The Terror Dream: Fear & Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
By Susan Faludi
Scribe Melbourne, 2007
351 pages, $35
Susan Faludi's new book, The Terror Dream, is part of the turning tide against US President George Bush's "war on terror" but hers is a limited view.
Best known for her 1991 book Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women, Faludi presents a feminist analysis of the media, popular culture and political life in the US post 9/11.
However, this time her feminism seems more limited than I remember from her earlier works. It fails to take into account the experience of race and class as it impacts on women's (and men's) experiences.
Faludi points out that women journalists, news announcers, academics and commentators were sidelined in the post 9/11 environment where heroes were recast as exclusively male. But she fails to address the exclusion of Muslims and Arab Americans — not just women were seen as potential traitors within.
Her analysis could have been wider and more far reaching. In this respect, fellow journalist Naomi Klein's work easily eclipses hers.
Faludi's writing talent, however, ensures The Terror Dream is an interesting read. Her reporting of the unnecessary deaths of New York firefighters who died in the northern Twin Tower because of old and failure-prone communication equipment reveals how much has been repressed from media presentations of 9/11.
Faludi's research also demonstrates the paucity of tributes to women involved in 9/11 rescue work or as part of the fightback on United Airlines Flight 93 (the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania). Women were cast as the victims who needed to be rescued.
This would be replayed over and over despite the lack of US female victims at home or abroad, as the truth of the "rescue" of injured soldier Jessica Lynch, unguarded and undergoing treatment in an Iraqi hospital in the first days of the Iraq war, revealed.
Faludi's exploration of the development of the political awakening of the "Jersey Girls" — a group of women whose husbands died in the World Trade Center — gives an insight into the vitriol that faced women who dared to speak out against the US war drive.
The Jersey Girls pieced together a sophisticated timeline of the missteps and mistakes made by their government in the lead-up to 9/11. For their crime of asking questions they were ridiculed and abused.
This section reminds me of the treatment of Natalie Maine from the Dixie Chicks as covered in the documentary Shut Up & Sing.
The second half of Faludi's book focuses on the myth making associated with the US war against Native Americans and the resultant captivity and rescue narratives that inhabit the white-American cultural landscape.
According to Faludi, humiliation lies concealed beneath a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms.
Yet Faludi, by concentrating only on gender roles, fails to explore other possible issues, such as those of land rights, invasion and racism, which have international parallels. I found this part of the book less interesting and overly long.
Despite these critiques, feminist analyses such as Faludi's contribute to our understanding of women's oppression in society today and her books analyse important facets of the US political landscape.