“Life in the Apocalypse: Projecting Anxiety in Post-9/11 Television Fiction”  

Caroline Kovacs          

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Gender/Cultural Studies  

 

Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts  1 May 2015  

       

The author grants Simmons College permission to include this thesis in its library and to make it available to the academic community for scholarly purposes.  

   

© 2015 Caroline Kovacs  

 

 

 

 

Advisor: Stephen Ortega  

Signature:  

Date:  

 

GCS Program Director: Jo Trigilio  

Signature:  

Date:  

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     Introduction  

“We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies:

unremitting banality and inconceivable terror.”  

—Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster”  

Television programming on the morning of September 11, 2001 was abruptly suspended in order

to broadcast the live catastrophic events happening in New York City. The images of the

hijacked planes crashing through the World Trade Center buildings and the vertical implosion of

each tower repeated on infinite loop on multiple networks. As the events of the day unfolded,

Americans watched their televisions transfixed by this unimaginable violence, and news outlets

reported without a certain narrative of what had happened and how this type of destructive

violence could happen (Doane 253-255; Klein 458). The iteration that the scenes of catastrophe

amidst the iconography of New York were “just like a movie” illustrated that as a televised

spectacle of violence, 9/111 was incomparable to previous cultural and physical traumas

(Redfield 68; Muntean 51).  

This paper reads the television shows Lost, Jericho, and Battlestar Galactica2 as

exemplary texts of the apocalyptic genre and discusses how these narratives address post-9/11

                                                                                                               1  In  his  essay  “Virtual  Trauma:  The  Idiom  of  9/11,”  Marc  Redfield’s  discusses  the  different  ways  we  refer  to  the  event  as  “9/11”  or  “September  11th”  and  how  these  phrases  represent  the  catastrophe.  The  removal  of  the  year  from  the  name  situates  the  moment  in  the  past  as  a  turning  point  in  which  all  time  since  that  moment  has  been  defined.  We  are  living  in  the  aftermath  of  the  event  and  cannot  be  removed  from  its  specter  (58-­‐59).    2  I  have  chosen  these  three  television  programs  for  several  reasons.  These  three  programs  were  produced  several  years  after  9/11  and  have  completed  their  runs.  These  programs  fall  into  the  science  fiction  genre,  which,  even  after  the  adoption  of  apocalyptic  narratives  into  mainstream  popularity,  remains  somewhat  marginalized.  Another  significant  factor  in  choosing  these  three  programs  was  their  cult  status,  as  they  had  dedicated  fan  bases  during  their  original  runs  and  remain  a  part  of  the  conversation  about  apocalyptic  narratives.  

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cultural anxiety and the role of fiction in a society moving toward catastrophe. First, I explain

why I identify 9/11 as the apocalyptic event as opposed to other millennial3 traumas. Next, I

discuss the themes present in these television programs that respond to 9/11 and how in post-

9/11 television fiction, the banal, anxiety, and repetition reveal the state of things in a world

marred by disaster. These programs focus on the disruption of everyday routine and the mundane

over the spectacle of disaster that is the apocalyptic event. In conjunction with this, I talk about

the importance of time and duration and how they create the anxiety of the apocalyptic scenario.

Finally, I explore the ways that the apocalyptic genre after 9/11 questions the tenuousness

between reality and fiction in our changing relationship with television. Fiction and fantasy, in

the post-9/11 apocalyptic genre, do not so much create a space to alleviate contemporary fears

about political, economic, and social collapse as they reveal the perpetual state of anxiety that is

a reality in a world of cyclical cultural trauma.  

 

Identifying 9/11 as the Apocalyptic Catalyst  

In the United States, the tumultuous decade around the turn of the millennium was rife

with massive sociocultural traumas4. The lethal combination of technology, politics, and

globalism, which contribute to the expanding social gaps between the advantaged and

disadvantaged, created an era of constant social unrest ("The Imagination of Disaster" 42;                                                                                                                3Nicole  Birch-­‐Bayley  expands  the  definition  of  term  “millennial”  to  not  only  identify  the  time  following  the  turn  of  the  millennium  but  also  to  specifically  include  the  cultural  influence  of  9/11  (1137).  4  Other  moments  could  certainly  be  considered  candidates  for  the  apocalyptic  catalyst.  The  Y2K  scare  leading  up  to  the  new  millennium  inaugurated  the  century  of  cultural  trauma  and  set  us  up  to  be  in  constant  fear  of  the  next  disaster.  In  1999,  the  fear  of  technological  collapse  bled  into  daily  life  causing  increasing  panic  and  anxiety.  Americans  swarmed  grocery  stores  to  stock  up  on  water,  non-­‐perishable  food,  and  batteries  to  prepare  for  massive  technological  failure.  In  2005,  the  environmental  disaster  caused  by  Hurricane  Katrina  marked  another  massive  trauma  in  the  United  States.  The  literal  collapse  of  the  levy  system  in  New  Orleans  and  in  the  American  South,  uncontrollable  flooding,  followed  by  the  inadequate  government  response,  turned  a  regional  disaster  into  a  national  outrage  about  race  and  class  in  America.  The  complete  failure  of  FEMA  and  the  horrific  spectacle  of  the  Superdome  made  Hurricane  Katrina  one  of  the  most  significant  environmental  disasters  and  government  failures  in  recent  history.  

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Baudrillard 404-405). Cultural trauma exposes the lacks and fractures in society. In these

moments of rupture, trauma shifts the collective thinking of a society, reorients notions of social

identity and individual identity, and changes material conditions. In coping in the aftermath of

trauma, there is an acknowledgement of the failure and faults in the society that gave way to the

disaster, creating the conditions that made the event possible (Felman 171; Baudrillard 404). A

moment of catastrophe and the subsequent events that spiral into a cultural trauma provide an

opportunity for individuals to reconstruct society from the shambles of what had previously

collapsed in on itself (Klein 8).  

