`Flying Planes Can Be Dangerous'

Abstract

In the immediate aftermath of the 11 September attack on America, a parallel was repeatedly drawn between this event and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The two events seem to have the same meaning in American discourse on 11 September because the two events seem to follow a similar sequencing: surprise attack leading to loss (again) of American innocence at a time when the rhetoric of isolationism was in play. Looking beyond superficial accounts of sequencing, this paper compares and contrasts the moral grammar that structures the meaning of these two events as they circulate in popular representations (the film Pearl Harbour and the official and mediatic representation of Attack on America) and the codes of gender and sexuality upon which these moral grammars rely. It concludes that the two events/representations of events abide by very different codes of gender and sexuality. Pearl Harbor and Pearl Harbor employ the codes of gender, sexuality and morality traditionally applied to sovereign nation—states, while Attack on America employs the codes of gender, sexuality, and morality traditionally applied to global firms in neoliberal takes on globalisation. The paper concludes by reading the investments America has in equating similar sequencing with similar meaning.