The Return of the Paranoid Style

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Friday, March 07, 2008
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The always-insightful Ross Douthat writing in the April 2008 issue of The Atlantic about the return of the 1970s-style paranoid style in American entertainment:

"But it wasn't just the reassertion of America's usual frivolity that caused the 9/11 moment to be stillborn; it was the swiftness with which the Iraq War replaced the fall of the Twin Towers as this decade's cultural touchstone. It's Halliburton, Abu Ghraib, and the missing WMDs that have summoned up a cultural moment in which bin Laden is a tongue-in-cheek punch line for a zombie movie and the film industry's typical take on geopolitics traces all the world's evils to the machinations of a White Male enemy at home."

I've puzzled before over the way that the Iraq War seems to have trumped September 11 as a galvanizing factor. I think Douthat is right in pointing out that the Iraq War fits better into the overall narrative a lot of people already embrace. He writes "...the '70s revival isn't simply a case of supply responding to demand; it's also a case of Hollywood giving the audience what Hollywood wants to give it." If you don't subscribe to The Atlantic, it's worth hunting down on the newsstand for Douthat's article alone. It's an excellent bit of cultural commentary.