Throughout the past fifteen years, cultural traumas, inaugurated with 9/11, have created a

zeitgeist of fear and anxiety that have thus far defined the new millennium. In a society

perpetually teetering on the edge of social, economic, political, and physical collapse, the

looming threat of destruction creates constant anxiety, uncertainty and fear about what the future

of America is destined to look like, as the instability of its systems seem on an inevitable path to

destruction5. This inevitability is a symptom of knowledge that existing economic and social

systems fuel their own destruction, are unsustainable due to lack of resources and centralized

power, and create more inequity and dissatisfaction among the population (Baudrillard 408-410).

9/11 held significance as a moment of economic, political, and social trauma, and its multiple

effects led to large shifts in society than have made the event an undeniable moment of historical

change. After the event6, vulnerability of the nation and its citizens was exposed, and thus, the

threat of such a disaster happening again was accepted as inevitable in the age of technology and

globalization (Norris, Kern, and Just 260; Birch-Bayley 1148).  

                                                                                                               5  The  problematic  War  on  Terror,  the  bank  failures  of  2008,  and  the  growth  and  increased  visibility  of  radical  groups  such  as  ISIS  reveal  the  vulnerability  of  American  political  and  economic  systems.  See  Klein  and  Cerulo  for  more.  6  Baudrillard  refers  to  9/11  as  “the  mother  event”  (405).  

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A number of factors determine 9/11 as a unique trauma and the apocalyptic event that

defines the present culture. One of the most important considerations is the symbolic significance

of 9/11 that contributed to its meanings as an economic, political, and social trauma. Some

reporters likened this to the attack on Pearl Harbor that incited US involvement in World War II,

but this comparison failed to consider the political context and the complex motivations and ends

of the terrorist attacks (“Tuesday, And After”; Faludi 12-13). September 11th stands out as an

attack on United States because of the visibility of the damage to the iconic New York City

skyline and the scene of horror at Ground Zero7. The destruction to the Twin Towers and

damage to the surrounding buildings was made doubly catastrophic by the permanent alteration

to the New York City skyline (Baudrillard 413). Evidence demonstrates that the choice of the

World Trade Center as a point of attack was completely intentional and more significant that the

attacks on the Pentagon or the crash of the hijacked plane in Pennsylvania, as the height of the

Towers and their location in downtown New York City contributed to the spectacle of the event

(Baudrillard 404; Sánchez-Escalonilla 11). In the media, 9/11 was framed as an attack on the

nation, with the World Trade Center a synecdoche of the United States as a global capitalist

nation (Redfield 65-69). The symbolism became more important than the physical damage itself,

as the spectacle of the attack superseded the material reality (Baudrillard 413-414).  

In his essay “The Spirit of Terrorism,” philosopher Jean Baudrillard discusses the

significance of the death as it played out in the symbolism of the event. “The irruption of a ‘more

than real’ death: the symbolic and sacrificial death. This is the absolute event that does not

tolerate any appeal. Such is the spirit of terrorism”, he writes of the absolute, definitive nature of

death (408). Death as the ultimate power lends itself to the unique catastrophe of 9/11 and its

creation of “disorientation, extreme fear and anxiety, and collective regression” (Klein 42).                                                                                                                7  For  more  about  the  significance  of  Ground  Zero  as  a  space  of  trauma,  see  Redfield.  

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Death as a tool of power changes the rules traditionally abided in a capitalist system and forces

society to reckon with the changing rules of society at this moment (Baudrillard 411). To

transform death into a productive power by intending suicide in this event questions the value of

life and death in the system. The symbolic power of death and its replication in the media

following the event makes this moment not only obscene but the moment in which death is

recategorized (Doane 263). Without a means of understanding this type of symbolic death, the

intentional and complete death of the nineteen hijackers on 9/11 ignites the long catastrophic

process (Baudrillard 405). The inability of the United States to respond to this “more than real”

death turns 9/11 into something else, an idea rather than event that cracks the foundations of the

nation as they struggle to formulate a counteraction (Baudrillard 408; Faludi 12).  

Another important factor in determining 9/11 at the apocalyptic catalyst is the

inextricability of the event from its transmission through television. The technological effects of

the moment are the most important reason of why I identify 9/11 as the apocalyptic catalyst.

Conversations about how to filter the obscenely violent content on the day of the event had been

neglected in favor of transmitting the immediate visual information to an audience (Doane 251-

253). From September 11th forward, a “society of spectacle” showed the images of violence

craved by the television audience, without censoring the society from violence or protecting the

sanctity of death (“Regarding the Pain of Others” 108-109). The twenty-four hour news cycle,

the exponentially expanding Internet, and globalization of news and culture are significant

factors in sustaining overstimulation that numbs society to violence. The spectacle of violence

reminded Americans of their own vulnerability, the constant threat around them, and the lack of

control over their own safety (Norris, Kern and Just 3-4).  

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Since 9/11, America has become “shock resistant” and more adept at absorbing economic

and social traumas as a regular occurrence (Klein 459). No longer are instances of mass violence

considered anomalies, but rather disasters have become an integral part of the banality of life in

post-9/11 America. Catastrophic events are less exceptional as the news media transmits more

images of violence and destruction, inuring viewers to the uniqueness and individual effect of

each event (Regarding the Pain of Others” 105). However, even as violence and trauma become

less exceptional, events since 9/11 manages to chip at the existing fractures, leaving less time for

society to repair damages to its systems. Continuous catastrophic violence is part of a routine

moving toward ultimate destruction and social rupture, a real apocalyptic event.  

 

The Renaissance of the Apocalyptic Genre  

Following 9/11, the apocalyptic genre in fiction experienced a renaissance8 that echoed

the contemporary “crisis culture” (Birch-Bayley 1137-1138). Apocalyptic fiction developed in

response to the social condition following 9/11, an era where the vulnerability of the nation and

the individual were under constant threat of violence. The restless anxiety about what disaster

would befall us next, after the unimaginable had become real, manifested in fiction

(“Imagination of Disaster” 48). Concerns about violence and disease, issues of population

growth and health, failing governments struggling for power, and the imminence of danger were

presented in science fiction and less explicitly discussed in nonfiction sources (Birch-Bayley

1148). The inability of society to cope with changing material conditions was answered in these

apocalyptic narratives that accessed our concerns about the problems of the present and the too-

near future (Norris, Kern and Just 10). Themes of reality appeared in fiction as a means of

                                                                                                               8  Susan  Faludi  calls  it  a  “Menaissance,”  as  the  earliest  narratives  of  this  genre,  produced  in  the  tow  years  following  9/11,  primarily  focused  on  male  heroism  and  the  threat  of  the  foreign,  nonwhite  other  (139).  

