Culturally Producing a Post-9/11 Society

31 July 2020 

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, catalyzed a new period of Middle Eastern-American relationships both in the U.S. and around the world. These attacks ignited a new kind of war: one which dwelt not only among the armed forces of a group of nations, but in the minds of the public as well. In his National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, President George Bush championed this fight as “both a battle of arms and a battle of ideas.”1 The year following the attacks, the U.S. State Department pushed a public diplomacy campaign that marketed these ideas the United States shares with Middle Eastern Muslims and highlighted the United States’ commendable record of religious tolerance towards Muslims in America. Charlotte Beers, former advertising executive and Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy at the time, launched a national branding campaign in which she attempted to mediate negative sentiments held towards the United States in the Middle East. Labeled the “Shared Values Initiative,” the first phase of the campaign included five mini documentaries designed for television, radio and print of Muslim Americans touting their ability to live happy, fulfilled lives in America while still freely practicing the values of Islam. The campaign, aired during the month of Ramadan in 2002, reached an audience of nearly 300 million people in key Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Pan-Arab nations, Egypt and more.2 Contrarily, on the home front, Islamic sentiments in the United States continued to grow terser, as evident through a political cartoon released nearly eight years after the launch of the SVI. Pulitzer Prize winning and nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich released a political cartoon on September 8, 2010, that starkly contrasts the values shared between the U.S. and the Middle East highlighted in the SVI campaign. In Luckovich’s cartoon, an American mother and child sit on a couch in the United States watching a news portrayal of radical, violent Muslims while a Middle Eastern mother and child watch a similar news reel of radical, violent Christians. Both mothers respectively tell their children, “Not all Christians/Muslims are hateful…”3 This global, stereotyped view of American-Middle Eastern relationships differs greatly from the highly personalized message of the SVI. As originally attributed by President Bush, a battle of ideas requires both a global-regional identity space as well as personal-social identities to understand the implications of producing a wholistic post-9/11 society. The synthesis of these two media products enhances the production of American-Middle Eastern internationalities to eventually reason that there are in fact similarities embedded in the differences between these two groups. 

The identity space-dynamics between these two media products reveal that these two spaces work best comparatively rather than individually to create a well-rounded cultural exchange between Americans and the Middle East. However, the striking number of mismatched comparisons between the Shared Values Initiative and Luckovich’s political cartoon exemplify that not every field of comparison is level between these two products. Like puzzle pieces, the provisions and limitations of each media product fill in certain communication gaps in the other to create a more compound understanding of societal production, one which recognizes similarities within differences. The contrasting identity spaces at play, as well as the differences in audience, scope and method of each of these media products together bridges major cultural barriers between the United States and Middle East and uses their differences to highlight cultural and humanitarian similarities. 

LIMITATIONS AND VALUES OF AN INTERNATIONAL IDENTITY SPACE 

Mike Luckovich’s political cartoon predominantly operates with international identity spaces, both in regions––the United States and the Middle East––as well as religions––Christianity and Islam. These spaces provide valuable overarching implications about the relationship between two groups on international levels. However, at the same time, these spaces fail to address a personal-social relationship between the publics of the two regions, which results in stereotyping individuals as “radicals.” The cartoon also presents several mismatched comparisons that draw implications about international perceptions of different cultures. While this lens of cultural production is limited due to its function in primarily an international space, this generalization nonetheless makes valuable deductions about implicit biases held towards the two groups that produces a similar society across the globe. 

