's examine that phrase itself - it seems to suggest that an attack that happened on American soil had a direct impact on global history and culture.

I know that as Americans we tend to be very egocentric and provincial in our views and if something happens here we expect it to reverberate throughout the rest of the world.

So my question is do we live in a "post 9/11 world" or is it something else? Is the current world climate and culture impacted by America's response to 9/11 more than the actual act itself for instance? Does 9/11 have the impact that this article suggests and if so why? What makes 9/11 different than other national tragedies like the Madrid train bombings, the London Subway bombings, the Christmas Tsunami, etc.

I'm particularly curious what non-Americans think of this idea of a world defined by an event that impacted primarily one country defining a global era. Also on a lesser note - do you agree that the last few Harry Potter novels are responses to 9/11 or the culture of a post 9/11 world?

[Illuminatus Primus]

There's also the fact that arguably our foreign policy response to the events of 9/11 is what has changed the world most for those abroad, and is therefore what they react to most strongly.

[SirNitram]

'Post 9/11' is the biggest load of steaming, putrified crap I've heard, frankly. It suggests so many blatantly wrong things.. That A-Q wasn't noticable until then(Wrong! It's who Clinton lobbed missiles at because he knew the problems of getting bogged down in a hunt. But that was 'just to cover up his affair'.. Which only the GOP and their media goons gave a fuck about.).. That America never suffered terrorism(Oklahoma City, duh).. And so forth. Oh, idiots whine about how America didn't realize such could happen to them, but that's more indicative of the idiocy of the Right Wing morons than anything else. Certainly very few New Yorkers were likely to buy into that crap, what with the WTC bombing still in living memory.

It represents, more than anything, a period of ridiculously overblown paranoia for the gains of a few.

[Darth Wong]

For the rest of the world, the "Post 9/11 world" is real, but it's sort of like the Terrible Twos for a parent. All of a sudden, we have to deal with a whiny, tantrum-throwing brat.

[K. A. Pital]

We live in a common world. American foreign policy has been the fist for quite a few years, and interventions are common. 9/11 was just an excuse for this, since facts have now surfaced that Iraq was a long-time goal of Bush and his cronies.

The "post 9/11" is a soundbite which means "in this world, only American domination under glorious conservatives can be sure to save you from Evil Terrorists". A lot of European states bought this bullshit; later they found out that it's bullshit indeed, and backed down from supporting the US in it's military adventurism and petty imperialist war. Well, too fucking bad. Who's left in the "coalition of the willing"? Spain? Poland and Australia who are moving out? Maybe the British, who also plan to move out? The US started acting like a lone retard with a gun and got what it rightly deserved - international rebuke and the rise of anti-American sentiment all over the world.

But they still use "post 9/11" as a mantra which excuses anything from torture to wiretapping, since the goal is resource domination, as in the old ages, not the vainglorious slogans Bush and Co throw around to the people's masses.

[DavidEC]

9/11 received 24-hour news coverage for a few days in Britain as well. 67 British citizens died compared to 52+4 bombers on 7/7.

But for this age I think its impact was especially visceral; looking back at the footage now on YouTube it still looks completely fucking unreal and film-like. The fact that it was actually nothing compared to any number of instances of suffering, in either scale or savagery, ranging from the Eastern Front to the Great Leap Forward to various natural disasters and so on, so forth is besides the point. It was a graphic shift in public and cultural perceptions, though as many have said before it's more like a major point on a long and continuing timeline if objectivity is invoked.

What you have to ask yourself is not whether it truly affected the world but whether it affected your imaginative paradigms, because Harry Potter and pop culture in general is the last thing you'd expect to make an Objective Analysis of Post-9/11 International Relations and American Foreign Policy, JK Rowling PhD.

Much as we'd like the world to take some rational perspective, the factors of 9/11 - spectacle, instant media coverage, and concentration of suffering, as opposed to the relatively unspectacular, isolated and spread-out (geographically and in time) suffering of Africa and co, foreign policy mistakes - make it much more powerful. I challenge anyone, unless they have a personal connection to either disaster, to say that they felt the Asian Tsunami more than 9/11, despite the difference in death toll. Ruined coastline and drowning children is beaten by skyscrapers collapsing, especially if it occurs in developed civilisation like NYC.