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showing the worst-case scenario of fears, with the intent to alleviate and expose anxieties, closer

to reality than in historical memory ("The Imagination of Disaster" 42-47).  With terror and

catastrophe seeming imminent, the line between fiction and reality blurred (Sánchez-Escalonilla

11). Apocalyptic science fiction resembled real life—or rather, real life uncannily resembled

apocalyptic science fiction—more closely than ever before.

In response to the cultural trauma of 9/11, Hollywood and the media approached the

subject matter on 9/11 through science fiction more easily than in biography or narratives

directly conscious of 9/11 as a moment. The event of 9/11 did not need to exist in fiction as a

referent, as it permeated the culture and hung over the collective cultural conscious as an

inescapable specter. This deliberate silence of the referent gave more power to the event as a

point of rupture (Sánchez-Escalonilla 11). The apocalyptic genre thematically expressed post-

9/11 anxieties with science fiction acting as a buffer to the real cultural trauma. Science fiction in

the case of post-9/11 apocalyptic fiction did not provide a fantasy escape from the potential

terror of everyday life. Instead, apocalyptic science fiction affirmed the fears of living in

contemporary society. The world of apocalyptic science fiction was our own (Muntean 52).

Fiction merely provided a space to examine anxiety and the human condition without focusing

on the limitations imposed by social capitalist hierarchies (“Imagination of Disaster” 45).  

Capitalizing on post-9/11 anxieties, innumerable narratives about living in apocalyptic

conditions emerged in the years following the attacks. The popularity of the apocalyptic genre

produced after 9/11 suggests that these stories addressed anxiety about the perpetual threat of

catastrophe. Films, television, comic books, and video games built universes where society had

collapsed due to combined environmental, social, biological, and technological problems gone

unsolved or neglected by political institutions. The continuous production of this type of

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narrative pinpoints our understanding of the inevitability of collapse. Narratives about the

apocalypse are repeated not to alleviate fear but to understand catastrophe as the inevitable end

that we must contend with. These stories on television shows, however, tell narratives of survival

and endurance. These apocalyptic stories fixate on the trauma of the event and its long events; an

apocalypse is less a singular event of massive violence, but rather a game-changing development

that forces societies and individuals to restructure what they know about society, citizenship, and

time.

The apocalyptic genre in media existed prior to 9/11 in various cultural forms. Not since

the Cold War, the perpetual threat of nuclear war, communism, and other futuristic anxieties, had

apocalyptic science fiction become so widespread and dominated fiction storytelling. The threat

of nuclear warfare following World War II brought about the growing threat of technology that

revealed the vulnerability of humanity, of political systems, and the real possibility of the end of

the world at the hands of humanity. Fueled by nuclear anxieties and government paranoia,

dystopian Cold War narratives, as seen in works of writers Kurt Vonnegut and Richard

Matheson, proliferated and expressed this cultural anxiety. Science fiction as a genre expressed

worries about the fear of communism and loss of the individual, the looming threat of nuclear

war, possibility of invasion, and the space race with the Soviet Union (Sánchez-Escalonilla 17).

Roughly around the fall of the Berlin Wall and the symbolic end of the communist threat, the

disaster movie and zombie film9 transformed into parodies of themselves instead of indicators of

cultural unrest and anxiety (Birch-Bayley 1143).  

In identifying this genre, I consciously identify “apocalyptic” as opposed to “post-

apocalyptic.” The prefix “post-” indicates a time after the apocalypse, but as I see the apocalyptic

                                                                                                               9  Birch-­‐Bayley  cites  the  figure  of  the  zombie  as  a  barometer  of  cultural  anxiety,  entering  mainstream  culture  during  times  of  economic  and  political  uncertainty  (1137-­‐1151).    

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event, particularly in relation to 9/11, the trauma is ongoing, and the ripples of the catastrophe

felt even years after the initial shock. Narratives in the apocalyptic genre on television, as

discussed in this paper, begin with the event rather than end with it (Di Tommaso 223-224). This

quality of reaction means that the characters in the genre are continuously engaging with the

apocalyptic event, just as Americans are coping with the contingency created by 9/11. Thus, I

categorize this genre as “apocalyptic,” referring to the ongoing struggle caused by an initial

violent trauma that reshapes the cultural landscape and forces characters to continuously engage

with the material and social effects of the event.  

What identifies apocalyptic fiction produced after 9/11 is the focus on the event as initial

disruption and the long narrative that follow the event. The event is not the climax but initiates

the action of the television series. In this way, apocalyptic fiction is made of narratives of

endurance and survival. The initial trauma, while a consistent presence, is less significant than

the evolution of society and individuals in its aftermath. Apocalyptic fiction on television

embodies this idea, as the duration of the series depends on the narrative of continuous

rebuilding. Survival in these fictions is less about starting with a clean start but focuses on

rebuilding and reconstructing with the remnants of the established conditions before the event

(Klein 8). The struggles to continue with life, the inability to go on, and the ambiguity about the

future while knowing the potential threat of another catastrophe is imminent, now that it has

already been a reality, make these narratives legible to post-9/11 Americans.  

Along with the theme of duration and endurance, repetition is a key factor in apocalyptic

narratives produced after 9/11. Fiction provides a space to contend with the fact that we are

living in a moment wherein we are still living with the anxieties and fears produced by that

moment. The repetition of the trauma through fiction reminds us of the constant effects of a

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trauma. Repetition is a means of accessing the real fears that manifest in response to the trauma.