The first major mismatched comparison between the international identity spaces at play in this cartoon presents itself in the regions Luckovich chooses to label. On the side labeled “U.S.,” the continental United States is the only nation represented in the Western Hemisphere of this cartoon globe, complete with the peninsulas of Florida and Texas, the latter of which would otherwise be indistinguishable on a true geographic map of all of North America. Clearly, the United States is the only nation Luckovich wishes to highlight on the Western Hemisphere. On the other hand, on the Eastern Hemisphere of this cartoon globe, Luckovich draws the entire region of the Middle East in the same way he draws the single nation of the United States. The Middle East is neither a country nor a continent, but rather a transcontinental region comprised of 17 different countries.4 Consequently, not every nation in the Middle East is anti-American. While U.S. relations with individual Middle Eastern nations has evolved drastically throughout the last two decades, the U.S. has maintained military facilities in several countries, including Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.5 It is not uncommon for journalists, politicians and diplomats to refer to the entire transcontinental region as a single entity, effectively ignoring any distinction between ally and enemy. Perhaps for the sake of satire or brevity, Luckovich assumed his audience would understand these distinctions and not waste his time muddying his comparison with technicalities. Nonetheless, this mismatched comparison between a nation and a group of nations offers critical insight into the production of internationalities between the United States and Middle East. Zooming out to a global lens produces a mutual distrust between the United States and the Middle East and reveals that there is a similar animosity on both sides. While stereotyping can be a harmful tool for misrepresenting individual people, it does offer a critical analysis of the implicit bias one group of people generally holds towards another. When producing a narrative of the relationship between differing groups of people, it is necessary to understand the foundation of distrust that makes this post-9/11 society what it is today. In this sense, the incompatible comparison of a nation to a region actually illustrates a dichotomy that has more in common than one could observe without a global lens. 

In the same way Luckovich draws a mismatched comparison between nation and region, he also creates an inconsistency in his equating of religion to region. In the cartoon, he draws no distinction between Christian and American nor Muslim and Middle Eastern; however, this apparent homogeneity of religion within its respective region is far from reality. In 2017, Pew Research Center estimated the population of Muslims in America to be roughly 3.45 million people and predicted Islam to quickly replace Judaism as America’s second-largest religious group behind Christianity.6 Likewise, in countries like Lebanon, Christians make up nearly 40% of the population, and an estimated nine million Christians reside in Egypt.6 Again, one could look at this misidentification as a sloppy generalization on the part of the creator of the cartoon, but in terms of producing internationalities, it actually conceptualizes a mutual misunderstanding between the two group. More significantly, these misconceptions are critical once again to understanding how the two groups are designed to interact with one another. Certainly not every Christian thinks every Muslim is a terrorist and vice versa, but here both Muslims and Christians are labeled as radical extremists in the eyes of the other. Casting the spotlight to a global stage and exploring the implications of conflicting religious and international identities as a whole allows spectators to draw similarities between the ways each group views the other. 

By stereotyping both Christian Americans and Muslim Middle Easterners, Luckovich misses a critical opportunity to humanize the individual people on both sides. The embedded identity spaces of individuals are stripped away, revealing only the single outermost layer of regional identities. Giving spectators only the outer shell of religious and regional labels, the cartoon offers no insight into the individual identities of the people portrayed in the cartoon, other than an extremely simplified family layer in which a mother attempts to tell her child not to believe everything portrayed through the media. Though undeniably dramatized in editorial fashion, the cartoon produces an abstract dichotomy of two cultures that both similarly stereotype those unlike themselves, without understanding the individual identities on the opposite side. This top-down approach is necessary for understanding a background of the implicit bias held towards each group. Despite stereotyping individuals, these generalizations provide a crucial foundation for understanding how each group is culturally trained to produce society in conjunction with the other. Any message transmitted across borders is rendered ineffective without first understanding how these cultures are different, and how these cultures reciprocate stereotypes. In an extremely simplified comparison, the cartoon is able to bridge cultural barriers by displaying mutual feelings of distrust and apprehension towards each other.  

LIMITATIONS AND VALUES OF PERSONAL-SOCIAL IDENTITY SPACES 

Compared to Luckovich’s political cartoon, the Shared Values Initiative produces culture across several different complex identity spaces, though predominately on a personal level. Individual Middle Eastern nations are explicitly introduced, either by direct mention in the videos or in the campaign’s listed audience, but the campaign focuses mostly on a personal-social identity space that humanizes individual people more so than the cartoon. In contrast to the top-down method of cultural analysis the cartoon provides, the SVI places a higher emphasis on understanding culture from an inside-out perspective. There is value in understanding a group of people based on the personal and social relationships they develop with their direct communities; however, this identity space is also limited in its ability to understand and recognize differences of treatment and prejudice towards opposite cultures in this comparison. 

