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Matthew Ryan on cinema's new role of making it more real than real.

Article Excerpt
We are in a strange state of war. The 'war on terror' is one that requires, from the government and media, regular reminders of its existence. War, as everyone in the global North has known since about 1950, is not what it used to be. Even so, the 'war on terror' is an unusually spectral affair. When the 'war' does materialise--in full-scale invasions of other nations or in domestic raids by security forces--it is accompanied by a generalised doubt about the motivation at work in the action. In the 'war on terror' nothing is the thing-in-itself; nothing can be taken as what it appears to be.

When Colin Powell made his PowerPoint presentation to the Security Council--a kind of diplomacy-themed magic show that turned ordinary looking pipes into weapons of mass destruction and hazy satellite photos into networks of bio-agent production--he began the dissipation of the international good faith that rose in response to 9/11. And after the invasion of Iraq, the remnant will to work alongside the US is all but drained.

Part of the problem of keeping a sense of reality in this war and maintaining the motivation of the populace is in the way it has been, since the beginning, a matter of spectacle. The image of the Twin Towers falling was the most compelling call to arms that a state inclined to war could use to bring along its citizens. But even an atrocity captured in action wears out when the threat is woven into everyday life.

As we are often reminded, the 9/11 attacks stand for the ever-present...

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