Living these vicarious situations over and over in apocalyptic narratives does less to assuage our

fears than to confirm them and let us understand the inevitability of future collapse and trauma.

In this way, fiction addresses the need for the event to be revisited over and over again through

media and reproduction of trauma in a way that news programming and documentary forms

cannot.  

As a genre of film and television, the fascination with the apocalyptic narrative reveals

the depth of the fear of catastrophe and the need to exercise control over the worst-case scenario.

In repeatedly visualizing fear, the probability of the event becomes more inevitable as the only

solution to the present political, technological, and environmental traumas. The obsession with

reliving the spectacle of a massive cultural trauma reminds us of the initial shock and the state of

potential disaster we live in (Doane 257). Catastrophe once had been unique, but in a “society of

spectacle”, its exceptionalism was no longer the reality (Regarding the Pain of Others 109). The

event inevitable and living in a constant moment of potential threat paradoxically creates a need

for repetition; the repetition allows for hope and possibility of what happens in the wake of the

event (Doane 264).  

 

Television and Temporality  

Television as a medium changed dramatically after the broadcast of 9/11. Prior to the

event, television was categorized by its regulation of time, production of routine, and

legitimization of information. The unanticipated event led to a lack of information on the day of

the event and created a vacuum of information. Information on 9/11 turned into a feat of

representation instead of knowledge, challenging the form of its medium (Cerulo 17; Doane

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253). Routine shattered as images of New York were broadcast live on dozens of channel. The

television broadcast of 9/11 and the repeated image of catastrophe disrupted the routine of daily

life as rendered through this medium. The live event unfolding captured the spectacle and

awaited the next uncanny moment of violence. This disruption to the scheduling and reminding

the viewer of the capability of television to live in the present moment, and this allowed

television to exist as a continuous, measurable stream of information. Its limitations of time and

adherence to a schedule were revealed after the catastrophe, mediating the present for its

viewers. Interruption to this routine and discontinuity revealed the capability of television and its

unique ability to create routine and presentness (Doane 253-264).  

On 9/11, these defining characteristics of television were challenged exponentially.

Routine, information, and decontextualization categorized television news media, and following

9/11, these ideas shifted exponentially and transformed television into something else. The

constant reporting and reproduction of images through 24-hour news cycle created a paradox of

overstimulation and numbness. The repetition of the image decontextualized the moment and

forgot its moment in time. Continuous representing the present moment removed 9/11 from time

and context as television was challenged to meet the height of its capabilities (Muntean 51;

Doane 255). The image itself preserved the moment in time, the spectacular violence of the

moment dissociated from context with each repetition. The more scenes were repeated in

broadcast, the less real they became, moved away from the moment in time but simultaneously

beholden to that one moment of spectacle.  

Television as the medium of the event helped create the anxiety. Where the medium has

once scheduled daily lives and regimented time, it was now beholden to the present and creating

anticipation for what would happen after the event. The temporal rupture caused by 9/11

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removed the television audience from time and situated them in a perpetual present that created

new anxiety (Muntean 52; Doane 255). In the apocalyptic genre, time and anxiety created by the

threat of the end of time and the routine are a common motif. These programs focus on the

disruption of everyday routine and the mundane over the spectacle of disaster that is the

apocalyptic event. Time and duration that form the television medium aid in constructing the

anxiety of the apocalyptic scenario in these narratives10.  

Apocalyptic television is an exercise of duration or repetition after a trauma, the plot

initiated by an unexpected catastrophe and the continuing struggle of restructuring after the

event. On the critically acclaimed television series Lost, Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crashes

midway between Sydney and Los Angeles, stranding its passengers on an unknown island

hundreds of miles off of the plane’s charted course. In the opening scene, the protagonist Jack

Shepard clamors through the lush green jungle and onto the beach, where he rescues survivors

from the flaming wreckage. In one grotesque moment, a survivor of the crash is sucked up into

the spurring engine on the broken wing of the plane. This sequence of chaotic violence lasts for

less than five minutes, and for the next six seasons, the survivors and other struggle to survive

life on the Island and cope with their haunting pasts. The instant of catastrophe—the plane

crash—is followed by the quiet adjustment to circumstances as the survivors make a basic camp

and await rescue. Repeated yet sporadic instances of violence between long periods of waiting

allow Lost the space to explore how community changes and is reconstructed in response to

catastrophes.

On Lost, time is constructed through daily life on the Island. When the survivors arrive

on the Island and believe that rescue may take longer than expected, they must find food, water,

                                                                                                               10  The  television  series  24  is  undoubtedly  the  epitome  of  this  fixation  on  time.  There  are  twenty-­‐four  episodes  in  a  season,  each  representing  one  hour  of  the  day,  setting  the  events  in  real  time  (Takacs  87-­‐90).  

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and explore the terrain, and make plans to escape. It takes episodes upon episodes before they

give up on being rescued entire and find more permanent shelter by moving inland and into the

jungle. Carnivorous monsters inhabit the Island and attack the survivors at every turn, and the

mysterious of the landscape constantly reveal new human antagonists. A security system set up

in the jungle brutally attacks anyone who comes too close, boars and polar bears run wild, and

other human inhabitants of the Island perform scientific experiments on anyone they can kidnap.

All of this potential danger constructs a world full of anxiety about what danger will befall the

survivors next, but this recreates our own fears of continued trauma after a massive attack. Once

the worst has happened, such as a plane crash, what is the next unimaginable terror we will

experience? As we have continued to live our lives after 9/11, so do the survivors living on the

violent Island.

Even with the unknown and known dangers of the jungle, life stranded on an island is

boring most of the time, and Lost seldom neglects this. In the season one episode “Solitary”,

while Jack is helping create a water filtration system in one of the caves on the Island, the comic

relief characters Hurley and Charlie construct a golf course on the idyllic Island in order to

alleviate their boredom. When Charlie invites the rest of the group to see the results of his and

Hurley’s labor, everyone is upset until Hurley states the facts for the group to consider:  

Rich idiots fly to tropical islands all the time to whack balls around…if we're stuck here,

then just surviving's not going to cut it. We need some kind of relief, you know. We need

some way that we can, you know, have fun. That's right, fun. Or else we're just going to

go crazy waiting for the next bad thing to happen.  

