Backlash: The Undeserved War Against Susan Faludi

by Randy Shaw, 2008-04-10

“This, sadly, is the sort of tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned book that gives feminism a bad name.” --- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, Oct. 23, 2007

Susan Faludi is among the nation’s pre-eminent nonfiction writers. Her two prior books, the landmark Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women and the less successful but also provocative Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, stimulated wide-ranging public debate. But Faludi’s most recent book, Terror Dreams: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, received far less attention. While most reviews were favorable, perhaps the most prominent was New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani’s unusually harsh critique. I think the reason Terror Dreams did not enter the public debate, and that Faludi’s journalistic credibility has been attacked, is that she effectively challenged the fundamental integrity of the United States media machine. Terror Dreams uses the media’s preference for fantasy over fact in its 9/11 coverage to demonstrate how “facts” are fabricated and widely spread regarding a broad range of issues to serve certain ideological agendas. Faludi hit too close to home in Terror Dreams, and the media industry responded by ignoring her message and demeaning her journalism skills---but this is a book that every progressive and media critic should read.

9/11 remains a sensitive spot for the traditional media, as so much of its coverage--such as claims that it would lead to an increase in marriages, that Saddam Hussein was involved, that firefighters risked their lives rushing into buildings out of pure heroism rather than because faulty communication devices deprived them of safety information, and that President Bush responded in a heroic manner rather than continuing to read “My Pet Goat” in a classroom--that anyone challenging the publication of such falsehoods runs a risk of a backlash.

But Susan Faludi does more than repeat how often the media got the 9/11 story wrong--she actually shows that the media intentionally got it wrong to serve the ideological goal of defining men as heroes and women as victims, with males as the protectors of cowering women.

Now more than one reviewer has taken issue with Faludi’s implication that the media response to 9/11 hearkened back to early American captivity myths, which were based on manly men protecting women and girls from Indians and other frontier dangers. But the success of the book does not depend on readers accepting Faludi’s entire argument.

Rather, Faludi convincingly shows how television, radio, newspaper and magazine coverage intentionally ignored the female heroes of 9/11, while transformed males undeserving of such status into virtual legends. Understand: Faludi is not suggesting this false coverage emerged by accident, by faulty “intelligence”, or by the media relying on official reports by the Bush Administration.

Rather, Faludi shows that the media used 9/11 to reassert masculine power, and to attack strong women and feminism. And she cites the names, publications and specific stories that confirm that false information was intentionally spread through the media world to further these ideological goals.

If you think you know everything about media lies concerning Private Jessica Lynch, you must read this book. Faludi’s extensive analysis of the media coverage of Lynch should be mandatory reading in journalism schools, as it provides a truly scary portrait of how false information can be enshrined in the information age.

As noted, this book is about far more than 9/11. For example, Faludi’s discussion of John Kerry’s attempt to prove his manliness during the 2004 presidential campaign is brilliant. While making fun of Kerry has become a virtual sport, Faludi forces us to examine how a person who fought in a war and actually fired a gun in combat was portrayed as “unmanly” while the draft-dodging, non-hunter Bush became publicly identified as a virile and strong protection of women.

Ultimately, the greatest strength of Faludi’s analysis is her depiction of the media’s continual reliance on establishing social trends via anecdote. She gives example after example of major public trends being trumpeted in the media--such as 9/11 pushing women toward marriage, toward leaving careers, and toward being stay at home mom’s—based entirely on a small collection of anecdotes or completely non-empirical and self-serving “surveys.”

Faludi then shows how the media could have questioned and refuted such trends with a few minutes of basic research -- something their ideological agenda would not permit them to do.

Ironically, Kakutani’s harshly negative New York Times review claims that “Faludi displays a disturbing tendency to write off or ignore evidence that might undermine her theories, while using highly selective anecdotal evidence to buttress her arguments.”

This is precisely the point Faludi makes about the Times, Washington Post, and a host of other publications about their post-9/11 coverage. In fact, readers will love Faludi’s account of how clearly self-interested anecdotes--such as bridal company spokespersons claiming women are desperate to marry in 9/11’s wake--are treated by the media as if they have come from extensive research by disinterested university professors.

Faludi’s Terror Dreams is akin to a public announcement that the traditional media have no clothes. And for her audacity in exposing this, Faludi’s book has gone largely unread even by progressives--a scenario all of us should help change.