SPOILERS for Star Trek Enterprise potentially
I was noticing it was tough for me to get into shows that started after the 2000s, and talking to someone I mused about how it must be because of 9/11. I was watching Enterprise at the time, on the season just before 2001, and sure enough, the episodes after 9/11 had a complete shift in tone, the show becoming basically 24, sci-fi War on Terror immediately. It’s like a parody of ‘if Starfleet had to make the hard choices to make America safe from space Al Qaeda’ or something. Overall the show is better than I was expecting though, still got me hooked on the trekness.
It was clear there was a cultural shift after 9/11, especially in the mainstream US media. It was interesting to be able to see it so distinctly in a show that went from the pre- to post- era. Does anyone else have any good examples of that happening in shows that spanned that shift?
it was pretty stark. prior media was very happy to lucky, like the biggest fear was not being fulfilled in work, “selling out” to be a corporate “drone”, being inauthentic.
then suddenly everybody has a single tear falling down their cheek, like Lee Greenwood himself had just been beheaded on TV and America would never be innocent and abundant again with free trips to the sundae bar at the buffet.
now we all had to get tough and hard to face an existential enemy nobody knew existed 20 minutes ago and send our big, beautiful boys to fight the baddies over there or else we’d be fighting them in the streets over here in the parking lot of the cheesecake factory after church.
its a testament to the control a few have over mass media that the tone shifted with such agility.