Pride

I was just reading the most recently assigned chapter from Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream (http://www.amazon.com/Terror-Dream-Fantasy-Post-9-America/dp/0805086927) when I was struck. Do you ever get it when you are listening to a song and BOOM, you notice that the lead singer belts out the words from which the song is entitled? For some reason the band you are listening to has decided that these words are more important than all of the other words, so the members of the band made those words the title of the song, a pocket explanation for everything that the song represents.

I had that BOOM moment just now with our assigned text, The Terror Dream. Apparently the "Terror Dream" is something that a male character in a movie has been living with: impotence (p. 207). If Susan Faludi has deemed that this phrase is important enough to use to label her work, then it must be the central idea to the work. Susan Faludi has been alluding throughout the book to the masculine backlash in response to 9/11. First, she describes how feminist voices have been silenced in the major media. Next, she describes how men in relation to the 9/11 attacks have been portrayed in hero roles while women have been pushed into the roles of the weak victim that needs protection. Finally, Susan Faludi directs her argument to what seems to be the core of her theory: a male-dominated society has been emasculated in its failure to protect its citizens. I feel that this is a very interesting thesis in that most people would associate the American response to the 9/11 attacks as a justifiably angry giant instead of an emotionally damaged and ashamed man. If one imagines American society as one solid unit it makes sense that America would build back on where its society may feel it has been consciously or unconsciously decided that has been damaged. I feel that Faludi's argument is quite valid, which is that the "masculine" roles of protection that America has espoused has been violated and the silencing of feminine voices is a direct result of this violation.