The temporary golf course, set up on the top of one of the mountains, away from the danger of

the jungle and the vulnerability of the beach, provides a haven for the survivors so they are no

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longer waiting for the next small horror to break their routine. The mundane events on the Island

juxtapose the repetitive violence. In post-9/11 America, this is how we pass our time in reality,

anxious for the next disaster spectacle and accepting the banality of routine and distraction until

violence disrupts.  

Season two of Lost revolves around the construction of anxiety through literal time and

constructed routine. The survivors on the Island discover a hatch underneath the ground, a shelter

stocked with food and supplies that had been built in the 1970s as part of a massive scientific

research project. Currently inhabiting the hatch is the mysterious Desmond, who became

stranded on the Island during a boating race around the world and recruited into the project.

After their initial meeting, Desmond reveals to the survivors that every one hundred and eight

minutes, he must enter a series of numbers into a computer and press a button, but he does not

know what will happen if he does not complete the task in time. The debate over what may

happen if the numbers are not entered lasts for nearly two seasons and leads the survivors into an

intense argument about letting the numbers hit zero to see what happens. The debate over

whether this is an elaborate experiment to see if they will do the menial task or if something bad

will actually happen to them if the numbers hit zero. Routine is constructed around the notion

that a catastrophic event is inevitable and all time before the event is waiting for it to happen. On

Lost, the survivors seem to have some control over this, but the question remains of the reality of

the threat. While debating what might happen if the button is not pressed, Desmond realizes that

the last time he missed hitting the button was the day the Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on the

Island, stranding the survivors there with him. With the understanding of the worst-case scenario,

the survivors have realized that the threat of danger is real, similar to post 9/11 sensibilities.  

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Jericho, a short-running series produced from 2006 to 200811, takes place in a small

Midwestern town. Multiple nuclear bomb detonations destroy major cities across the United

States, in Denver, Atlanta, and elsewhere, and the town of Jericho is cut off from

communication, energy, and supplies from the outside. In episode two “Fallout,” the residents of

the town prepare for an incoming storm that threatens to soak the town in radiation. As winds

blow the storm towards the town of Jericho from the remains of nearby Denver, the townspeople

race to secure their homes and the public nuclear fallout shelters to protect themselves from the

radiation in the rain. Jake Green, the show’s protagonist and son of the mayor, and his friends

and family must hurry to secure the residents of the hospital from exposure, and, in a moment of

desperation, seek refuge from the storm in the local mine to protect themselves. With the storm

an imminent threat to the town, each character must race against the clock and contend with

setbacks as they come in order to secure the safety of the overall population. Once the rain

finally hits, all anyone can do is wait. In that waiting, more than one person starts to go mad,

uncertain what will even be left of the town once the radiation and rain hit their crops.  

Jericho asks the question, how do we as individuals digest a massive cultural trauma, and

how does it impact our individual lives and daily existence? Jericho is not concerned with

patriotism and heroism but with the human condition in response to cultural trauma. For most

Americans, 9/11 was removed by distance from where they lived, the physical threat of an attack

far away. Major targets were on the east coast of the United States or assumed to target national

landmarks. Although the threat created a cultural anxiety palpable around the nation, the

immediate threat was not everywhere. This is what makes Jericho stand out as a program. It

addresses the way most Americans understand cultural anxiety following the trauma of 9/11.

                                                                                                               11  A  third  season  of  Jericho  was  released  as  a  limited  comic  book  series,  titled  Jericho  Season  3:  Civil  War  and  published  from  Novermber  25,  2009  through  June  8,  2011.  

Kovacs 17

There is an uncertainty of the scope of the initial attack and questions about how real the threat is

and who is the real enemy. Jericho relocates the trauma to show the ripples of anxiety created by

a trauma (Takacs 190).  

Representing a similar genre, the premise of Battlestar Galactica is based on humanity’s

need to leave the home planet and the threat of a dwindling population as the remaining people

struggle to find a place to resettle. In the narrative of Battlestar Galactica, humanity has been

forced to flee from their planet after a brutal takeover by the robot race of Cylons, who were

originally developed to help humankind but developed sentience and identity that surpassed

human control. The pilot episode12 charts the struggle of the remaining survivors to stay alive

aboard a small fleet of space ships and outrun the enemy for as long as possible as they develop a

plan to find a safe place in the galaxy. In the pilot episode “33,” the crew aboard the Galactica

suffers after enduring five days without sleep. Every thirty-three minutes like clockwork, the

Cylons catch up to the fleet of ships and force them to run, torturing humans near insanity by

keeping them perpetually awake and in fear. The initial catastrophic event, the invasion of the

planet by Cylons, is followed by periods of waiting and reacting to another attack, exemplified in

the plot of “33.” The potential threat of attack is a constant, and society is organized around

moments of waiting and moments of spectacle, creating anxiety for the entire population as their

life is constantly moves toward the moment of attack.

The idea that “the medium is the message” rings true for post-9/11 apocalyptic fiction.

Television is a medium of duration and predictability for both news and fiction. The duration and

understanding that there will be another episode of the television series next week reminds the

viewer that there is a hope, even if the hope is nothing more than survival. What identifies

                                                                                                               12  The  reboot  of  Battlestar  Galactica  began  with  a  two-­‐part  miniseries,  but  the  first  episode  “33,”  which  takes  place  immediately  after  the  events  of  the  miniseries,  is  identified  as  the  pilot.    

Kovacs 18

apocalyptic fiction after 9/11 is the focus on the event as initial disruption and the long narrative

that follows the event that is not the climax but rather initiates the ongoing struggle that

transpires. The trauma of the event looms of the series as a specter, influencing the motivations

of the characters and creating an apocalyptic landscape. Through the repetition of the event of

9/11 through fiction, the audience recognizes the inevitability of trauma in reality.  

