Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Faculty of Arts
Department of Comparative Literature
1
The Spectacle of Terror
After “9/11 attacks”, the world becomes very familiar with the term, “terrorist” then ever.
“Terrorist” has been unconsciously linked with Muslim, Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bin
Laden, etc…but never refers to the western world. It is really an interesting question to ask,
who the terrorists are and why the traumatic event is named by a date.
Let’s put the question in context, which I will mainly focus on the events of and beyond “9/11
attacks”. A war in 21st century is different from previous ones. The vitualilty through
computer networks, media circulation, images and simulation make it different. The conflicts,
power relations are made through the domination and hegemony of images. “Violence” is no
longer only about atrocity or blood, but also humiliation, exhibition and the murder of reality.
We can investigate how the self-portrayal, media coverage of the “9/11 attacks”, Iraq war and
liberation to find out how the spectacle of terror is formed. At the same time, how the
audience of the war who does not experience it responding to the images and information.
They may become indifferent to wars and become fear to something unknown.
In this paper, I want to argue that any group of people can be named as terrorist by a powerful
force through media and their names will be equalized to the “terrorists”. However, the
spectacle can be reversal and have differing political effects. I will use U.S. as an example to
Many people indirectly experienced the 9/11 attack through comfortably witnessing distant
2
televised images which Fabiano called this as a “spectator sport” (1)1. The live broadcasting
showed 2 airplanes cracked into the twin towers of World Trade Center in New York until
they collapsed. The incident was ridiculous in real life that most of the people live in the
postwar era which Baudrillard called a period of “weak events” (Kellner 1)2 could not
anticipate and perceive such catastrophic event. Derrida used a French idiom saying that if
something marks a date in history; that is always what's most striking and unprecedented3. He
also commented on the naming of the event, “‘To mark a date in history’ presupposes, in any
case, that ‘something’ comes or happens for the first and last time, ‘something’ that we do not
yet really know how to identify, determine, recognize, or analyze but that should remain from
“9/11 attacks” is not a purely physical violence, an act of purely arbitrary, but a symbolic one.
The attack was carried out through symbolic strategy. Firstly, twin tower of World Trade
Center is a symbol of global capitalist market force. It embodies double-ness or twin-ness that
on one hand it represents the western hegemonic financial power; on the other hand, it
inhabits people from wide variety of nationalities of both the first world and the third world,
who benefited from globalization. Being one of the top powers in the world, U.S.’s World
Trade Center was cracked down by 2 airplanes abducted by several individuals with minimal
arms. It is an irony that the most sophisticated system failed to prevent and withstand a rather
1
Fabiano, Mark. “Terrorism and Its Metaphors”. The University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture
and the Arts. http://forum.llc.ed.ac.uk/issue2/fabiano.pdf
2
Kellner, Douglas. “Baudrillad, globalization and Terrorism: Some Comments on Recent Adventures of the
Image and Spectacle on the Occasion of baudrillard’s 75th Birthday”. UCLA Graduate School of Education
Information Studies. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/baudrillardglobalizationterror.pdf
3
Ibid.
4
“9/11 and Global Terrorism A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida”. The University of Chicago Press.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/derrida/derrida911.html
3
primitive attack by someone who used the “weapon” and “skill” provided from the system.
The attack is not merely a confrontation to the western world, but also a challenge to
globalization.