The SVI profoundly illustrates embedded identities of individual people as complex members of society throughout the campaign. Not only are these people Muslims or Americans, they are teachers, doctors, neighbors, parents and members of a community. The list of embedded identities goes on. In particular, one of the videos in the campaign spotlights Abdul Hammuda, a Libyan bakery owner who also cofounded the first Islamic Academy in Toledo, Ohio. Hammuda immigrated to the United States to pursue his education and eventually started his own business in America, where he praises his ability to practice his faith in totality: 

Since 9/11 we’ve had an overwhelming sense of support from our customers and clients. America is a land of opportunity, of equality. We are happy to live here as Muslims and preserve our faith.7 

As this quote depicts, Hammuda explains that he encountered an extreme level of inclusion and tolerance towards his beliefs in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Many of the other participants in the campaign offer a similar view of life in America: one in which their neighbors, coworkers and communities are extremely tolerant of their Islamic beliefs. This inter-social identity extensively emphasizes the harmonious blending of all of these American and Muslim values. This thread of cultural symbiosis weaves itself throughout each of the videos in the campaign. In another video, a paramedic describes himself and his community as “all brothers and sisters” with one another, and another doctor shares his thoughts on America as a place of immigrants where people of all backgrounds are welcome. This effectively levels individuals to the same status first as human beings, sharing similar values of education, hard-work, family, faith and personal achievement. To produce a wholistic post-9/11 society, this media product intensely fixates on the personal and social relationships of these specific individuals, which differs greatly from the stereotyped individuals seen in Luckovich’s cartoon. 

Contrarily, the limitation of thinking solely on a personal-social level that identifies only cultural similarities is that it ignores the issue of Islamophobia in the United States, as well as anti-American sentiments in the Middle East. Many of the participants in the SVI claim they had faced no retaliation whatsoever from their communities as a Muslim in the wake of 9/11. However, according to data collected by the FBI, the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S. spiked in 2001 from 28 to 481 and has never returned to the same levels as before 9/11.8 In a period of time in which tensions between the Middle East and the United States were highest, the State Department was desperate to align American ideals of religious tolerance with those ideals held in a largely Islamic Middle East. In a report titled “The Geopolitics of ‘Hearts and Minds’: American Public Diplomacy in the War on Terrorism,” Anja Sletteland explores the implications of this somewhat obvious omission of any discourse that contrasts what is being said in the short films.9 Sletteland’s analysis presumes that based on the nature and language of the participants’ responses throughout the campaign, they are answering an implicit discourse that assumes the opposite of their responses and represents the root of cultural clashes between the two groups. For example, when Hammuda explains that, “Religious freedom here is something very important, and we see it practiced and no one ever bothered us,” his response implies that the viewer would hold the belief that Muslims are usually bothered when practicing their religion in America. This implied reality of two dissenting discourses pales in comparison to the explicit distinction provided in the political cartoon, where this opposing rhetoric is literally drawn onto the paper of the cartoon. While the SVI clearly incorporates a humanized similarity shared between the two groups, it fails to address global and regional contradictions embedded in the global identities of the two groups. 

Ultimately, the shortfalls of the SVI are supplemented by the provisions of the political cartoon; likewise, the value of the SVI supplements the limitations of the cartoon. In this sense, where the political cartoon tends to stereotype individuals, the SVI clearly humanizes them. Where the SVI fails to explicitly address global differences, the political cartoon plainly sketches the rhetoric of conflicting global identities in which the SVI feels a need to respond. While the SVI does operate on multiple identity spaces, it still by itself cannot produce a wholistic post-9/11 society due to the shortfalls of omitting dissenting discourse. Synthesizing the SVI with Luckovich’s cartoon fits the puzzle pieces of a larger society together to make sense of what was previously unclear and incomplete. Having understood the similarities reflected in global conflict through the cartoon, the individualized messages of the SVI now flesh out the similarities of these regional identities on a humanized, individual scale. Explicitly naming the values shared between two cultural groups further enhances the argument that despite religious and regional differences, these values in the simplest sense make these two groups equally human. 

