Written by lattice9.net
9/11 occupies a one-of-one place in the American consciousness. It was the single deadliest attack on US soil ever, and the catalyst for a forever war whose consequences the world continues to deal with. It is an enduring source of trauma, and a lasting aggravator of race relations. It changed flying forever.
But it has also become the punchline of endless internet memes, and a way to signal personal irreverence and political affiliation. In art and fashion, it is a cultural symbol and a provocative aesthetic. In fact, to a younger generation with no real memory of the day, 9/11 is mostly these things, and only on some secondary level an actual event that happened in the world.
There are few cultural symbols or social concepts as complex or dynamic as 9/11. On its 25th anniversary, we’re examining the evolving cultural significance of the tragedy, and tracing the changing social attitude towards its contested legacy.
CW: this article contains description and imagery of the 9/11 attacks. Reader discretion is advised.
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, major media declared irony dead. Comedians asked permission to tell jokes, and radio stations were told exactly what they could and could not play.
Twenty five years later, the Twin Towers are an evergreen meme format, appearing on tattoo flash sheets and edgy garments.
So, how did we go from this:
To this?:
The answer is in three distinct stages.
9/11 as Tragedy (2001 - 2004)
Proximity to (and vivid memory of) the attacks created a cultural attitude toward 9/11 that was sincere, reverent, and largely uncritical
9/11 as Conspiracy / Critique of Government (2005 - 2014)
Growing distance from the attacks, and continued geopolitical and social fallout from the government’s response to them, shifted cultural attitude toward critical humor and conspiracy
9/11 as Meme (2015 - present)
A rising generation without direct memory of 9/11 reappropriate the tragedy in discourse as a provocative symbol
9/11 as Tragedy (2001-2004)
In the aftermath of the attacks, flags lined every stoop in Brooklyn. Walmart sold 300,000 that week. Bush stood at O’hare airport and told the country to “get down to Disney World” in an attempt to restore confidence in flying, and prop up the economy.
Vanity Fair and TIME said it was the “the end of the age of irony.” Saturday Night Live came back with Rudy Giuliani doing the opening monologue, and Lorne Michaels asked “can we be funny?” The Onion suspended publication for two weeks, before returning with some earnest soft humor (punctuated with a graphic description of the attackers burning in hell).
Clear Channel, which regulates radio programming, sent stations a list of 160 songs it would “rather they not play.” Songs like “Free Fallin,’” “Walk Like an Egyptian,” and Rage Against the Machine’s entire discography. The twin towers were cut out of movies that hadn’t even came out yet. Airports changed forever with the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Eric Fischl’s Tumbling Woman (2001), a bronze statue of a falling figure, sparked immediate controversy and was ultimately removed from the Rockefeller Center where it had been installed to commemorate the attacks in 2002.
Sharon Paz’ Falling (2002) was pulled from the Jamaica Arts Exhibition following controversy and audience outcries.
It’s important to understand that, psychologically, America was primed for an end-of-days catastrophe. Y2K spent two years preparing the country and world for a technological apocalypse that never came. In many ways, 9/11 even looked like the disaster movies that Y2K inspired. (see Independence Day and Armageddon.)
In sum, the first chapter of 9/11 as a cultural symbol and social concept was defined by earnestness, a collective agreement about its tragic nature, and a sense that the world might be on the precipice of a darker age. Crucially, everyone participating in its discourse actually remembered it.
9/11 as Conspiracy / Critique of Government (2004-2014)
As the immediacy of 9/11 faded, it became easier to engage with it in a way that wasn’t strictly sincere. It also became easier to question the official narrative of the events. Beginning in 2004, and continuing into the mid 2010s, conspiracy theories and critical humor became increasingly visible in 9/11 discourse.
An important distinction: most of the 9/11 jokes in this era were critical of the governmental response to 9/11, not the tragedy itself. They also still directly referenced the actual event of 9/11.
