The sense with which Americans positioned themselves in relation to the rest of the world can easily be detected in films. The twin disaster had at last given Americans a new opportunity to define themselves in relation to an enemy. An Israeli film critic has rightly commented that many themes of American films relied on defining American culture and moral values in simple terms of good and evil in relation to an outside threat. (For example, when newspapers referred to the attack on the WTC as Pearl Harbor 2, did they think about the historical event or about the remake of it in a film that was screened a half year earlier?) The Second World War and Korea gave ample material for films in which American heroism could be celebrated. Only the Vietnam war succeeded to confuse these simple dichotomies of good and evil as the anti war movement gained strength and Hollywood had produced only one film about the war with John Wayne. The fall of the evil communist empire turned America into the only super power and this had the effect of the US finding it hard to define itself in relation to an external threat.
The threat of the invasion of America by Martians from outer space became
a popular theme in some films. In the nineties a growing number of films
had used the theme of international terrorism to define the vulnerability
of a society to an unknown elusive enemy. In all these films the implications
that America was the only super power also meant that it represented the
entire world—a fact that enabled the United States to organize a
coalition and claim that the attack on the 11th of September was an attack
against all of the free world.
As I stepped off the travel belt in the airport I searched for another information board. This reminded me of the pleasure I had taken in my childhood listening to the metal plates rotate with the names of the cities on them and the red lights indicating that it was time to board, before electronic signs were invented. The rattling sound of the turning metal flaps suggested the promise of an entire universe opening up before the child if only he could decide what destination to travel to. I had just passed the sign reading "Dublin" and listened carefully to the soft-spoken Irish accents of the waiting passengers, wondering what experiences and memories of New York they were taking back with them? Then I passed a boarding gate and discovered the following sign: "America." I was genuinely surprised. Was there such a destination? A city? A place outside this country by the same name? Could an American fly into America without ever having left it?
Then I realized there were more boarding gate signs with the word "America" on them in small lettering. They appeared so fragile in the middle of the dark board that framed them, recalling neon signs outside churches or funeral parlors in small American towns. But there was something much more uncanny and sad in the sight of those small red letters, spelling out the word "America": they were all beside unmanned counters and television sets that faced rows of empty seats, provoking the type of melancholy mood that often comes upon us while visiting tourist resorts off season. A trace of the feeling and quietude around ground zero came over me. I looked up toward one screen to search for more information about the flight. But just then, as I mistook the television set for an information screen, I saw a small plane flying in the sky, looking like the tiny iconic plane that indicates the direction of travel on the small monitors inside an airplane. It flew among the congested tips of the skyscrapers and went directly into the WTC for the umpteenth time—and I thought I had seen the last of this image when I left Manhattan. I was startled; even more so than on the first occasion when I saw the towers collapsing before my eyes. I quickly looked away from the television screen and found my gaze resting on the electronic board above the airline counter where the letters suddenly changed in perfect harmony to phrase for the first time a complete sentence: "GOD BLESS AMERICA."
The words could not bellow out their hollow message as their silence only reinforced the feeling of desolation and sadness in the almost empty halls of the reopened airport that had known finer days, with the bustling activity of aggressive self-assured footsteps rushing to make connections to many destinations at home and abroad. All that remained now were the ghosts in the guise of the electronic boards, the counters, the seats and the television sets that were showing once again that moment that had awoken the self-satisfied giant from its slumber and from its phantasy of being untouchable. A country that had only fought abroad and knew no invasions, had ironically been pierced by its own planes, by pilots that it trained, from inside, under its nose, below its belly, in the place it hurt most; at the symbol of male power and virility, only to find out that a few hijackers who were willing to die and to kill any one who tried to stop them had made an entire mockery of the American dream of being completely protected from "outsiders" by an umbrella shield against ballistic missiles.