No Jurisdiction: Legal, Political, and Aesthetic Disorder in Post-9/11 Genre Cinema

252 Pages·2022·1.749 MB·English

by  Fareed Ben-youssef

No Jurisdiction
RECENT TITLES
Tony Tracy, White Cottage, White House
Tom Conley, Action, Action, Action
Lindsay Coleman and Roberto Schaefer, editors, The Cinematographer’s Voice
Nolwenn Mingant, Hollywood Films in North Africa and the Middle East
†Charles Warren, edited by William Rothman and Joshua Schulze, Writ on Water
Jason Sperb, The Hard Sell of Paradise
William Rothman, The Holiday in His Eye
Brendan Hennessey, Luchino Visconti and the Alchemy of Adaptation
Alexander Sergeant, Encountering the Impossible
Erica Stein, Seeing Symphonically
George Toles, Curtains of Light
Neil Badmington, Perpetual Movement
Merrill Schleier, editor, Race and the Suburbs in American Film
Matthew Leggatt, editor, Was It Yesterday?
Homer B. Pettey, editor, Mind Reeling
Alexia Kannas, Giallo!
Bill Krohn, Letters from Hollywood
Alex Clayton, Funny How?
Niels Niessen, Miraculous Realism
Burke Hilsabeck, The Slapstick Camera
A complete listing of books in this series can be found online at www.sunypress.edu
No Jurisdiction
Legal, Political, and Aesthetic Disorder
in Post-9/11 Genre Cinema
•
Fareed Ben-Youssef
Cover Image: The post-9/11 superhero mourns: Batman (Christian Bale)
stands on the edge of ruins in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan,
Warner Bros., 2008). Courtesy PhotoFest New York.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2022 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Ben-Youssef, Fareed, 1987– author.
Title: No jurisdiction : legal, political, and aesthetic disorder in post-9/11
genre cinema / Fareed Ben-Youssef.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2022] | Series:
SUNY series, horizons of cinema | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021051933 | ISBN 9781438489278 (hardcover : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9781438489285 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001, in motion pictures. |
Motion pictures and the September 11 Terrorist Attacks. | Motion pictures
and the War on Terrorism, 2001–2009. | Film genres—United States. |
Motion pictures—Political aspects—United States—History—21st century.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.T46 B46 2022 | DDC
791.43/6552—dc23/eng/20220203
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021051933
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Hollywood at Ground Zero: Confessions of a
Conflicted Fan 1
1 “It was like a movie!”: Theorizing the Eerie Symmetries
of a War on Terror 23
2 On the Frontier between Hate and Empathy:
The Post-9/11 Border Western 49
3 Femmes Fatales as Torturers and Lost Detectives in a
Fragile City: Post-9/11 Noir 83
4 Soaring Above the Law: The Post-9/11 Superhero 127
5 “9/11 Transformed the Whole Planet, Not Just America!”:
The War on Terror’s Shadow across Global Law and Cinema 167
Notes 191
Works Cited 207
Index 221

Illustrations
I.1 The shadow of a plane about to crash into the World
Trade Center passes over a Zoolander (2001) billboard,
a metaphoric gesture to how 9/11’s shadow may fall over
all of Hollywood. World Trade Center. 11
1.1 The superhero stands between the neon of a noir motel
sign and the cowboy of the West depicted in a painting.
Logan. 34
1.2 Connecting two genre heroes: a superhero reading of his
exploits in glamorizing comics stands next to a TV, projecting
an image of a young fan of the western gunslinger Shane.
Logan. 36
2.1 The disillusioned FBI agent seen through infrared—drained
and hollowed out. Sicario. 63
2.2 The corpse of an undocumented Mexican echoes the
colors of the American flag: a bloody red, white, and blue.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. 65
2.3 Melquiades confronts his reflection in TV screens, less a
human than a phantom that lingers within the media.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. 66
2.4 A border patrol agent experiences the Other’s plight when
lassoed like cattle. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. 68
2.5 A femme fatale rides the frontier, personifying a world
where noir and the western are fused. The Counselor. 70
vii
viii Illustrations
2.6 An assassin prepares his decapitating death trap under a
billboard reading: “Aye have faith.” The words act as a
promise to the viewer that soon heads will roll.
The Counselor. 73
3.1 The word war breaks out of a speech bubble. In Sin City,
the women’s war cannot be contained. Frank Miller’s
Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #3, 2. 99
3.2 Before growing up to be a femme fatale, Callahan is
portrayed as a victim in a subordinated position to seemingly
gigantesque male captors. Sin City. 101
3.3 A femme fatale twirls her lasso on stage, ensnaring men
as easily as a cowgirl ensnares cattle. Sin City. 102
3.4 Wielding the law as a weapon. A femme fatale finds an
“opportunity to fake ignor[ance]” in a legal loophole,
uncovering a means to conceal the true depths of her
knowledge. Sin City. 103
3.5 The Wonder Women of Old Town. The leather bracelets
on the Wonder Woman analogue (not metal as typical)
metaphorically signify the femmes fatales’ power to disrupt
and destroy the patriarchy. Sin City. 107
3.6 Slamming the doors shut when Old Town becomes a prison
where, like Abu Ghraib, women are the jailers. A perpetrating
femininity emerges that can at once dismantle and obscure
patriarchal violence of the military. Sin City. 108
3.7 A real-world detective walks under the gun of his cinematic
analogue, Dirty Harry. The legally unbounded cinematic
hero may obliterate the public’s acceptance of bounded law
enforcement. Zodiac. 117
3.8 A hint toward the detective’s destructive obsession with
catching a mass-mediated killer. He comes into the
Zodiac Killer’s crosshairs. Zodiac. 119
3.9 (Above) Figure 3.10 (Below). The Zodiac Killer’s aim falls
upon a cartoonist, foreshadowing the civilian’s own obsession
with the case. Zodiac. 120
Illustrations ix
4.1 Black bodies hanging in an abandoned American city,
moments before Batman shatters the screen in distress.
This is one social reality even a superhero cannot face.
The Dark Knight Rises. 161
4.2 The Joker’s smiley face emerges when the state embraces
a vigilante. The supervillain’s ultimate victory comes
when the rule of law is indeed shown to be a joke.
The Dark Knight Rises. 163
5.1 A veteran watches the footage of his first kill. His
confrontation with his past perpetration means aiming
his own rifle at himself. Game Over. 175
5.2 The 9/11 attacks draw the film camera’s attention, panning
past the Belgian family playing together in the scene.
Unbeknownst to them, America’s trauma encroaches upon
and directs their lives. The Broken Circle Breakdown. 181
5.3 A terrorist hostage video overtakes the frame, signaling
China’s own entrance into the War on Terror. Wolf Warrior 2. 188
5.4 In outtakes over the end credits, the “Chinese superhero”
runs away from the foreign enemy. The nationalistic action
film exposes the position of China as the commanding force
in the War on Terror as nothing but theatrical bluster.
Wolf Warrior 2. 188