Conspiracy movies began going viral in 2005, hosting taglines like:
“Bush did 9/11”
“Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” (a dog whistle for another inside-job theory)
“Dick Cheney made money off the Iraq war”
This attitude had a lot to do with the fact that the public was seeing the consequences of the rash military action prompted by the attacks. There was also an increasing acknowledgment that the rampant islamophobia 9/11 set off was textbook xenophobic panic, rather than a justified interest of national security.
(To be sure, general islamophobia continued to be rampant in this era, perhaps best exemplified in the public discourse by the 2010 controversy around an Islamic Community center two blocks from Ground Zero.)
Symbols like the Mission Accomplished banner George Bush displayed six weeks after the invasion of Iraq became a shorthand punchline for the whole war, which would go on for almost another decade.
This 2004 - 2014 era was also marked by the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. While this death temporarily restored public fervor around 9/11 (crowds went to ground zero chanting “USA”), it ultimately furthered the public’s psychological distance from the event.
Toward the end of this period, we begin to see 9/11-related discourse decouple from the event. The towers became a reaction image to unrelated content. “Never forget” became a caption you could use for anything on 4chan or Tumblr, from a discontinued TV show, to a viral pet’s passing.
‘Never forget’ is an ironically apt tagline for an era that can be understood on the whole as a gradual collective forgetting of the horror of 9/11, and a persistent distancing from the reality of its occurrence.
9/11 as Meme (2015-present)
In the mid 2010s, this new humorous and aesthetic leveraging of 9/11 came to dominate discourse. 9/11 jokes were no longer motivated by a critique of government policy. Usually, the had next to nothing to do with the actual event at all.
Pedaled online by young people who had no vivid memories of the attacks, this new era of 9/11 as symbol and concept was formed on social media. In spring 2015, “Bush did 9/11” took over Vine. (Results of this virality included students yelling the phrase in class, and 9/11 themed prom-posal posters.)
These terms were fully detached from the argument they seemed to make, and became catchphrases for edgy teenagers, just one meme among many, with no connection to conspiracy theories and truthers.
Where in the 2004-2014 era 9/11 humor was used to critique the governmental and social response to the attack, now the zone of humor has shifted. In its edgiest formulations, the purpose of a 9/11 joke is to make fun of the tragedy itself. More commonly, they have literally nothing to do it.
This has allowed 9/11 to be incorporated into art and fashion as a symbol in a way that was impossible before.
Fashion brand Enchanted Armour’s 9/11 denim puts a print of the explosion across both legs, one tower each. $150 retail, and they’ve resold at over $1,000. The backlash came and went, but the pants were laughed with, not at:
These are only a few examples. Anyone who has been on the internet in the last decade will no doubt be familiar with many more.
Of course, these eras bleed into one another. They also do not accurately represent the attitudes of individual people. The way that most individuals think of 9/11 is more static. (Today, for instance, millions will observe the anniversary with the solemn reverence that dominated the 9/11 as Tragedy era.)
What we are really witnessing in the evolving character of 9/11 as a cultural symbol is the successive dominance of different groups of people in the discourse.
In the first era, the discourse was dominated by those who witnessed the tragedy firsthand, or saw it live on television, and knew 9/11 as a terrible catastrophe.
The discourse of the second era was define by those fixated on what happened in response to 9/11, and knew the event as the catalyst for a misguided war and an intensification of racism.
In today’s era, the discourse belongs to those who were first exposed to 9/11 as a piece of internet humor. They know 9/11, first and foremost, as a meme.
The imagery of 9/11 unites these three eras and groups of people. But what that imagery references is entirely different.
The archival efforts of certain internet historians, such as the incredible X account 2001 Live, might do something to reintroduce younger generations to the pure horror and tragedy of the attacks. But it seems that we are continuing to trend away from the visceral memory, becoming every more distanced.
With another chapter of deluded military action in the Middle East upon us, however, the next 25 years of 9/11’s evolution as a cultural symbol could surprise us. Like so many cultural symbols, what it means will be determined on the internet.
