Appendix 1 reports only a small part of the plethora of references to Independence Day, which appeared in mainstream media in the United States and around the globe. I define these powerful and pervasive intertextual references as a “global narrative,” because they were disseminated in several contexts, languages, and media outlets in every corner of the world.

In the case of this global narrative, it is rather difficult to separate, as Ott and Walter (2000) suggested, an “interpretative practice” from “intentional textual strategy:” priority is in fact hard to establish, given the pervasiveness of the association in the media. From a postmodern viewpoint, disregarding this association would mean disregarding a significant component of the “sea of symbols” (Denzin 1991, p. vii), promoted and maintained by mass media, which represents for the postmodern audience a pervasive context to make sense of their experiences. In this respect the further question arises whether global narratives should have a special epistemic status in discussion of intertextuality.

The pervasiveness of intertextual reference to Independence Day suggests other implication, first of all relating to the obstruction of other alternative interpretations available in the symbolic sea that is popular culture. In the case of September 11th, Independence Day’s subtext offered not simply a convenient, but a specific ideological framework for the interpretation of the events. This is particularly evident after a comparison with another candidate movie: Fight Club. Both Independence Day and Fight Club (Appendix 2 includes two short synopses of the movies) have been commercially successful. Both movies contain analogous scenes of crumbling towers, which remind the WTC tragedy. Yet, the subtexts and treatment of these scenes are executed in radically different contexts. Given this, the emphasis on one association instead of another is not a mere, arbitrary choice, but it is an ideologically marked decision that promotes the hegemonic ascent of a specific interpretative framework for these the tragic events.

The three major categories of intertextuality as textual strategy outlined by Ott and Walter (2000), namely parodic allusion, creative appropriation, and self-reflexive reference, do not seem to include this alternative, hegemonic function of intertextuality. The following paragraphs contain a comparative analysis of the subtexts of the movies Independence Day and Fight Club with particular attention to the scene of falling towers, to show that the choice of connecting the disaster of the World Trade Center with Independence Day clearly reflects an interpretation of the events that is favored by political elites.

Movies And Falling Towers In Modern And Postmodern Worlds

Critical scholars have always been interested in mass culture phenomena. This attention stems from the concept of "culture industry," which was originally outlined by the members of the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972b; Marcuse 1964). The Frankfurt School did not criticize mass culture because of its populism, but on the contrary because of its anti-populist and oppressive connotations (Marcuse 1964). Their main thesis was that mass communication means was greatly contributing to the "leveling-down and standardization of men [and women]" (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972a, p. 236). The Frankfurt School identified general social tendencies behind mass culture phenomena, which contributed to the persistence of social injustice. Film, radio and magazines help promote a monopoly of thoughts through standardization and blind obedience to the social hierarchy (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972a).

Building on the seminal work of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, postmodern scholars have continued to pay great attention to cultural artifacts like movies. They see the contemporary world as immersed in a “visual, cinematic age [in which] the search for the meaning of the postmodernism moment is a study in looking” (Denzin 2001 p. viii). In a world of simulacra where the boundaries between reality and image are blurred (Baudrillard 1983), a new powerful group of “specialists of symbolic production” (Denzin 1991, p. 8) has emerged, formed by journalists, politicians, and advertisers. For this reason, visual artifacts cannot be only regarded as mere form of entertainment, but they act as “new vehicles for the production and reproduction of official ideology” (p. 8).

Postmodern theorists identify in cinema a primary ideological function of reinforcing the capitalist structure and values of American contemporary society. According to Boggs (2001),

media culture in general and Hollywood filmmaking in particular have emerged as one of the most important arenas for the diffusion of values, beliefs, attitudes, and myths that help shape popular consciousness across social landscape: work, the family, sexuality, politics, art, and so forth. From its inception film production, always a major part of the culture industry, embellished system-sustaining values such as patriotism, the work ethic, and puritanical views of sexuality and family life, generating strongly positive attitudes toward big business and government, all part of what Antonio Gramsci called ideological hegemony. (p. 353)

Upon a closer look, Hollywood production appears nonetheless more complex and less monolithic than the classic Frankfurt School concept of the culture industry assumed. In addition to the mainstream, “modernist” production of “blockbusters, spectacles, and hyper-commodified fare often comprised in mindless and formulaic action sequences, disjointed visual images, cartoonish characters, threadbare plots, and overpowering sound levels” (Boggs 2001, p. 354), Boggs identified, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, a “postmodern” format of cinema. Postmodern cinema possesses precise formal and ideological characteristics such as “thematic emphasis on chaos, intrigue, and paranoia, death of the hero, disjointed narrative structures, and embrace of dystopia” (p. 351). As Boggs (2001) explains,

within postmodernism the power of established myths, loyalties, and identities could no longer be merely assumed … Themes of alienation, conflict, rebellion, and mayhem now surfaced in movies of all genres, becoming visible even in such commercially successful pictures as The Godfather, Nashville, Annie Hall, Blade Runner, JFK, and Pulp Fiction. (p. 354)