 

Cowboys, Criminals, Citizens  

The following day on September 12th, the initial shock of the event was spun by the

mainstream media into a story of hope, nationalism, and patriotism, harkening back to historic

cultural metanarratives of American rebuilding and reinvention based in the mythologized West.

However, these aggrandized patriotic narratives of heroism ignored the reality, the grittiness, and

the complexities of 9/11 as an event. The return to this fantasy of cultural identity provided an

understanding of how to rebuild after a disaster and reinforced the shared American dream and

identity (Faludi 289). Apocalyptic reality allows for the freedom and possibility of reconstruction

that is not possible in absence of a crisis (Klein 20). Returning to these narratives brought back

tropes of cowboys, the frontier, citizenship and patriotism, and the threat of the violent other in

our territory. In apocalyptic fiction, these narratives were embodied and then refuted, understood

as means of coping with the initial trauma but seen as a superficial solution to complex problems

of citizenship and the myth of the duality of good and evil.  

In its post-9/11 renaissance, the apocalyptic genre of television was far more critical of

the present and less optimistic about the future of American society in the wake of such a

massive cultural trauma. Apocalyptic fiction created moral grey areas and scenarios where there

were no winners or morals. The question on everyone’s mind was not how do we survive but

Kovacs 19

why do we survive. Apocalyptic television shows acknowledged the return of the narrative of the

American West and confronted and complicated the related tropes as a reaction to a cultural

trauma. The heroic cowboy, a lone male protagonist settled with the burden of caring for a

community, was embodied in post-9/11 narratives, but his motivations and past made him even

more of an anti-hero than his original incarnation. Criminals and others in apocalyptic fiction

were no longer reduced to simple enemies; their motivations were complicated and forced the

audience to reckon with the violence and motivations of the protagonists. At the center of these

narratives were questions of citizenship, of who is a citizen and who is not, of who is the leader

of a population and why.  

The apocalyptic cowboy is thrust into a barren or unexplored territory and burdened with

a position of reluctant leadership as his community faces the threat of the other (Faludi 46-63).

On Jericho, Jake Green assumes the role of leader, despite his ominous past and outsider status.

Jake returns to his hometown to collect his inheritance after the death of his grandfather dies and

must face his family after a mysterious absence. His father and brother, the mayor and deputy

mayor respectively, are angry about Jake’s disappearance, but his mother understands what led

her son to remove himself from his family and the town. As Jake prepares to leave again, a

disaster forces him to stay put and help the townspeople of Jericho. He returns home to the

family farm, reluctantly takes on a leadership role to help his family in a time of crisis, and faces

the mistakes of his past.

In constructing its narrative and main characters, Lost remains aware of normalized

narratives in media and subverts narrative expectation by playing with the cowboy character

trope (Faludi 139). Using its flashback techniques, Lost is able to show characters reinvented on

the islands and reveal who each character was before arriving. For example, the character

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Sawyer, a survivor of the crash, is initially seen as an antagonist and a thief, hoarding medical

supplies and spending all day reading novels on the beach instead of helping with daily tasks.

With his thick Southern drawl, rugged physique, and penchant for assigning offensive

nicknames, Sawyer is unlikable and isolated. In the flashback, it is revealed that his real name is

James Ford, and his past as a con man is a product of an especially traumatic childhood, wherein

he witness his father murdering his mother after discovering she had an affair. As an adult,

Sawyer tracked down the man his mother had an affair with only to accidentally murder the

wrong man. Once on the Island, he adopted the identity of Sawyer, wanting to reinvent himself

and forget his past crimes.

The characters of Jericho also face the issues of the other among them, but the show

itself is centered on ideas of governance, citizenship, and corruptibility (Takacs 198-199).

Isolated and without information, the people of Jericho slowly begin to turn on one another,

uncertain of what started the attack, who the enemy is, and if their town will be a future target of

an attack. The town has difficulty uniting in the disaster, with individuals hesitant to turn to their

elected leadership, the Green family dynasty, as they blame those in charge for not preparing for

these circumstances. The breakdown of national government hierarchies leads to questions of

authority in the town. In this fictional universe, Jericho is already a town living in post-9/11

America, and the townspeople believe that the mayor should have better prepared for this nuclear

disaster. At first, the town makes multiple efforts to find out what caused the initial attack, but

this rapidly becomes secondary to their attempts to keep the people of Jericho from turning on

each other and descending into chaos. 9/11 narratives tend to make heroic stories out of firemen,

police officers, but this is not the case in Jericho. This small town hosts virtually no heroes. Even

the government officials and police must use power and violence to earn authority. In “Four

Kovacs 21

Horsemen”, the police chief argues with Mayor Green about his response to the disaster and says

that following September 11th, the mayor should have better prepared the town to face this

situation. Mayor Green invites the sheriff into his office, shuts the door, and physically beats the

sheriff down to assert his authority. Authority cannot be affirmed through election or governing

bodies; violence is what creates hierarchical structure (Takacs 195).  

In apocalyptic scenarios, the lines between criminals and citizens become tenuous, a

result of the collapse of governmental structure. Without the power and authority of an existing

and historic structure to regulate citizens, questions of good and evil, of citizens and criminals,

become impossible to divide into separate categories. This developing grey area responds to the

dramatic patriotism produced in rhetoric in post-9/11 America and represents the difficulty of

understanding the complex loyalties and motivations of individuals in a global society.

Following 9/11, the reaction to the foreign terrorist threat was patriotism and a prescribed

performance of citizenship. Constructing citizenship as unifying in the aftermath of a national

tragedy and rhetoric of strength blamed the event on the failure of citizenship. Politics and social

practice regressed (Faludi 295-296). However, in creating the ideal citizen, the threatening other

also became identifiable. Foreign, nonwhite criminality became the norm. The largest part of this

threat was the idea that the other lived among the masses and pretended to be a citizen

(Baudrillard 410; Faludi 12). This problem of identification again blamed social liberalism for

the vulnerability that allowed 9/11 to happen and put the nation at risk.

