ESSAYS

Terrorism on film (Die Hard 4.0, WTC, United 93, Rendition, and other mythologies)

A part of the text is a paragraph from the book Discourse of Terrorism which will be published this year by AGM publishing house (Zagreb). Analyzing new films on terrorism, such as Die Hard 4.0, WTC, United 93, Rendition and others, the author is trying to show how terrorism is presented in the media after 9/11. The author uses the fact that WTC is made as a disaster film that quite resembles classical films about earthquakes and links it to a well-known Lisbon earthquake and thus gives another interpretation which both naturalizes terrorism and presents it as the emanation of some other-worldly and eternal Evil. Instead, terrorism should be understood not only as a consequence of some fanatical groups (terrorists in films are usually portrayed as lunatics praying to Allah) but as a consequence of an economic and social reality, i.e. as a tool we need to confront but that exists because there is obviously something wrong with the modern, western world.

Srećko Horvat