Abstract
This chapter uses Immanuel Kant’s notion of the Sublime to trace formal developments in the disaster film post-9/11. It considers how several films from that generic group attempt to stimulate and shock audiences who witnessed the mediated events of the morning of 11 September 2001. Starting from the qualitative and quantitative magnitude of the collapsing towers (matched with Kant’s dynamical and mathematical Sublimes), it proposes a third category—the ubiquital—to frame the universal images of that disaster and then considers how the post-9/11 disaster film attempts to reproduce effects of that experience. It uses three films—The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004), 2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009), and Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008)—as case studies of broader tendencies in the genre, assessing their efforts to recreate the sensory assault of that historical morning.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Battersby, Christine. 2007. The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference. London and New York: Routledge.
Bignell, Jonathan. 2005. Big Brother: Reality TV in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bukatman, Scott. 2003. Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Dixon, Wheeler Winston (ed.). 2004. Film and Television After 9/11. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Freda, Isabelle. 2004. Survivors in The West Wing: 9/11 and the United States of Emergency. In Film and Television After 9/11, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon, 226–246. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Hark, Ina Rae. 2004. ‘Today Is the Longest Day of My Life’ 24 as Mirror Narrative of 9/11. In Film and Television After 9/11, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon, 121–141. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1987. Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner. S. Pluhar. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
Pomerance, Murray. 2004. The Shadow of the World Trade Centre Is Climbing My Memory of Civilisation. In Film and Television After 9/11, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon, 42–62. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Schneider, Steven Jay. 2004. Architectural Nostalgia and the New York City Skyline on Film. In Film and Television After 9/11, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon, 29–41. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Sterritt, David. 2004. Representing Atrocity: From the Holocaust to 9/11. In Film and Television After 9/11, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon, 63–78. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Vaughan, Dai. 1990. Let There Be Lumière. In Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser, 63–67. London: British Film Institute and Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Wallechinsky, David, and Amy Wallace. 2004. The Book of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Monahan, B. (2018). Kant’s Sublime and the Disaster Film After 9/11. In: Dibeltulo, S., Barrett, C. (eds) Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90134-3_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90134-3_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90133-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90134-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)