Seeing Stars and Stripes

Jennifer de Poyen is an US-Canadian dual citizen raised abroad who wrote an essay reflecting on how she and others found their feelings about United States flag changing after the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11th, 2001. She was living in New York City when the World Trade Center towers were destroyed and because of her background has a more complex and nuanced view of the subject than most Americans, or even most “good liberals” like herself (de Poyen 121). That said, her essay is as much about the rest of America as it is about her and she doesn’t shy away from showing either end of the spectrum of opinions on the subject in her effort “to explore the possibility that the post-9/11 flag-waving was not proof of a terror-induced political and cultural shift to the right, but a broadening of the definition of what it means to love America” (de Poyen 117).

de Poyen remembers that when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened “for as long as I’d been alive the flag had been the property of right-wing ‘patriots,’ who had appropriated it to promote certain ideas of what it means to be an American” (116-117). Flag-waving was the province of the redneck, the hillbilly and the jingoist, who flag-burning liberals like de Poyen dismissed as dupes and troglodytes for whom patriotism was “a cover for the ill-considered and sometimes illegal practices of the United States government” (117). She does not dwell on the subject, but that statement speaks volumes about de Poyen’s politics pre-9/11.

9/11 changed everything. The phrase was trite over a decade ago, but it was true then and it is true now. Patriotism was cool again, and flag-waving was no longer the province of the hick and his pickup truck. “Even some devout liberals embraced the Stars-and-Stripes symbolism after Sept. 11 (de Poyen 119). Noted radical professors at places like Columbia University flew flags from the balconies of their apartments for all to see. Within a week of the bombings there came “a slew of artistic responses to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington,” and most of them featured the flag prominently (de Poyen 118). At first they came from popular artists, celebrity “culture-makers, who are happy to swim in the mainstream” with little concern for “the notion that their work is unsophisticated” (de Poyen 117-118). But in post-9/11 America no one got a pass when it came to being patriotic, and before long more high-brow art institutions like operas or Broadway were “under pressure to provide cultural ballast” (de Poyen 118). Those contributions were at times trite or forced, such as the ubiquitous American flag pins every TV personality was expected to wear or the moments of silence before and between acts of theater performances, but they were effectively mandatory if people wanted to keep their careers.

There is rarely any need to pressure people to do something they already want to do. Again, no one got a pass when it came to being patriotic and there were social and financial consequences for refusing to get with the program. September 12 looms just as large in de Poyen’s memory as September 11th, and she was scared of different things on both days. On September 12th de Poyen remembers that she “realized I wasn’t safe from my own government, my fellow Americans, my fellow New Yorkers” (121). American flags were everywhere, on T-shirts, “flags flying at the rear of a car or draped over a back seat, flags hung with the canton on the wrong side, and flags flying unilluminated at night” (de Poyen 12). This is, as de Poyen points out, a total violation of the Flag Code that defines the etiquette for how the flag is supposed to be displayed and treated, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Showing respect for the flag boiled down to a combination of saying the right things about how much the speaker loved America and hated the terrorists and plastering the flag as prominently and widely as possible.

9/11 changed everything, and one of those changes was an increase in the number of voices declaring that anyone who criticized America could just get out. The public discourse in America was dominated “by the command from on high to be ‘patriotic’ and to defend ‘the American way of life,” and failing to show what was deemed the proper respect for the flag was an invitation to be publicly censured and derided in the media. A Colorado library director’s decision not to hang a giant flag over the front doors of their main branch ignited a firestorm of controversy. An anti-domestic violence art exhibit on display at the same library was robbed and vandalized for daring to receive more attention than the flag in question, which the perpetrator called “a kick in the groin for our boys overseas” (de Poyen 120). The robber in question stole the exhibit in front of a crowd of onlookers, none of whom intervened or apparently even said a word against what he was doing. He later bragged about the crime live on the air after calling a local radio station. The entire thing was treated as an exercise in political protest rather than simple thuggery. Symbols of freedom and democracy were in. Free speech and independent thinking were not.

de Poyen concludes by admitting that her view of the American flag and what it represents has changed since 9/11, but she sure hasn’t stopped being a “good liberal.”. She says that “I still see it as an object of fetish, a sacred cow that gets hoisted up on the petard of patriotism every time they want to shut someone up” (121). She still distrusts it on many levels, still thinks that it’s used to cover up crimes and abuses like the famous line about how fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag and waving a cross. But she also admits that she is more comfortable with it. She says that “I no longer see it hanging in someone’s window and think, I’m not welcome in there” (de Poyen 122). Increased familiarity with the flag has bred comfort rather than contempt, and years of being “moved by the solace so many people seemed to get from the flag” made her loathe to deny them the comfort (de Poyen 121).

I’ve spent my entire adult life seeing images of the 9/11 bombings and their aftermath. I was about to head out for my first job interview when the news broke and I knew that nothing would ever be the same, that this would be the big event of my lifetime. I became patriotic. I sang hymns and waved the flag as hard as anyone because I felt like civilization was under attack. But after a decade and a half of those same images being used as a sop for blind patriotism and wars of aggression they’ve lost their impact for me. 

Works Cited

de Poyen, Jennifer. “Seeing Stars and Stripes.” Now and Then: Current Issues in Historical Context. Ed. Judith De Poyen. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. p. 116-122. Print.