DISCREPANCIES IN AUDIENCE, SCOPE AND METHOD 

Lastly, several discrepancies exist between these two media products in terms of audience, scope and method that generate necessary provisions about the production of culture and society in a post-9/11 world. Understanding first how a nation views itself and then how individuals view that same nation offers two distinct analyses of the cultural identities working conversely between these two global spaces. Synthesizing the two media products’ communicative processes of producing society includes observations on the effects of contrasting producer-audience relationships, the use of propaganda as public diplomacy and the personalized implications of editorial publications. Comparing the forms of these two communicative processes helps level differences in a post-9/11 society. 

The audience distinctions between these two media products provides an understanding of the effects each media product has on shaping culture. While both the SVI and the cartoon are American forms of media, one is intended for a Middle Eastern audience and one is intended for an American audience. With a budget of $15 million reaching an audience of over 300 million Middle Easterners, the SVI reaches a much wider scope than Luckovich’s cartoon. An American cartoon, although produced by a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist with a national reputation, reaches a much less deliberate audience than an advertising-style public diplomacy campaign. As already rationalized, the cartoon addresses shortfalls in U.S. relations with Middle Eastern Muslims, whereas the SVI effectively ignores them. One could argue this is due largely because of the respective audiences of each product. In a way, each of these media products are communicating to an echo chamber; research analyzing the effects of the SVI shows that Muslim Middle Easterners already knew America was religiously tolerant and that that was not the problem.10 That being said, a study of this particular media product primarily hones the cultural implications generated in the campaign, rather than the campaign’s effectiveness to mediate international relations. 

An analysis of the cultural production from these two media products would be incomplete without finally addressing the different approaches to communication working together to create cultural similarities. The SVI undeniably takes a more advertising-style approach, while the political cartoon attacks this comparison in a journalistic light. Charlotte Beers, the former advertising executive who created the SVI, was selected for the role of Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy for her ability to sell a product; in this sense, the United States was her newest client. Beers’ goal was to market the intangible assets of the United States: belief systems, values and the implication that the United States is widely misunderstood to the rest of the world. In a journal titled “The Propaganda War on Terrorism: An Analysis of the United States' "Shared Values" Public- Diplomacy Campaign After September 11, 2001,” author Patrick Lee Plaisance analyzes the Shared Values campaign in the scope of 10 divisions for propaganda.11 In this analysis, Plaisance argues the communicative approach to propagate U.S. values in the Middle East combined “a mass-media-based diplomacy effort” with a communicative business model rooted in corporate strategy. In this sense, the SVI was largely transactional. In a global perspective of sharing values in a cultural give-and-take, this campaign was highly focused on giving out American ideals of universal egalitarianism in the hopes of receiving back a corrected misconception about America. Every last detail of this campaign is meant to serve the general purpose of relating back to the positive values of America, which by itself present shortfalls in understanding conflicting global identities. 

Mike Luckovich, on the other hand, represents no one but himself and his observations. In an interview with Columns Magazine, a publication of his alma mater, the University of  Washington, he describes his passion for creating cartoons as feeling a “responsibility to people who don't have voices in this world--the poor, the disadvantaged. I can make a difference for them.”10 In the same interview, he relates that the Atlanta Journal Constitution offers him a great deal of creative independence to create the cartoons he wishes. This, working in conjunction with his primarily American-based audience, generates more freedom to create the cultural implications he deems necessary for the American public to hear. Editorial journalism, in this case represented by a cartoon, does not try to persuade or sell, but rather inform, educate or entertain. Like the humanitarian values preached in the SVI, this form of communication is a much more democratized and humanized method of communicating by reflecting the observations of one person on international sentiments. 

These two media products enhance each other and enhance the cultural production of internationalities by the inherent values they hold in their forms. Freedom of speech is a fundamental American value, one which carries implications of social liberties and freedom of expression in America. By comparing these two media products together, Luckovich’s political cartoon quite literally produces what the SVI is attempting to communicate: that Americans have the freedom to choose to practice any belief. The very fact that Luckovich is able to criticize his own country in a comparative manner to radical Islam demonstrates a key fundamental American value rather than just advertising that it exists. Propaganda is generally met with apprehension, both in domestic and international audiences, so understanding the production of American values on a level other than propaganda puts meaning behind the branded message of the SVI. This strengthens the argument that at the end of the day, despite cultural differences, individual people are all just humans with a story to tell. In this way once again, cultural barriers between these two sides dissolve into a much more humanized scale. 