On this note I suggest you watch "The Siege", a film in which Arab Muslim terrorist cells terrorise NYC with IEDs... on buses, federal buildings and theatres. It seems positively quaint now, except for the scene where the suspect is tortured and executed by Bruce Willis's character.

[DavidEC]

PS I've never set foot in the United States.

[Gil Hamilton]

I think the thing is that with the London Subway bombings were that the British didn't make it a big thing. If you watched coverage of the bombings, you could see people shopping right outside the police cordone that afternoon. Yeah, it was a tragedy, but life goes on. Going by the descriptions I've heard, there was probably a London subway passanger out writing an angry letter about the subway service being slow that evening.

The difference there is not that 9/11 changed the world, but the US response to it did. US culture and politicians exploiting it made it Another Pearl Harbor and the event that changed the world forever. It was also the best thing to happen to Bush's career, since at that point he was a rapidly failing and mediocre one term president who was failing at his big initatives, such as his Social Security initative. It's not often a President is given a blank check to do whatever he wants without accountablity and that's what's changing the world.

[SirNitram]

Much as we'd like the world to take some rational perspective, the factors of 9/11 - spectacle, instant media coverage, and concentration of suffering, as opposed to the relatively unspectacular, isolated and spread-out (geographically and in time) suffering of Africa and co, foreign policy mistakes - make it much more powerful.

For you, maybe.

But then, most of us don't define the impact things have on our lives by what the media tells us to think, at least most of us on this board. Or we'd be devastated by each celebrity death as much as major disasters, and more than the loss of an entire city.

Hey, anyone remember that city? Yea, down on the Gulf Coast? Got hit by a storm while the government did nothing but play 'pass the buck'? Gosh, that couldn't be as important as the loss of two buildings. Never.

It's a never-ending source of eye-rolling for me how people who've never been to NYC treat that day, as compared to how those of us who've been near and had it effect our lives directly have. Especially the idiotic rural conservatives, for whom 9/11 is a battlecry, but New York Liberals are the enemy.

[Dahak]

I think most Europeans, and speaking as a German, were (sadly) far more used to terrorist groups on their soil in one form or another than US Americans. While "9/11" was a step-up in scale, it did not rock us as much as the USA. It looked like a sort of "culture shock" from over here.

I don't see me living in a "post-9/11" world. It just provided a useful tool for the more pro-active conservative politicians to get laws done that wash away civil rights.

[Tribun]

A post 9/11 world...

The sky is still blue.
The grass is still green.
The cows still give milk.

The only thing that actually HAD changed was that the shit-o-meter for the foreign politics of the U.S. had gone through the roof.

[Dartzap]

I think most Europeans, and speaking as a German, were (sadly) far more used to terrorist groups on their soil in one form or another than US Americans. While "9/11" was a step-up in scale, it did not rock us as much as the USA. It looked like a sort of "culture shock" from over here.

I don't see me living in a "post-9/11" world. It just provided a useful tool for the more pro-active conservative politicians to get laws done that wash away civil rights.

I'd have to agree with this assessment - despite the fact the majority of IRA bombings had more or less finished when I was young, practically every time I got on a damn train to Waterloo there was always a bloody bomb scare or something like that. So much so, that when there was one, everyone just grumbled and made some vague comment about "Here we go again"

The Germans have the RAF, we had the IRA (and now the damn home grown Muslim Extremists), Spain has Eta. Whilst the US had thankfully, until that time, not faced anything similar and the public were generally (and not unjustly) fucking shocked that something that horrific could occur on home soil. It certainly would be Culture Shock for anyone in such circumstances.

The fact the hysteria has lasted is merely because of the fact the US exports a rather large amount of media around the globe, and so we constantly reminded of the attacks.

[FSTargetDrone]

The fact the hysteria has lasted is merely because of the fact the US exports a rather large amount of media around the globe, and so we constantly reminded of the attacks.

