NEWS: Book Review: The Terror Dream

CULTURE: Book Review: The Terror Dream

I have a confession which will please some and dismay others.

When I first read reviews of Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, I thought, "Oh dear, 9/11 is a feminist issue? That's taking it too far."

Reader, I was wrong.

What's at stake in this book isn't the argument, as the reviews I read seemed to be saying, that 9/11 in and of itself was a feminist issue. That's not what Faludi's saying. She takes pains in her introduction to point out that she's looking, not at the event itself: "This is not a book about what September 11 'did" to women or men." What she's examining are our *reactions* to it, specifically the way "we were . . . enlisted in a symbolic war at home." Faludi argues--and it's a provocative argument, even to this feminist--that that symbolic war was largely (if not exclusively) about an American myth of invincibility that is, and has always been, deeply gendered.

Taken straight, that argument seems both insufficient (oh, come on--gender matters, but it's not at the center of *American* identity any more than any other nation!) and obvious (well duh, of *course* American invincibility is all about cowboys and frontiersmen). What's great about this book is the way it marshals a lot of specific, thought-provoking evidence in support of that argument. In the end, I think the project Faludi's aiming at is, by definition, too huge for a single book to contain, but she does a lot to make open-minded, and even reluctant, readers start thinking, hard.

The Terror Dream does three things. First, it collects a fair bit of evidence that post-9/11 popular discourse *about* 9/11 (and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) was weirdly focused on gender. From the director of Idaho Chooses Life, who said, bizarrely, that

(cited on page 23) to Sarah Wildman's intellectually bankrupt implication, in The New Republic, that feminists were ignorant of (or silent about) the oppression of women in some Islamic countries (page 42), Faludi collects a number of completely wacko statements linking 9/11 to feminism--not by feminists, but by anti-feminists. The ludicrous argument that 9/11 was a feminist issue isn't ours; it's theirs.

Faludi goes on to detail a number of really heartrending, infuriating, and frankly amazing examples of how this ridiculous meme distorted the news, and our reactions to the event. There's an upsetting chapter about how all the fuss over the "heroes" of 9/11, the NYFD, were in fact some of the Twin Towers' most pitiable victims:

Even worse was the radio failure that kept rescue workers inside the second tower from communicating rescue plans, knowing the first tower had collapsed or hearing the fire chief's order to evacuate before the second tower went down--a problem that had been known to the city since the 1993 bombing of the WTC and that was repressed, after 9/11, for three and a half years by Giuliani's office even in the face of protests by the family members of dead rescue workers. (God I hope the Dems will hammer on this in the general election if Giuliani is the Republican candidate.)

There's a chapter about the focus on 9/11 widows that talks about how widowers were marginalized, apolitical women or those supportive of the War on Terror were trotted out in front of the media, and the Jersey Girls--a group of stay-home moms led by a former Republican who, after her and their husbands died in 9/11, became vocal critics of the Bush administration's failures leading up to and after 9/11 and helped form the 9/11 Commission--were praised by Congress but dismissed by the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, and (of course) the assholes on Free Republic and other conservitive jackoff sites. By this point of the book, though, those assholes don't seem so marginal any more; they're merely saying, in less decorous language, the same things that Faludi's been documenting from more mainstream sources for over 100 pages.

That said, the chapter on widows is the weakest, because Faludi seems to tiptoe around the story of Lisa Beamer, the widow of one Todd Beamer, who was broadly considered the hero who had led the passenger rebellion on Flight 93. In an earlier chapter, Faludi points out the fact that no one really knows what happened on that flight, since there were no survivors, and reminds us of the way that the male passengers on that flight were lionized as heroes while little attention was paid, for example, to the fact that mothers and wives encouraged the men to attack and that apparently two flight attendants boiled hot water they intended to use to scald the hijackers. (Faludi also mentions, in passing, that one of the attendants, CeeCee Lyles, was "a former police officer trained in hand-to-hand combat", something I don't remember having heard about before reading this book.) Because she's doing cultural criticism rather than conventional history, Faludi isn't making an argument one way or the other about Lisa Beamer's actions or intent--but the question kind of hangs in the air. What Faludi thinks of Beamer shouldn't matter, but the argument comes across, at this point, as somewhat equivocal because she doesn't tell us.

