I conducted an explorative content research in the database Lexis-Nexis®, categories "News/General News-Major newspapers," "News/Transcripts," "News/Wires," and "News/Non-English Language News." The time range selected was one month, between September 10, 2001 and October 10, 2001. Using as keywords "Independence Day" and "World Trade Center" I obtained almost one hundred results, considering only the references to the movie. The same research with "Fight Club" and "World Trade Center" as keywords produced barely 5 items. Further research could specify exact contexts where these reference appeared, taking into account, among many other potentially enlightening factors, the political orientation—progressive or conservative--of the media in which a reference appears.

Four major categories of intertextual references to Independence Day has emerged in my explorative content analysis: a) reports of eyewitnesses; b) commentaries on the relationship between fiction and reality; c) commentary on the role of Hollywood in the tragedy; d) mentions of Fox’s decision to cancel the airing of the movie. Please note the appendix includes only a small part of the almost two hundred results of the research. All emphases in the quotations are mine.

a) Reports of Eyewitnesses (“It was just like Independence Day”). This category includes news that focus on the description of the World Trade Center after the attack. They usually have an objective tone. Some examples:

• Ron Insana, reporting from the WTC during “NBC News Special Report: Attack on America” on NBC, 11 September 2001, stated: “. . . if you can envision again that scene in Independence Day, that--that terrifying alien movie that--that showed New York City exploding in--in--in a horrific fireball. Without the fire, that is exactly what the corridors in lower Manhattan looked like” (from the NBC News Transcripts);

• During “World News Tonight” on ABC, 12 September 2001, a report interviewed a eyewitness, employed in the American Express building, who described the terrorist attack in the following way: “We saw the plane flying through the air and it didn't even strike me that that plane is going to hit the other building until it did. When that second plane approached, it looked like Independence Day, you know, where they explode the bottom of Manhattan, it was the exact same thing;”

• A reportage for Agence France Press quoted a financial analyst, who was working in the World Trade Center in the moment of the attack: “It reminded me of Independence Day, when the spaceship destroyed a building;” [4]

• Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) – Europadienst reported the testimony of David Richards, a journalist: “What I saw, it was like Independence Day, with all these people running. These scenes from Independence Day did come to my mind.” [5]

b) Commentaries on the Relationship Between Fiction and Reality (“It may look like Independence Day, but remember: it is not”). This second category includes columns and commentaries, where the writers usually explain with a dramatic tone: “the reality has not been a movie.” Some examples:

• Robert Bianco, in his article “Attacks and chaos unfold on national TV” appeared on appeared on USA Today, 12 September 2001, commented:

Now that TV has shown us what mass murder and destruction truly look like, maybe we'll lose our taste for them in movies. Yet even though we knew what we were seeing was actually happening, it was almost impossible to believe. Watching the pictures coming out of New York and Washington of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Tuesday morning, your first thought may have been that it all seemed so oddly and sickly familiar -- an Independence Day come hideously to life (section Life, p. 1D);

• Ed Siegel (“In Hollywood style, the world changed before our eyes but spectacle captures only some of the devastation,”) wrote on the Boston Globe, 13 September 2001:

The analogies to Tom Clancy novels and Hollywood movies were everywhere as the media tried to make sense out of what happened to America on Tuesday. Clancy was even a guest on CNN talking about life imitating art, while scenes right out of ‘Independence Day’ and ‘Armageddon’ played behind him - the whoosh of smoke and debris rushing down a city street, not to mention the bombing of US landmarks in Hollywood style, the world changed before our eyes but spectacle captures only some of the devastation (Living, p. D1);

• Clarence Page, in his articled significantly entitled “This time it is not a movie,” appeared on The Chicago Tribune, 12 September 2001, wrote: