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Friday, Sep 2, 2011 11:30 PM UTC

Looking back at the cultural impact of 9/11

Slide show: Remembering the years after the attacks, when everything felt filtered through one September morning

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Topics: Friday Night Seitz, 9/11, Slide Shows, Movies, slideshow,

Looking back at the cultural impact of 9/11

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The second entry in our slide show series about pop culture after 9/11 covers three years, 2002-2004. It was a dense and lively period that saw movies, TV, music, literature and comics shifting out of a numb, somewhat disconnected state and becoming more reactive, then provocative, and by 2004 — an election year — combative.

The first installment of this series covered work that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the attacks; because so much of it was in production before the catastrophe, any associations between the work and recent events were likely to be coincidental, maybe more in the eye of the beholder than in the work itself. Starting in mid- to late 2002, though, we started to see more books, TV series, films and music that were meant as a response to the attacks: Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising,” for instance, and Spike Lee’s “The 25th Hour.” By the time 2004 rolled around, pop culture seemed to have moved past the “can’t we all just get along and grieve together?” stage. There was more work, and more statements, of an overtly political nature — work that was explicitly designed to provoke discussions, maybe even start fights. We’ve collected a few memorable examples here; we hope you’ll add your own picks to the Letters section.

The final installment of this series, covering 2005-2010, will run next Friday.

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  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

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  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

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  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

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  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

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  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

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  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

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  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

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  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

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  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

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  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

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Every Friday, Salon writer Matt Zoller Seitz sifts through beloved classics and obscure indies for a slide show that sheds light on the hidden connections and most fascinating moments in film and TV history.

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