Apocalyptic fiction is often concerned with questions of this other and of citizenship, of

who belongs and does not belong, and who is on what side. These programs often determine that

such motivations are not as simplistic as we want to believe. On Lost, the other is quite literal,

the group identified as “the Others” by the survivors of the front section of Flight 815. They are a

Kovacs 22

primarily unseen antagonist but their presence as a threat becomes known as survivors go

missing and are threatened. Throughout the narrative of the show, the loyalties and identities of

the others are unknown. In the season two episode “The Other 48 Days,” the audience is

introduced to the survivors of the crash seated in the tail section of the plane, and through this

group, the antagonism of the real others slowly is revealed. A group of scientists living on the

Island, the Others are associated with the Dharama Initiative, an organization of scientists

dedicated to study of the human condition, and perform social and medical experiments on those

the manage to capture on the Island.  

Individuals on the Island are corrupted by circumstances, and as time passes, the

survivors of the plane crash become increasingly questionable in their actions, betray one

another, and less loyal to the group. Michael is initially the one who spearheads the projects to

leave the Island and to find help by building a raft, doing everything he can to get the group

rescued. After the Others capture his son Walt, Michael makes a deal with the Others by handing

over Jack, Sawyer, Kate, and Hurley, the de facto leaders of the survivors, and in exchange, he is

able to sail to freedom with his son. Locke, one of those most inspired by the Island, eventually

becomes a leader to the others, invested in the magical properties of the Island and taking a place

in control. The motivations and alliances of individuals become very complicated over the course

of the series, and Lost shows that circumstances lead individuals to act in their self-interests and

that citizenship is based on how governance helps the individual.  

On Battlestar Galactica, the western genre is reimagined as a space western, with the

crew aboard the Galactica leading exiled humanity across space in hopes of resettling the

mythical planet Earth. In this universe, the enemy is a literal creation of humankind. The Cylon

army, created to make life of the planet easier for humans, eventually developed their own

Kovacs 23

communities and went to war with humankind. Although they were robotic beings, their

sentience and transcendence of corporeal form made them a huge threat to humans. However,

this trope returns to a key theme of even the earliest science fiction, which is that men are often

the makers of this own enemy. In the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, as the spaceship is being

decommissioned, Commander Adama addresses the crew with the following speech:  

When we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never

answered the question, why? Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit

murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. And we still visit all of our sins upon our

children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we've done…You

cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later,

the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore.  

This theme is even apparent in Jericho and Lost and echoes the motif of inevitability that

pervades post-9/11 thought. Although the settings of science fiction construct these worlds as

separate from our own, they are a key means of commenting on the corruptibility and

vulnerability of human nature ("The Imagination of Disaster" 48).  

 

Fantasy and Reality  

Discussing 9/11 in terms of fictionalized violence complicates the relationship between

fiction and reality as they are mediated by television. The event of 9/11 was more like a work of

science fiction than a reality, simultaneously unimaginable and imagined into being, collapsing

lines separating fiction and reality. Without the existing visual language to talk about this

massive catastrophe, fiction contextualized the event and made it real and understandable.

Disaster films produced before the event seemed to indicate that the event had been imagined

Kovacs 24

into existence, an identifying anxiety present in the American cultural conscious (Baudrillard

405). The fragility of the United States, globalism, and capitalism had been threatened and

fractured in a public spectacle and forced the world to understand the tenuous moment that

violent collapse was an imminent threat. Philosophers ask whether we dreamed this moment into

existence, and science fiction and disaster films produced before this event support the idea that

not only had the fear on 9/11 already existed, but catastrophe of this cultural magnitude had long

been acknowledged as an inevitability (Baudrillard 405). Not only this, but the question remains

if this event had been a need of a modern society, wherein capitalism and modernity had reached

beyond the control of humanity; the only means of regaining control is through the destruction

and reconstruction (Klein 20-21).  

Apocalyptic fiction cannot exist without the reality of the event to invoke our anxieties,

but the real trauma of 9/11 as negotiated through news footage and aired across the networks ad

infinitum replicates the disaster seen in films and television before the event. Philosophical

considerations see 9/11 as a moment of convergence, where the fantasy of disaster became real.

The popularity of the apocalyptic narratives and anxiety about the apocalypse as an inevitability

reveals not only the worst nightmares of an over-stimulated visual culture, but it reveals a wish

fulfillment and fantasy of rupture. The climate of catastrophe manifests in simultaneous fear of

the apocalypse and the inevitability of the apocalyptic world. Fantasy lets us live our scenarios

that are seemingly inevitable the more we depend on failing governance and technology.

Regardless of which came first, the chicken or the egg, 9/11 was more like a work of science

fiction than a reality, and thus, reality and fiction had become intertwined both in medium and

spectacle (Baudrillard 413).  

Kovacs 25

A key component of apocalyptic fiction is its ability to represent the human condition, as

disasters have an ability to strip humans down to their most essential selves, unmitigated by

social and economic constraints. As the apocalyptic genre addresses human nature and desire

without the restrictions of society as we live in it, these apocalyptic narratives are conscious of

where they exist in relation to reality. Apocalyptic fiction on television opposes the notion of

dissociating the viewer with fiction, and instead, engages the audience in the narrative. Within

this genre, there is a metatextual motif of the relationship between science fiction and reality as

they are in dialogue with one another about possibility and the perpetual threat of technology and

modernity. Apocalyptic narratives respond to this by situating themselves in our reality, placing

themselves in location and time, as television does, to help us place ourselves in relation to the

probability of this future.  

As the relationship with the news media and television new broadcasts had changed, so

did the relationship with fiction television. The spectacle of violence aired live on 9/11 and

repeated for days following the event did more than epitomize the desire to watch images of

catastrophic spectacle. What had once seemed like pornographic violence in fiction had become

reality as transmitted by news television, legitimized by the medium’s presentness and

information production (Redfield 69). Science fiction had provided an existing visual language

for the real event and gave way to narrativizing what could not be articulated in the immediate

moment (Norris, Kern and Just 13). A dialectic between television shows and the news formed in

the aftermath of 9/11, as the reality of American life began to take the shape of science fiction.  