Secondly, the “terrorists” used airplanes, computer networks, and the media associated with
Western societies to produce a spectacle of terror. Nacos5 suggested the term “mass-mediated
terrorism” that media terrorism implies a political statement. He compared the media violence
with a criminal violence, saying that most people who committed brutal crimes did not
consider their deeds as a means to spread their propaganda or expect to reap publicity for their
acts in order to further a political agenda. The act of media terrorism is a means to win media
attention and news coverage. The target of the “terrorist” is not the victims, but the wider
audience. The “terrorism” is an act of communication. The central changes since 20th century
can be coined by Thomas Friedman’s notion of “the world is flat” 6 and MuLuhan’s vision of
media-based global village7. It is the main factor makes the mass-mediated terrorism work. In
the era of globalization, the geographic distance and national boundaries is collapsed and
companies collaborate both vertically and horizontally. It allows the transnational media to
emerge. Television, the internet, and the World Wide Web erase national boundaries, for
example the cable news network, CNN. The breaking news of “9/11 attacks” from these
transnational media spread through globally to monopolize the information and images of the
incident. It becomes a competition for visuality and discourse. The “terrorist” gained entrance
5
Nacos, Brigitte Lebens. Mass-mediate Terrorism: the Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and
Counterterrorism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. pp.14
6
Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat: a Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2006
7
Stuken, Marita. Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: an Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001. pp.317
4
Nacos, the Arab television network al-Arabiya, marginalized among mainstream national
media has frequently broadcasted audiotaped message from Osama bin Laden which was
prominently reported and commented on by the news media in the West. Although the
dominant discourse is still in hand of the mainstream national media, the role of Osama bin
Laden was upgraded to a global player by the frequent coverage of the western media noted
by German TV commentator Elmar Thevessen8. The “terrorists” and the presidents and their
The media visualize “terrorists” emphasizing their “Middle East” racist characteristics. It may
because more “Middle East” people engage in the revolt or just because the media exaggerate
the linkage between “terrorists” and “Middle East” people. They even reveal the background
and daily life of the “terrorists”, making them like a neighbor next door who put on mask to
disguise in the banality of American everyday life. It creates the fear that any inoffensive
individual can be a potential terrorist, and then anyone can be an unnoticed criminal. The
“Middle East” people are especially suspected for being a potential “terrorist”. The event
Baudrillard that due to the murder of the Real, the vanishing point of Reality. Something
disappears in the visibility9. The detail information given does not assure the preservation of
the Reality. Baudrillard pointed out that, “Murder of the image, crushed by overinformation,
8
Nacos, Brigitte Lebens. Mass-mediate Terrorism: the Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and
Counterterrorism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. pp.22
9
Baudrillard, Jean. “The Violence of the Image” The European Graduate School Media & Communications.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-violence-of-the-image.html
10
Ibid.
5
thing call “terrorist”, and “Middle East people” is a sign exchanging the meaning of
“terrorist”. “Middle East people” simulates “terrorist” and attest the existence of “terrorist”.
The original concept of “terrorist” disappears, and gigantic simulacrum appears, the
simulation is never again exchanging for what is real, “but exchanging in itself, in an
original or real, only copy of copy remains. In this logic, “Middle East people” become
simulacrum in itself embody “terrorist” while there is not such characteristic of “terrorist” but
The image of “Middle East” as the “terrorist” is made through the declaration of “war on
terrorism as immoral. It uses the old-fashioned American dream mind map of binary
opposition, coining “Middle East” as evil and America as good and the “war on terrorism” is
heroic. Baudrillard noted in the essay “the Spirit of terrorism” that “…the philosophy of
Enlightenment. We naively believe that the progress of the Good, it rises in all domains
not reduce Evil, nor vice-versa: they are both irreducible, and inextricable from each other. In
fact, Good could defeat Evil only by renouncing itself, as by appropriating a global power
allows America to announce its justness to declare a war. America is regarded as the civilized
nation to salvage or free the uncivilized part of the world. This is one interpretation for the
battle and so-called liberation of Iraq. It justified the war as a moral act, rather than another
11
Baudrillard, Jean. Poster, Mark Ed. “Simulacra and Simulations”. Selected Writings. Calif: Standford
University Press, 2001 pp. 173
12
Baudrillard, Jean. Bloul, Rachel Trans. “The Spirit of Terrorism” The European Graduate School Media &
Communications. 2 November 2001 http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-spirit-of-
terrorism.html
6
kind of terrorism. Baudrillard sees the behavior of denouncing the Other as ‘absolute Evil’ is
because of fear: a fear of the powers of death and destruction. The soilders were haunted by
the real that they sought refuge behind video screen. They preferred ‘the exile of the virtual,
The “war on terror” is similar to the Gulf War which is speculative, to the extent that we do
not see the real event. We only acknowledge how many civilians or soldiers died in the war,
sometime where Osama bin Laden had fled, sometime the balance sheets of expenditures on
the war by U.S government, sometimes the news of suicidal symptom of the American
soldiers through the media. The war is circulated with images, even the prison abuse of U.S.
solider is revealed by the discovery of quasi-pornographic images of the Abu Ghraib prison
abuse in Iraq by U.S. troops. According to Kellner, “The Abu Ghraib images were for
Baudrillard a parody of violence and the Iraq war itself in which the “reality show” of the “the
power”. There is no secrecy, everything must be seen, must be visible under the free media.