And that media overload has influenced other countries to the point that we are also starting to see that various incidents such as the Madrid bombings and London bombings are being referred to by some of the locals by phrases such as "11-M" and "7/7." On the BBC, I saw a Mexican refer to the floods earlier this month in his country as "our 9/11."

[Darth Wong]

What you have to ask yourself is not whether it truly affected the world but whether it affected your imaginative paradigms ...

It didn't change mine at all. But I suppose that if you had some absurd, completely bullshit Candy-Coated Worldview before it happened, then it might have been a big shock to the system. To be honest, when it happened, I found it tragic but not surprising. America had spent decades engendering hatred overseas with their foreign policies; it was bound to come home sooner or later. I said as much that same week, much to the chagrin of certain American friends.

At least Americans are finally collectively aware that their lives might be affected by their government's foreign policies; they seemed woefully unaware of this before. Unfortunately, far too many Americans think that this means their government needs to be more belligerent.

[General Zod]

I challenge anyone, unless they have a personal connection to either disaster, to say that they felt the Asian Tsunami more than 9/11, despite the difference in death toll. Ruined coastline and drowning children is beaten by skyscrapers collapsing, especially if it occurs in developed civilisation like NYC.

I live in the midwest of the US, and I can safely say the impact on me for either one was virtually nil. It's not as if we've never had foreign attacks on US soil before. The only difference is this was a purely civilian target in a major metropolitan center as opposed to a military base. Then there's the Oklahoma City bombing, which was done by a US native and more comparable if somewhat smaller scale, etc.

[DavidEC]

It didn't change mine at all. But I suppose that if you had some absurd, completely bullshit Candy-Coated Worldview before it happened, then it might have been a big shock to the system. To be honest, when it happened, I found it tragic but not surprising.

Did you predict it beforehand? If not then that's unfair and a case of hindsight being 20/20 - my whole point is that it 9/11's power is not rational. I repeated it several times in fact.

For you, maybe.

But then, most of us don't define the impact things have on our lives by what the media tells us to think, at least most of us on this board. Or we'd be devastated by each celebrity death as much as major disasters, and more than the loss of an entire city.

I'm not asking you to take it personally - as in whether it has a real impact on you - but to give your visceral reaction to it.

Hey, anyone remember that city? Yea, down on the Gulf Coast? Got hit by a storm while the government did nothing but play 'pass the buck'? Gosh, that couldn't be as important as the loss of two buildings. Never.

You didn't answer my question - direct comparison between Tsunami and 9/11 - and in fact dodged the point. The whole idea is that 9/11's impact is not rationally justified but rather through its relative novelty and spectacle, which was 'condensable' into a widely disseminated media package. You switched on the TV and knew almost instantly roughly what happened; you cannot do the same with an analysis of Africa's problems, for example.

It's a never-ending source of eye-rolling for me how people who've never been to NYC treat that day, as compared to how those of us who've been near and had it effect our lives directly have. Especially the idiotic rural conservatives, for whom 9/11 is a battlecry, but New York Liberals are the enemy.

Do I look like an idiotic rural conservative to you?

I live in the midwest of the US, and I can safely say the impact on me for either one was virtually nil. It's not as if we've never had foreign attacks on US soil before. The only difference is this was a purely civilian target in a major metropolitan center as opposed to a military base. Then there's the Oklahoma City bombing, which was done by a US native and more comparable if somewhat smaller scale, etc.

Impact in what sense? The impact on my life was nil as well, I'm not saying it changed anything substantial. Impact on your life, or your political opinions, or your expectations of what art - say, I dunno, Harry Potter... - will comment on?

9/11 was a unique image for me and people my age at least - not only larger than Oklahoma by an order of magnitude, but broadcast live, in one of the most famous cities in the world.

[General Zod]

Impact in what sense? The impact on my life was nil as well, I'm not saying it changed anything substantial.

I challenge anyone, unless they have a personal connection to either disaster, to say that they felt the Asian Tsunami more than 9/11, despite the difference in death toll.

Then why mention this at all if its impact didn't change anything substantial?

mpact on your life, or your political opinions, or your expectations of what art - say, I dunno, Harry Potter... - will comment on?

