"I Am a Leaf on the Wind": Cultural Trauma and Mobility in Joss Whedon's Firefly‪.‬

It has by now become commonplace to hear the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 referred to as events that "changed the world." Even if one denies that the world itself underwent a fundamental paradigm shift on that autumn morning, the profound effects that the attacks--and the subsequent American "War on Terror"--have had on global politics, economics, language, and culture are irrefutable. For many Americans, September 11th is a watershed moment, equivalent in their memories to the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King assassinations, the first lunar landing, or the attack on Pearl Harbor. Such retrenchment in American collective memory is helped, even eight years on, by the endless televisual replaying of the iconic images of the attacks: the footage of the second airliner slamming into the south tower of the World Trade Center, the smoke billowing from both buildings in the moments after the attack, the falling bodies of those jumping from the upper floors. While documentaries like PBS's Frontline (1983-) series (through titles such as "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" (Helen Whitney Productions, 2002), "The Falling Man" (Darlow Smithson Productions, 2006), and "The Dark Side" (2006)) and HBO's Brothers Lost: Stories of 9/11 (2007) offered a thoughtful examination of the moral, psychological, and political reverberations of the attacks, television fiction was often more bellicose, even jingoistic, fighting America's new "long war" in its own way. Dramas like Fox Television's 24 (2001-), David Mamet's The Unit (CBS, 2006-), and Showtime's Sleeper Cell (2005-2006) all put viewers on the front lines of the new "War on Terror," showing generally good (if flawed) heroes fighting the good fight against bloodthirsty terrorists. 24's Jack Bauer, for instance, is a no-nonsense counterterror agent, dedicated to defending the city of Los Angeles by any means necessary: week after week, viewers are treated to Bauer's killing, maiming, and often torturing terrorists and their accomplices in the name of the greater good, avenging the trauma of New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, and making America safe again. The Unit is a military drama focusing on an off-the-books special operations team, elite soldiers who take the fight to terrorists around the globe, often terminating them with extreme prejudice.