Hollywood at Ground Zero: Confessions of a Conflicted Fan
April 20, 2022 @ 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Hollywood at Ground Zero: Confessions of a Conflicted Fan
Wednesday, April 20, 7:30pm
Dodge Hall - Rm. 511
In this talk, Dr. Fareed Ben-Youssef offers a personal reflection on Hollywood blockbusters and genre films after 9/11, examining how they framed the shifting meanings of the War on Terror and its effects on American society. Beginning with his experience of a visit to the September 11 Memorial Museum, Dr. Ben-Youssef explores how Hollywood’s shadow also falls over Ground Zero and reflects on the need to look to allegorical representations of the attacks to truly sense their impact.
Speaker bio: Fareed Ben-Youssef is an Assistant Professor in Film & Media Studies at Texas Tech University. He earned his Ph.D. in Film and Media from the University of California, Berkeley. His forthcoming book, No Jurisdiction: Legal, Political, and Aesthetic Disorder in Post-9/11 Genre Cinema (SUNY Press, 2022) explores genre cinema’s multivalent capacity to both critique and normalize state violence.