ARTICLE SUMMARY
Brian Gikunda
Diamond
ENC1101
09/17/2014
Assignment 1: Article Summary
In this article, James Aston and John Wallis talk about the apocalyptic movies that are released before and after the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. They look at the fears and Issues following the 9/11 attack such as: the war on terror, American imperialism and other issues that involve the environment. This articles looks at movies with the same patterns and show the same disaster and apocalyptic genre as the movies that are released in the late 1990s.
The point of doing this is to track the four theme elements that are seen in films that are released before and after the 9/11 attack and how they are transcoded into films. These four themes are: the representation of the apocalypse; the role of human agency; the role of religion; and the using of rhetorical means to provide commentary for the films. By doing this, we are saying that the movie representations of the apocalypse are much more pessimistic after the attack on 9/11, which I think shows that science fiction, or “sci-fi,” displays wider socio-political concerns and at the same time provides the expected awesome, audio-visual displays which can be labeled as entertainment.
Representations fall into two broad categories: direct and indirect. Direct representation has the benefit of being easy to evaluate and are used to solving. This article uses images that we associate with 9/11 to describe something traumatizing that happens and cause people to look for a reason to control and to look for something or someone to place blame. Before 9/11, films showed to have apocalyptic themes but in the end there is always some sort of solution. For example the article talks about the movie Armageddon and how the main character detonates the bomb exactly at the deadline, causing the asteroid to split in two and miss the earth saving everyone and everything. Looking post 9/11, we see that after a traumatic event, people’s
Diamond
ENC1101
09/17/2014
Assignment 1: Article Summary
In this article, James Aston and John Wallis talk about the apocalyptic movies that are released before and after the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. They look at the fears and Issues following the 9/11 attack such as: the war on terror, American imperialism and other issues that involve the environment. This articles looks at movies with the same patterns and show the same disaster and apocalyptic genre as the movies that are released in the late 1990s.
The point of doing this is to track the four theme elements that are seen in films that are released before and after the 9/11 attack and how they are transcoded into films. These four themes are: the representation of the apocalypse; the role of human agency; the role of religion; and the using of rhetorical means to provide commentary for the films. By doing this, we are saying that the movie representations of the apocalypse are much more pessimistic after the attack on 9/11, which I think shows that science fiction, or “sci-fi,” displays wider socio-political concerns and at the same time provides the expected awesome, audio-visual displays which can be labeled as entertainment.
Representations fall into two broad categories: direct and indirect. Direct representation has the benefit of being easy to evaluate and are used to solving. This article uses images that we associate with 9/11 to describe something traumatizing that happens and cause people to look for a reason to control and to look for something or someone to place blame. Before 9/11, films showed to have apocalyptic themes but in the end there is always some sort of solution. For example the article talks about the movie Armageddon and how the main character detonates the bomb exactly at the deadline, causing the asteroid to split in two and miss the earth saving everyone and everything. Looking post 9/11, we see that after a traumatic event, people’s