Recasting the Other in American Media

The fall of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the alliance between former Soviet bloc countries left the American media with a void. With the fall of America's largest ideological enemy, American media was also left without an imaginary enemy in films. Its not suprising that the Soviet Union would compromise the Other when we consider that the popular forms of mass media developed significantly during the era of the Cold War. However, after 1991 the search for the new Other was on, but it wouldn't take more that ten years to find exactly what they were looking for. After September 11, 2001 it became clear that America's new enemy would be the illusive terrorists, soon the television and film industries began constructing new stories and images that pitted the United States against Islamic fundamentalists.

The majority of the stories that depict terrorist as the primary enemies of the United States focus on a post-September 11 world. Examples of these include 24, James Bond: Casino Royale (a franchise that normally pitted the U.S. against communists and Russia), Iron Man, Sleeper Cell, The Grid, Vantage Point etc. However, the new enemy is not limited to newly written films and TV series but instead has allowed us to go back in time and do a rereading of the past. One film that finds terrorists in places where we hadn't bothered to look before is Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich which is based off of the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes by Black September terrorists.

While it is true that Black September was labeled a terrorist organization long before the events of the September 11 attacks, we should still question the reasoning behind the production of the film. It seems doubtful that interest in producing this movie would not have been as great had it not been for the September 11 attacks. Its production would not have been as likely if Islamic terrorist had not come to encompass the new Other, the anti-thesis of the United States and her allies in the west.

The film Munich shares many similar qualities with other post-9/11 films. Evelyn Alsultany documents some of these characteristics and strategies in her article Representing the War on Terror in TV Dramas. One of the most important of those strategies for this film is what Alsultany calls the “humanizing of terrorist characters.” Alsultany says that, “…post 9/11 terrorist characters are humanized by representing them in relation to their families, or by narrating a back story or motive” which is opposed to pre-9/11 terrorists that where one-dimensional all around bad guys. The protagonists in Munich are hired by the Israeli government to kill 11 members of the Black September organization involved in the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes. However, in the process they come into to contact members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). In a scene where the leader of the PLO and the protagonist of the movie have a conversation we are given a more humanizing view of the PLO. The leader of the PLO explains their motives and justifies their actions. He ends the conversation by saying that “Home is everything.”