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Singing the Trauma of 9/11 : reading National Trauma and Resilience in American Popular Music Lyrics

Mougenot, Claire
(2017)

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Mougenot_00991500_2017.pdf
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Details

Supervisors
Bragard, Véronique
Faculty
Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres
Degree label
Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques
Abstract
enThe events of September 11, 2001 deeply impacted Americans’ mentality. The national trauma that followed, partly manipulated by the media, needed to be comforted. One solution lied in the lyrics of American popular songs. This study addresses the issue of trauma and resilience in a corpus of fifteen songs dealing with the attacks, and is divided in two parts. The first one considers songs as traces of a temporal disruption. The analysis emphasizes the role of memory that summons up the past to act on the present, then highlights elements that point to the incapacity for some singers to escape their traumatic paralysis. The second part of this dissertation stresses the most frequent themes in the corpus of songs. Family, religion, American symbols, exclusion and references to body parts form an aggregate of responses that foreground the values that helped Americans grieve. All these themes are used in songs to give meaning to the attacks and restore the sense of security that was shattered with the sudden destruction of the Twin Towers. In the examples discussed, music ultimately functions as a cohesive force that bonds Americans together.