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Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America by Stacy Takacs. University Press of Kansas. 2012. $32.81 hardcover; $24.86 paper. 344 pages.
When I wrote Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism, the topic of 9/11 and American film had been relatively unexplored.1 Since the book's publication in 2009, however, numerous insightful works have taken up the subject. In Firestorm, I was mainly concerned with theatrical film and covered television but briefly in a single chapter that did not aim to be as comprehensive as those that explored feature film.
Stacy Takacs's Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America provides a wide-ranging and far more complete portrait of the influence of 9/11 and its aftermath on programming for television. She moves easily in her analysis from news to entertainment programming because she takes each category as containing elements of the other. She writes, "Rather than reimpose some false distinction between information and entertainment, nonfictional and fictional programming, my approach is to treat all program types as simultaneously entertaining and informative."2 News, documentary, and entertainment programming, then, are seen to perform many of the same strategic tasks in proposing, constructing, and conveying the various meanings of 9/11 to viewers.
The comprehensiveness of Terrorism TV is one of its virtues. The chapters examine news programming, shows that valorize counterterrorist agencies, entertainment programs with a military focus, and various examples of resistant or counterhegemonic programming. News coverage of the 9/11 attacks, Takacs writes, drew on the tropes of melodrama to mobilize the public to support a war of vengeance, and she demonstrates the ways this operated. The melodramatic framing functioned to make "militarism appear necessary and inevitable."3 The ongoing efforts of counterterrorist agencies, depicted in heroic terms in shows like Threat Matrix (ABC, 2003-2004), The Grid (TNT, 2004), The Agency (CBS, 2001-2003), Sleeper Cell (Showtime, 2005), and 24 (Fox, 2001-2010), "helped normalize the state of emergency and promote the acceptance of policies of surveillance, detention and interrogation that were fundamentally antidemocratic."4 "Militainment" formats-entertainment programs with strong military content-accompanied the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Takacs. Shows like JAG (CBS, 1995-2005), Over There (FX, 2005-2006), and Generation Kill (HBO, 2008) helped turn viewers into "armchair imperialists."
While these categories of programming, according to Takacs, worked to manufacture...