The Selling of 9/11: How a National Tragedy Became a Commodity

The Selling of 9/11: How a National Tragedy Became a Commodity Dana Heller, Editor. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

In the 1960s and 1970s advanced capitalism adjusted to its critics by repackaging rebellion and selling it to erstwhile anticapitalists. Indeed, the plasticity of American capital often places selfreplication above considerations of politics and morality. The latest case in point is the commoditization of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. In a new collection edited by Old Dominion English professor Dana Heller, 9/11 remains a symbol of national anguish, but also the place where the Wailing Wall meets Wal-Mart.

Heller and the book's thirteen contributors take pains to be respectful of the genuine grief and tragedy associated with 9/11, but they also make it clear that America has so inexorably become, in Stewart Ewen's words, a "consumer democracy," that not even 9/11 could long close down the marketplace. Lynn Spigel, for instance, traces TV's role in restoring "normalcy," that term being...