Flag Mania: Reading Assigment

"Flag Display Post-9/11: A Discourse on American Nationalism"

http://work.colum.edu/~zfurness/intro/Bratta.pdf

Review Notes:

A flag, as well as a name and anthem, is essential for any nation to exist among other nations. Moreover, flags help countries to think about how they present themselves to the rest of the world and what roles they will play in shaping the future. In America, a place where national identity comes more from our politics than our genetic heritage (we are a nation of immigrants after all), the symbols we use to unite the people under one nation becomes all the more important. The flag helps us to imagine what the criteria is to be an American and what moral characteristics being an American entails.

Throughout American history, the flag has been deployed in crucial and contested moments to function symbolically as a unifying national force. After 9/11, flags appeared bound on automobile bumpers, tattooed on various body parts, as a wallpaper screen on cell phones, on all types of attire, from boxers and socks to winter coats, collectibles, pins, and many more. The American flag came to represent a resurgence of confidence in the nation and our shared values and a symbol of support for the firefighters, the victims’ families or the soldiers. This new patriotism that emerged post-9/11 can be attributed to the widely televised response to the 2001 attacks, where flag imagery was used over and over again. To be patriotic was to display the flag, and refusal to display the flag was unpatriotic.  
The characteristics of bravery, courage, and strength are depicted in the waving of the flag, especially post-9/11. The moving, live flag indicates that the country is still alive. The country has not died or succumbed to the attacks. The flag reminds Americans what this country is believed to be about; it continues to wave for Americans to provide hope in the midst of the chaotic events. The flag communicates to Americans to be brave and strong, that even after the attacks, we will continue to rise like the flag on a post, both metaphorically and literally. Americans are still standing. 

America is a society that has equality, freedom, and democracy as its fundamental principles because it assumes that deep down everyone is the same and desires the same things. The flag unites people who are tied up in conflict and turmoil, provides the nation with its consciousness, and, even though its meanings can change over time, expresses and attempts to communicate the country’s core values. Regardless of the inequalities like racism or sexism, a flag calls for unity in the nation and for citizens to adopt these core values in a fight against all threats (post-9/11 – al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden).  

Thomas E. Franklin, Ground Zero Spirit, 2001