Volume CXXXIII, Number 16 February 15, 2002 f

McAlister talks on terrorism
EIDER GORDILLO
STAFF WRITER

Melani McAlister gave a speech outlining how terrorism has been playing out on American TV screens for three decades.

Melani McAlister addressing the community. (Henry Coppola, Bowdoin Orient)

McAlister, Assistant Prof. Of American Studies at the George Washington University in Washington D.C., gave a talk this past Monday titled, "A Cultural History of Fear, U. S. Television, Terrorism, and the Middle East." She focused on U.S. understandings of terrorism as partly molded historically by the American media and "fashioned" extensively in U.S. popular culture. Notably, she discussed the prominent American sentiment of terrorism post-Sept. 11 as closely related to Iranian protests in the mid 70s.

In support of her argument, she showed a picture of an Israeli Superman (with a Star of David on his chest, rather than and "S") rescuing a hostage as bullets bounced off of him as a symbol of Israeli military power after being raided by Palestinian airplane hijacks in 1976.

In the U.S., the conflict was highly televised. Dr. McAlister asked the audience rhetorically about the meaning of the label "terrorism." She claimed, "to name something terrorism is to immediately condemn it." She held that definitions of terrorism in the U.S. are still not very clear, that, "in America, terrorism is like porn, they know it when they see it."

She also discussed the televised portrayal of the American-Iranian conflict in 1979 when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was raided and its constituencies held hostage for months. ABC reporter Frank Reynolds hosted a show, aired on November 8, 1979, titled "America Held Hostage." The Special Report (as it would be called today) shows Iranian protestors screaming in unisonance, "Yankee Go Home!" Yet the hostages were not being released. It is clear that the citizens of Tehran were outraged at America's previous support of the Shah Regime in the 50s, a time when U.S. foreign officials took gratefully the cruel dictator's offer to give the U.S. a chance to "observe" the Middle East.

American hostages were released by the Iranian kidnappers on January 1981, after negotiations with the Carter administration.

In the mid 80s, Chuck Norris would not be stopped from rescuing hostages in Iran in the movie, "Delta Force." Unlike the real thing that happened five years earlier, the message was clear to the American audience, "[If they are kidnapped by the barbarous multitudes], let's get our people outta there!" The clips that she showed gave good Chuck a chance to prove his patriotism as he recreated history, confirming American militancy as soldiers invaded Iranian grounds. (Fair mention to the childhood films of many Bowdoin students that featured the theme of rescue: "Die Hard" and "Rambo," the eloquent Keanu Reeves in "Speed," etc.).