CONCLUSION 

Narrativizing relationships like Christian-Muslim and American-Middle Eastern in a post-9/11 world is an extremely difficult and daunting task, especially considering the generations of conflict embedded in these global identities. A comparison with as many layers of strife, anguish and ideological differences is far too complex to treat in a single identity space and in a single media product. Neither the Shared Values Initiative nor Luckovich’s political cartoon alone could generate an accurate narrative of life and culture between these two groups of conflicting peoples. Only when produced comparatively can these two media products attempt to bridge cultural differences and substantiate the claim that a series of similarities lie within these two groups’ differences. However, the comparisons cannot stop there. If one can equate the cultural production of internationalities between the United States and the Middle East in a post-9/11 world to supplementing puzzle pieces fitting together, one cannot complete this relationship with only two pieces. Furthermore, these pieces are constantly changing and evolving. Both of these media products are well-tenured examples of early 21st century communication efforts on the stage of American-Middle Eastern relations. The narrative of these two competing global spaces has evolved even within the last decade. For the purpose of this comparison as producing internationalities to show there are similarities in differences, these two media products sufficed as two small puzzle pieces in an ever-changing puzzle. No two pieces in a puzzle will look identical, but when fit together, produce a coherent message. Unfortunately, this simple analysis of just two pieces out of millions cannot cover every single aspect of this incredibly complex cultural relationship. They can, however, conceptualize how even two different media products producing seemingly dissenting aspects of culture can together draw internationalities onto the same level as merely a reflection of human relationships. 

References 

1. The White House. (2006, Sept.). National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. Washington DC. Retrieved from https://2001-2009.state.gov/s/ct/rls/wh/71803.htm. 

2. Boucher, R. U.S. State Department. (2003, Jan. 16). Daily Press Briefing. Washington DC. Retrieved from https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2003/16717.htm. 

3. https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2003/16717.htm 

4. Luckovich, Mike. Atlanta Journal Constitution, 8 Sept. 2010. https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/holiday/mike-luckovich-september-2010-cartoons/veOdToz5U89NxH5OhEh7QN/ 

5. “Middle East Countries 2020.” World Population Review, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/middle-east-countries. 

6. Wallon, Matthew. “U.S. Military Bases and Facilities in the Middle East.” American Security Project, 2018, www.americansecurityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Ref-0213-US-Military-Bases-and-Facilities-Middle-East.pdf. 

7. Tristam, Pierre. “Facts and Figures on Christians of the Middle East.” ThoughtCo, 2019, www.thoughtco.com/christians-of-the-middle-east-2353327. 

8. Rampton, Sheldon, director. Shared Values. YouTube, 7 June 2011, www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6887FCB8E5CFEC3C. 

9. Keng Kuek Ser, Kuang. “Data: Hate Crimes against Muslims Increased after 9/11.” The World from PRX, 2016, www.pri.org/stories/2016-09-12/data-hate-crimes-against-muslims-increased-after-911. 

10. Sletteland, Anja. SHARED VALUES INITIATIVE: CONTROVERSY AND GEOPOLITICAL VISIONS. Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI), 2008, pp. 83–100, The Geopolitics of ‘Hearts and Minds’: American Public Diplomacy in the War on Terrorism, www.jstor.org/stable/resrep08063.11. Accessed 31 July 2020. 

11. Satloff, Robert. “The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror: Essays on Public Diplomacy in the Middle East.” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2004, pp. 19–25., doi: 10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f. 

12. Patrick Lee Plaisance (2005) The Propaganda War on Terrorism: An Analysis of the United States' "Shared Values" Public-Diplomacy Campaign After September 11, 2001, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 20:4, 250-268, DOI: 10.1207/s15327728jmme2004_3 

13. Boucher, R. U.S. State Department. (2003, Jan. 16). Daily Press Briefing. Washington DC. Retrieved from https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2003/16717.htm.