Flag Display Post-9/11: A Discourse on American Nationalism

Honorable Mention Winner of the 2008 William M. Jones Best Graduate Student Paper Award The emotional reaction to the September 11, 2001, attacks (hereafter referred to as 9/11) was varied. The anger, fears, and panic of Americans were caused by hijackers who managed to gain control of four U.S. airplanes and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The tragic events left over three thousand dead on that morning and sparked a crisis in the nation. Because the United States has experienced few incidents where attacks have occurred on its soil, 9/ 11 shocked the nation, and Americans reacted in myriad behaviors. In America post-9/11, more strangers conversed; citizens donated large sums of relief monies; more people signed up or changed career paths in order to be firefighters; some people arrogantly shot convenient store clerks because of an aggression and hatred towards anyone who appeared to be a "terrorist," most often those who appeared of Arab descent (several of the clerks were actually Sikhs, not Muslims). Some wore buttons that stated "I am an American Sikh" with an American flag under the caption, and underneath the flag, "God Bless America" (Robin 47). Many quickly hung fifty stars and thirteen stripes in their windows and on their porches. American flags were hung not only from windows and porches. They also appeared bound on automobile bumpers, tattooed on various body parts, as a wallpaper screen on cell phones, on all types of attire, from boxers and socks to winter coats, collectibles, pins, and many more. As background for television broadcasts and government speeches, flags were ubiquitous. Flag purchases skyrocketed among retailers. As Samuel P. Huntington, citing the New York Times, notes, "WalMart reportedly sold 116,000 flags on September 11th and 250,000 the next day, compared with 6,400 and 10,000 on the same days a year earlier" (1-2). Numerous companies and factories pumped out vast amounts of American flags as Americans hurried to stores and the Internet to purchase "Old Glory." Most Americans watched the 9/11 events unfold on television. In the following days and weeks Americans tuned in to get the latest on the events and aftermath. The news channels provided the means to see and hear more details of the 9/1 1 attacks, a photograph depicting the raising of the American flag by three firefighters over the rubble hours after the attacks, and President George W. Bush's speeches to the nation, Congress, and other government bodies in the world. Television provides images. Encoded in these images are ideologies. Thus, the television experience of 9/11 plunged the American mind into ideological narratives that could not be separated from the American flag: to be patriotic was to display the flag, and refusal to display the flag was unpatriotic. The ubiquitous influence of television helped construct the patriotic behavior of Americans. When someone says the word patriotism, most associate the ideology with the flag. Many people displayed the flag and believed others displayed the flag for patriotism, to be patriotic, and the love of the country. Throughout American history, the flag has been deployed in crucial and contested moments to function symbolically as a unifying national force. In addition, many cultural mythologies were encoded onto the flag. The mythologies reemerge post 9/1 1 and help construct the patriotic narrative Americans tell themselves about what happened the morning of September 11, 2001. This study offers explanations for the fixation on the flag and how it conflates the ideologies of patriotism and nationalism by deconstructing three post-9/11 cultural images: (1) an NBC "Special Report" following the fall of the Twin Towers, (2) Thomas E. Franklin's Ground Zero Spirit, and (3) President George W. Bush's September 20, 2001, speech to Congress. It is also relevant to note that these three images have different levels of fluidity in meaning for the flag: flexible in the NBC "Special Report"; semifluid in Ground Zero Spirit; and fixed in President Bush's address. …