The prison, even the army and the whole society is still under Foucault’s theory of
panopticon, things were made visible to an external eye. The power of control is internalized,
and people are no more the victims of the image: they transform themselves into images 14.
The media are not only manipulated by the “terrorist” and political agency, the free media
A war in 21st century is different from previous ones. The ‘image technology’ project
navigation information onto screens of the aircrafts and send photo-information through the
13
Robins, Kerin. “Sights of War”, Into the Image. NY: Routledge, 1996 pp.69
14
Baudrillard, Jean. “The Violence of the Image” The European Graduate School Media & Communications.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-violence-of-the-image.html
7
spy satellites orbiting on the top of the enemy. The weapons are controlled in a distance with
increasing automation. The soldiers hit the targets by only pressing buttons like playing
computer games. The victims are inhumanized and psychologically invisible on the screens so
that the soldiers can split their mind to separate the knowledge from the pain of death.
“Killing must be done ‘at a distance’, through technological mediation, without the shock of
direct confrontation and violence; it is necessary to break the causal link between the firing
button and the deaths that follow” (Robins 64)15. They know that their weapons are
murderous, but they cannot feel the pain of death of the other side. This is why the “terrorist”
affords to sacrifice their life as the ends of the deed while the U.S. army cannot. The tiny
losses of the U.S. army comparing to Iraq army shows the ‘zero death’ phenomenon of U.S.
army that it always keeps a comparatively very tiny loss in the war by their distance killing
strategy. Death means differently for the soldiers and the “terrorist”. Besides, the high-tech
weapon system creates a sense of technological euphoria in wars such as the Vietnam War, the
Gulf War, as well as the Iraq War. I remember a shot in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket
(1987), a film about the Vietnam War, which shows a solider shooting at the civilian
ecstatically on the aircraft. Mike Nicols’s film, named Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) shows that
Wilson, a congressman acted by Tom Hanks acknowledges the war in Afghanistan by the TV
programme “60 Minutes”. This is another example of the mass-mediated virtual war shown in
by supporting them with high-tech weapons. When the Afghanistan fighters use the weapon
and hit the target, they show the same ecstasy as the U.S. solider in Full Metal Jacket. These
wars create a sense of moral debt for the U.S. people. People first believed they are rational
animals and can make reasoned judgments about rights and wrongs, but they failed. They
15
Robins, Kerin. “Sights of War”, Into the Image. Routledge NY, 1996 pp.64
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were bombarded by the repeating images in the hours of television watching. It is better to be
numb than informed. We may call these wars the ‘postmodern’ wars which exercise mass-
manipulative rhetoric and hyperreal techniques. People are collectively being indifference to
Baudrillard said, “The media promote the war, the war promotes the media” and “it allows us
to turn the world and the violence of the world into consumable substance” (236)16. Different
disastrous movies were made to comfort the traumatic experience and documentaries were
produced by American producer, for example Michael Moore has made a documentary called
“Fahrenheit 9/11” which has made a lot of profit. As mentioned before, it was new to
experience a real traumatic event through televised image. Some people even thought that
they were watching the promotion for one of several terrorism thrillers scheduled for release
later in the month. They began unable to distinguish life from movie or movie from live.