Jericho is unique in how it locates itself on the map of the United States. The attack on

New York City and drastic changes to its iconography after 9/11 made cities and urban spaces

the locus for apocalyptic anxieties. Jericho subverts this trope and places the action in a small

Kovacs 26

town American, removed from the cities, and the problem of location becomes a part of their

struggle to keep the town together. Though the event does not destroy their town physically, the

town decays due to its lack of access to information and supplies to sustain them. Isolated by

physical distance that hinders communication, Jericho avoids the narrative of exceptional

violence and grounds itself in the broader, lasting implications of cultural and physical trauma

every day and everywhere. At the end of episode two “Fallout,” Robert Hawkins receives a

message in Morse code, detailing the exact detonation sites spread across the Unites States. In

the final moments of the episode, he is seen pushing tacks into a map over and over again as he

identifies what cities have been destroyed in the nuclear attacks, starting to mark the places of

each attack. By episode eighteen “A.K.A.”, the citizens of Jericho have assembled a map of

targets. Assigning a physical, known location and time in apocalyptic fiction unravels the

exceptionalism of mainstream news narratives 9/11.  

A poignant episode of Lost situates itself in reality, an uncanny moment where news

events that happened in real time are told on the Island, and disrupt the new established routine

crafted by the Island’s isolation. In episode two of season three “The Glass Ballerina,” the de

facto leader of the survivors Jack is captured by the mysterious Others. While hoping to convince

Jack to join their team, the leader Ben taunts Jack with contact with the outside world. Ben

reveals to Jack that in the sixty-odd days after arriving on the Island, in October and November

of 2004, George Bush was reelected President, actor Christopher Reeve passed away, and the

Boston Red Sox won the World Series. This bizarre moment locates Lost in our reality and time,

and in this moment of reality inserted in fiction, the science fiction and fantasy of Lost become

more grounded to the television audience. The sudden popularity of apocalyptic fiction following

9/11 is not about escapism but the realization that reality looks more like science fiction than

Kovacs 27

ever before. Programs such as Lost and other apocalyptic fiction are aware that although it is

fiction, it must be situated in a way that the viewer recognizes as his or her own world. The

separation of science fiction was not as far away, and the awareness of the liminality of science

fiction aided these programs in addressing real concerns about contemporary society.  

The finale of Battlestar Galactica does much the same as Lost in creating a moment of

the uncanny, ending the series with the population settling planet Earth and thus having the

events of the television show lead up to the creation of our modern society. The questions about

technology and morals, about ethics in science are issues we contend with in post-9/11 society,

and Battlestar Galactica places itself in our own reality so this notion is unavoidable. It grapples

with post-9/11 society, with how we contend with massive violence and with the future and

tenuous present of social relations and governing bodies. This subverts the expectation of

Battlestar Galactica and of science fiction as a genre; it is not a warning about what the future

could look like but rather a commentary on what is already happening and taking shape in

contemporary society.  

The work of science fiction is somehow better at addressing human fear and anxiety than

nonfiction and the news media. The focus of science fiction, particularly apocalyptic fiction, is

related to contemporary humanity. These worlds create new rules that allow characters to face

moral questions that are removed enough from the plagues and social constraints of our own

society. Fiction has created a space where the exploration of motivation and fear can be

complicated and innate, a part of the human condition. These fictions show what the end looks

like and the continuous struggle to survive and endure. They imagine how society looks in the

wake of collapse, but more importantly, they reflect the present fragility of our society and the

inevitability of collapsing systems.  

Kovacs 28

 

Conclusion  

Fifteen years removed from the immediate aftershocks of the even, the ghostly presence

of 9/11 still looms over reality and science fiction alike; we are living in a society built around

fear of the inevitable collapse of what modernity has built and started to fracture on that day.

Since that time, apocalyptic fiction has only become darker, gorier, and bleaker13. Apocalyptic

fiction could not exist in its present incarnation without the reality of the event to invoke our

anxieties, but the real trauma of 9/11 as negotiated through news footage and aired across the

networks ad infinitum replicates the disaster seen in films and television before it. Susan Sontag

explains the phenomena of how we collectively dream trauma and disaster into existence, but

9/11 is the point at which fiction and reality converge to produce the uncanny. These fictions and

the repetition of apocalyptic narratives expresses the paradox of fear of the inevitable collapse

and the potential hope of what may be rebuilt and reconstructed in the collapse of corrupted

institutions and systems (Klein 21). The unimaginable on the news and the mundane in fiction

create a dialogue about fiction and reality, and ultimately remind us that even in the present,

perhaps especially in the present, we are still living in the aftershocks of an apocalyptic trauma.  

 

                                                                                                                   13  The  current  television  series  The  100  and  The  Walking  Dead  illustrate  this  thematic  shift.  The  100,  based  on  a  series  of  young  adult  books,  has  a  bleak  depiction  of  human  nature  and  the  continuous  failure  of  society.  After  spending  three  generations  living  aboard  a  space  station  called  the  Ark,  humanity  returns  to  Earth  to  recolonize,  only  to  go  to  war  with  the  factions  of  humans  who  survived  nuclear  war.  As  war  rages  and  alliances  are  made  and  broke,  the  people  of  the  Ark  are  forced  to  kill  their  enemies,  including  innocent  children,  in  order  to  survive.  The  Walking  Dead  takes  place  in  the  American  South  in  the  midst  of  a  zombie  apocalypse.  This  programs  features  the  moral  relativism  of  The  100  and  echoes  motifs  of  the  American  West  to  show  the  isolation  and  aimlessness  of  society.  Former  sheriff  Rick  Grimes,  his  family,  and  band  of  followers  look  for  refugee  from  the  attack  and  a  place  to  settle.  At  the  end  of  the  fourth  season,  the  refugees  make  their  way  to  a  camp  called  Terminus,  which  they  believe  is  a  haven  for  survivors  where  they  may  rebuild  their  lives.  Shortly  after  arriving,  they  realized  that  the  people  of  Terminus  are  cannibals.  

Kovacs 29

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