Popular Culture, Terrorism in

Before 9/11

There are notable differences in the ways terrorists and counterterrorism fighters were portrayed before 9/11 by mass culture and they ways they have been portrayed since. Terrorists of the 1970s and early 1980s were often driven by a nationalist or leftist ideology, had stronger or more easily identifiable ties with countries and governments of the former Soviet bloc or Latin American countries, and were not necessarily depicted as completely unsympathetic villains. Examples of this type of portrayal include the Palestinian terrorists from Black Sunday (1977), the Lebanese terrorists from The Delta Force (1986), and the left-wing guerrillas in Salvador (1986).

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, characters of Middle Eastern descent and individuals with close ties to the Middle East slowly replaced the Soviets in the role of global foreign villains, but their depictions tended to be fairly complex, not easily reducible to stark black-and-white portrayals. This was also true of “villains” more generally, including Oliver Lang (played by Tim Robbins), the antigovernment terrorist plotter from Arlington Road (1999), and Malli (Ayesha Dharker), the hired assassin from the Indian film The Terrorist (1998). The 1990s also saw shifts in the overall nature of “counterterrorist heroes,” who displayed much less aggressive militarism than images of terrorism fighters in the 1980s. For example, the 1980s film heroes Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris) from The Delta Force (1986) and John McClane (Bruce Willis) in Die Hard (1988) assumed much more showy and violently antagonistic postures than did Thomas Devoe (George Clooney) in The Peacemaker (1997), President James Marshal (Harrison Ford) in Air Force One (1997), or captain Riley Hale (Christian Slater) in Broken Arrow (1996).

Real-world conflicts involving terrorism have often been used as the basis or the backdrop for cinematic drama. The conflict in Northern Ireland, for example, inspired a number of dramatic films that tackled the knotty and seemingly intractable ethno-political struggle that plagued Ireland, Northern Ireland, and England between the late 1960s and the late 1990s. Films like The Crying Game (1992), In the Name of the Father (1993), The Devil's Own (1997), and The Boxer (1997) dramatized the violent struggle among paramilitary and security forces, politicians, and political activists on both sides, as well as the profound and often horrific results wrought by the seemingly endless cycles of violence. The Crying Game, in particular, is notable for its nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of an IRA terrorist who is unable to bring himself to carry out the murder of a fleeing British soldier whom he and his fellow “freedom fighters” have been holding hostage.

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