Nacos wrote that “Real terrorists had transformed Hollywood’s pseudoreality into an
unbearable reality, into real life. This time there was neither a happy ending to be enjoyed nor
an unhappy ending that the audience could forget quickly (44)17”. People’s wound caused
from the real catastrophe needs the healer of the media reality and the traumatic genre movies
“Terrorist” can mean very different things. It is obvious that every word does not have a
concrete and fixed definition but means differently across the history and cultures. The
perception of “terrorist” also varied a lot. It first appeared in the period of French revolution
16
Baudrillard, Jean. Poster, Mark Ed. “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place”. Selected Writings. Calif: Standford
University Press, 2001 pp. 236
17
Nacos, Brigitte Lebens. Mass-mediate Terrorism: the Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and
Counterterrorism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. pp.44
9
to describe one group who dominated another. “The word was originally applied to supporters
of the Jacobins in the French Revolution, who advocated repression and violence in pursuit of
democracy and equality”18. If we use this reading to perceive the “terrorist” coined nowadays,
it will turn out to be a mockery. It is irony that when it put into the current context, the power
position of “terrorist” reversed that it becomes the oppressed one. However, the are different
type of terrorism in the world, for examples, Russian revolutionary terrorism, left-wing
terrorism in Italy, west German left-wing terrorism, political violence in argentina, the
revolutionary terrorism of Peru, terrorism in India, terrorism in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, all
Even when it is put into current context, when violence act is the basic element of “terrorist”
regardless its function and aim. Violence is the act dangerous to human life with any number
of weapons, foreign or domestic. Then the official definitions of terrorism are virtually the
same as the definitions of counter-terrorism. The U.S. intents to use chemical and biological
weapons, aimed to deter and punish terrorist acts in the name of the ‘war on terrorism’ 19. But
the official will not say that it committed to terrorism. In both ‘9/11 attacks’ and ‘war on
terrorism’, violent acts are exerted by two different entities having different names to the
deliberately set off car bombs to kill civilians can be called ‘terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters’
noted by the slogan that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter” (Nacos
25)20. Therefore, it is the matter of power struggle. When the U.S. is financially and politically
18
Fabiano, Mark. “Terrorism and Its Metaphors”. The University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of
Culture and the Arts. http://forum.llc.ed.ac.uk/issue2/fabiano.pdf
19
Ibid.
20
Nacos, Brigitte Lebens. Mass-mediate Terrorism: the Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and
Counterterrorism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. pp.25
10
stronger, it holds the power to define. It is that which haunts every global order and every
hegemonic domination. If Islam dominated the world, terrorism would fight against it. For it
If we recycle the example of simulacrum in previous paragraph and replace the sign of
“Middle East People” by the U.S., we will have a new set of gigantic simulacrum. The U.S.
becomes a new sign exchanging the meaning of “terrorist”. The U.S. simulates “terrorist” and
attests the existence of “terrorist”. The original concept of “terrorist” disappears, and gigantic
simulacrum appears, the simulation is never again exchanging for what is real, “but
(Baudrillard 173)22”. There is no original or real, only copy of copy remains. In this logic, the
U.S. become simulacrum in itself embody “terrorist” while there is not such characteristic of
“terrorist” but the signature of the U.S. Moreover, we have analyzed that the image of
“terrorist” is reinforced by the mass-mediated terrorism. The hegemonic power of the U.S.
singular ideology conquers the media upon the thinking of terror. If “Middle East” become
the dominated power, it can reshape the definition of terror. Lastly, as “terrorist” first related
to the revolution for democracy, the U.S. announcement of liberation of Iraq in the ‘war on
terrorism’ can be seen as a kind of ‘terrorism’. When revolution can be a positive term, why
____________________________References:__________________________
“9/11 and Global Terrorism A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida”. The University of Chicago
21
Baudrillard, Jean. Bloul, Rachel Trans. “The Spirit of Terrorism” The European Graduate School Media &
Communications. 2 November 2001
22
Baudrillard, Jean. Poster, Mark Ed. “Simulacra and Simulations”. Selected Writings. Calif: Standford
University Press, 2001 pp. 173
11
Press. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/derrida/derrida911.html
Baudrillard, Jean. Poster, Mark Ed. “Simulacra and Simulations”. Selected Writings. Calif:
Standford University Press, 2001 pp. 173
Baudrillard, Jean. Poster, Mark Ed. “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place”. Selected Writings.
Calif: Standford University Press, 2001 pp. 236
Baudrillard, Jean. Bloul, Rachel Trans. “The Spirit of Terrorism” The European Graduate
School Media & Communications. 2 November 2001
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-spirit-of-terrorism.html
Baudrillard, Jean. “The Violence of the Image” The European Graduate School Media &
Communications. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-violence-
of-the-image.html
Fabiano, Mark. “Terrorism and Its Metaphors”. The University of Edinburgh Postgraduate
Journal of Culture and the Arts. http://forum.llc.ed.ac.uk/issue2/fabiano.pdf
Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat: a Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006
Nacos, Brigitte Lebens. Mass-mediate Terrorism: the Central Role of the Media in Terrorism
and Counterterrorism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
Robins, Kerin. “Sights of War”, Into the Image. NY: Routledge, 1996
Stuken, Marita. Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: an Introduction to Visual Culture. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
12