Take your pick.

[Darth Wong]

It didn't change mine at all. But I suppose that if you had some absurd, completely bullshit Candy-Coated Worldview before it happened, then it might have been a big shock to the system. To be honest, when it happened, I found it tragic but not surprising.

Did you predict it beforehand?

Don't be a goddamned retard. You don't have to predict a specific attack in order to know that some kind of attack is inevitable. Hell, they already tried before, moron.

If not then that's unfair and a case of hindsight being 20/20

Blow me, dumbshit. It doesn't take hindsight to know that constantly antagonizing an entire region of the world is going to have repercussions sooner or later.

This is the same tripe that Bush apologists have been selling: that no one could have seen it coming. It's a lie, plain and simple. Around the world, many people were surprised not by the fact that the US was attacked, but by the fact that the attack was so successful.

[DavidEC]

Then why mention this at all if its impact didn't change anything substantial?

Because you can still might have an immediate reaction to it. Pick and choose any major news story with which you are not personally connected and apply the same logic to it.

Hugo Chavez being told to shut up may not change my life at all but I can still have a feeling of comedy about it.

"mpact on your life, or your political opinions, or your expectations of what art - say, I dunno, Harry Potter... - will comment on?"

Take your pick.

The last, cultural one, obviously. Has anyone forgotten the OP or what?

[General Zod]

Because you can still might have an immediate reaction to it. Pick and choose any major news story with which you are not personally connected and apply the same logic to it.

I generally tend to feel more sympathy for people in disasters that are completely outside of a nation's ability to control or prevent.

[DavidEC]

Blow me, dumbshit. It doesn't take hindsight to know that constantly antagonizing an entire region of the world is going to have repercussions sooner or later.

It does take hindsight - or the exceptional imagination of someone like those who did the attacks - to say that this sort of attack could happen, as in this.

a) On September 10th a mysterious man tells you a few Arab terrorists will detonate fertiliser truck bombs at rush hour, destroying large parts of buildings and killing hundreds.

b) On September 10th a mysterious man tells you 19 Arab terrorists will employ considerable coordination and planning to hijack four fuel-laden airliners and use them as missiles into major landmarks, two of which will then collapse on live TV, killing thousands.

The latter image is a post-9/11 image to me. Sorry if I don't have your imagination, or Osama's, or Rick Rescoria's.

Did you see a) or b) as inevitable?

Shallow as it sounds I am trying to explain the OP. Whether it is rationally justified or not, the idea of pre and post 9/11 exists and I am trying to explain it in terms of mass media and the visual impact of the attacks. What are you talking about Bush apologists for?

[DavidEC]

PS I meant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla

[DavidEC]

I generally tend to feel more sympathy for people in disasters that are completely outside of a nation's ability to control or prevent.

Where you thinking about the political causes ramifications of the attacks as soon as you saw the images?

[DavidEC]

*Were.

And indeed, did most people have that reaction, rationally justified or not?

[Darth Wong]

Blow me, dumbshit. It doesn't take hindsight to know that constantly antagonizing an entire region of the world is going to have repercussions sooner or later.

It does take hindsight - or the exceptional imagination of someone like those who did the attacks - to say that this sort of attack could happen, as in this.

Bullshit.

a) On September 10th a mysterious man tells you a few Arab terrorists will detonate fertiliser truck bombs at rush hour, destroying large parts of buildings and killing hundreds.

b) On September 10th a mysterious man tells you 19 Arab terrorists will employ considerable coordination and planning to hijack four fuel-laden airliners and use them as missiles into major landmarks, two of which will then collapse on live TV, killing thousands.

The latter image is a post-9/11 image to me. Sorry if I don't have your imagination, or Osama's, or Rick Rescoria's.

Did you see a) or b) as inevitable?

I NEVER said that I actually predicted a SPECIFIC attack, you goddamned idiot. Can't you fucking read? I said I wasn't surprised at all that Middle East terrorism, which we had been reading about for decades, would strike American soil sooner or later. You'd have to be a fucking retard to think America would be immune from this.