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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 8, No. 10

Publication Date: October 25, 2021

DOI:10.14738/assrj.810.10982. Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The

Attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.

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Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the

Symbolic in the Attack on New York

The Attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th and Universal

Daze

José Maurício Saldanha Álvarez

Midia and Cultural Studies, Fluminense Federal University, Brazil

of Technology, Manchester, UK

ABSTRACT

This article examines the political participation of mythology and the imaginary

and the role of the history of unexpected events. It demonstrates how the attack on

the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, determined

contextualization of the event and 'resymbolization.' Working with the concept of

the state of cinema, this article explores the possibilities of constructing modern

culture which, based on the action of images and the movies. We analyze the North

American imperial discourse, and the fabrication of a picture of the world based on

a cinematographic, symbolic, and media process was - in the duel against the bad

guy, and the American hero.

Keywords: History, Power, Imagination, Mythology, Islamite, Cinema culture.

PROLOGUE

This essay was written in the emotional moments of September and October 2001 under the

attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Its initial version, presented in October, was published

in 2001, in Portuguese, in the Revista Poiesis of the Universidade Federal Fluminense, in Brazil.

The following year, an enlarged version also addressing the war in Afghanistan and Iraq favored

the notion of cinema wars, published in French in the magazine En-Quete, 13-16, 2002, by the

Université Cocody, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Now, when the tragic event turned ten years old, I

decided to republish it in English.

Our initial objective is to debate the issue of mythology, history, how the public received the

television images filtered by the cinema culture. The amazement and amazement that still takes

us today at the new and disturbing images revealed shows how the public was, and still is,

impacted by these images of never-ending catastrophe. Our essential theoretical support was

the works of Paul Virilio, whose inventive path fascinated us at the time of writing this essay.

This hastily written essay deals with the imaginary and the state of contemporary mythology.

As top American officials and hurried philosophers follow Fukyama touting the end of history,

it is surprising that she collided with the present in 2001. Coming from the century of the

expansion of Islam, she hit the West as a counter-crusade. September 11 was an aesthetic

spectacle, and all the spectators, like in the movies, were ecstatic, moved, and calm. Even

because to the spectators, nothing can happen. The awareness of future evil, far from spoiling

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Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The Attack on the Twin

Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.810.10982

the pleasure of the present, even intensified it. We employ Bodansky's definition of an adherent

of Islam who becomes a supporter of Jihad as Islamite.

INTRODUCTION

Today, dark and stormy clouds are rolling over the Middle East and rubbing their ominous

wings over Asia. Once again the war seems to renew its forces in this troubled region, taking

the particular form of the duel, an action very common in films of the North American western

genre. This offensive duplication wrote yet another scenario in the recent saga of media and

film wars. If, from what we will be able to note, September 11 corresponded to an unnamed

surprise, the new wars started by the mood of cinema, become announced chronicles, like what

happened during the duel which had a fixed time an adversary chosen on purpose. Now it will

be carried out on the "info-lanes".

The first and stealthy military operations in Afghanistan were presented to the public in the

form of nocturnal and spooky images in October 2001. Television showed North American

special troops digging through cubic houses and Afghan caves in search of it. omnipresent Bin

Laden, in one of the most complex operations of this war. The place where he is hiding,

moreover, seems to be located in the mythical Beriabad, from the movie "Sindbad, the Sailor",

a role played on screen by actor Douglas Fairbanks Junior. In this film, the Arab hero, who was

asked where the city in question was, replied that it was here, there, there, everywhere. All the

military panoply of high technology and high sophistication such as GPS, and the informational

warfgae, like its paotic vision, recurs to that enormous defensive fortresses that fall in front of

the shrewdness of some nomads. i In the North American news agency (or even the Echelon

System), or anty intelicenge agency at least succeeds in following in his footsteps. Usama Bin

Laden virtually disappeared and physically in his Beriabad-Afganistan.

As for the Taliban, after tasting the bitter taste of the B-52 air bombers, he disappeared,

returning to hiding places in the village and shelters inaccessible to all invaders. He made

himself as the Soviet invaders said, invisible. The result of the attack on the twin towers

produced an "event" that belongs to the 20th century as something indomitable. According to

Raymond Aron, the event made is in the sphere of the unpredictable and the unforeseen.ii

THE WAY OF MYTHOLOGY INTENT AND STORAGE OF TAGS

There is a relationship between the visual impact of 9/11 and mythology. We will dwell on

American mythology and its myths, such as the invulnerability of its territory, the remarkable

readiness of its armed forms to repel external aggressions and the enormous detection capacity

of its intelligence agencies. The shock to the credibility of their myths must be put in the context

of Greco-Roman mythology.

The latter always considered the deities to be tender beings. But it seems that, for the Greek

mythology, even the gods were mortal. And when they died the news aroused terror, stupor. It

would perhaps be important to begin with the path of Hellenic mythology, that inexhaustible

source and so rich in meaning, offered to modern man, and especially in this time of war.

Plutarch, in one of his books, tells the story of Epitherses, father of the speaker Emiliannus, who

took a boat trip to Italy. In the evening, when they landed on an island in the Aegean, the wind

stopped and the boat drifted to Paxoi Island. The majority of the passengers were still awake,

many of them drinking after supper, when suddenly a voice was heard from this island; it