In a way, though, that problem highlights the book's strength; one of the reasons we wonder is because we're aware throughout of Faludi's presence as a woman and a feminist, and so we want to judge the merits of her argument by assessing her character in terms of whether she's sympathetic (or not) to the real women she talks about. In other words, she's right: we *are* preoccupied with gender. The chapters about Jessica Lynch and the last election's "Security Moms" reminded me, anyway, of how easily I bought into gender norms when it came to those two stories. I thought the Security Moms were nuts, but it never occurred to me that they didn't exist. Faludi shows that the argument that married women voters were preoccupied with the war on terror was bullshit.

The Lynch story I'm more familiar with, so that in that chapter I could see most clearly the way that Faludi's analysis was working: she points out, again, the ways that Jessica Lynch was first lionized as a hero, then cast as a damsel in distress (complete with staged rescue), and how the rumors that Lynch had been (or could have been!) raped worked to reinforce the "dark threatening male vs. fair endangered woman" stereotype. Faludi even points out the way that mainstream press neglect of Lori Piestawa (who was, in Lynch's words, "the real hero" worked in recasting Lynch as the damsel who needed to be saved by men.

(I can't resist throwing in a tidbit about Lynch's and Piestawa's relationship--in Janauary of this year,

Piestawa is Hopi, not Sioux, so the anecdote doesn't entirely counterbalance the racism of the way Lynch's story was told, but it's a really touching story on a more personal level.)

The last third of the book, I thought, should have come first, evidence-wise; but undoubtedly reorganizing the book to postpone the current events angle would have severely affected readership and sales. That said, make sure and read the last three chapters, which give a good thumbnail sketch of early American Indian captivity narratives, Indian wars and witch trials, pioneer stories and the glorification of Daniel Boone, all by way of demonstrating that the "(white) male protector" aspect of American security (and its correlates, the damsel in distress and the threatening Indian/black rapist) is a well-established trope in American mythology.

To Americanists, historians, and much of the English department, this is old news; if I'd thought about it when I first heard of Faludi's book, I would probably have been less skeptical. But presumably the general audience to whom she's really writing aren't familiar with this stuff, and beginning with it might have made the founding claim that gender matters to "America" easier for most readers to swallow. In a sense, The Terror Dream has dessert first, by talking about contemporary culture while postponing the meat-and-potatoes argument about history. Then again, Americans might be said, like children, to be impatient and fond of sweets. In any case, Faludi's book does a pretty good job of demonstrating that we're not entirely past the Oedipal stage.

Interesting review. Thank you. I may pick it up. I will certainly read it.

I thought this book was fascinating, and this is by far the best review I've read of it. I found it became increasingly unnerving to see how so many issues are corkscrewed around, by, and through 9/11, until it becomes a labor unto itself just to sort them out and understand where people stand.

Very well written thanks for the review

Great review, I think I might have to pick this up.

Didn't this used to be called "Suicide Bookshelf"?

the only thing in this i have enough knowledge to talk about is the PFC Lynch rescue. she was made into an icon by the media, but in the end, what happened to her was quite largely her own damn fault. no, she didnt direct that convoy, and could not have avoided the ambush, but for the gods' sake, could she at least have kept her weapon clean? then it wouldnt have jammed, and she would have actually been able to fight back. The Army made her a war hero for propaganda, the media took it and ran. it came out later that she didnt go down fighting as originally said, but that she failed to properly take care of essential equipment and was captured because of it. sure, maybe they did turn her into a damsel in distress, needing to be saved, but in reality, she did. she fucked up bigtime, and became a helpless person who needed rescue, her gender really doesnt change that. her gender is simply a fact. turning her into a symbol of male bias is as wrong as turning her into a hero was.

Why would she have to do something that everyone else had to do daily, if not hourly? I fondly remember sitting around the vast nothingness and bullshitting and cleaning our weapons multiple times a day. It's the same kind of things that the female cooks we had in our battalion tried to pull though. We'd go on KP and they'd try to have us carry the heavy boxes and go fill the 5 gallon water jugs at a faraway water point, because they were "girls" and couldn't do it, but it was part of their job. Yet, anytime anyone tried to deny them something because of being female, they were all up in arms about it. They never understood that equality goes both ways. We can give you the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities, but you have to do the same work then.

Hilarious reference. I actually LOL'ed.

The book review is really good, and it's timely, too. I think 2008 will carry with it much debate over the similarities and differences between feminist issues, race issues, and the administration's "War on Terror." I think that's just one facet of why the '08 presidential race will be interesting, though. I'll have to read up on this before the primaries.

dear bitchin - and the point is............?¿.........white male bashing yes?........or¿.....
let's roll...... baby

Someone explain that. ^

Es un... ¿misterio?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?

I very much want to read this book.

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