No Jurisdiction: Legal, Political, and Aesthetic Disorder in Post-9/11 Genre Cinema

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By Fareed Ben-Youssef ’09

Published Sept. 23, 2022

 No Jurisdiction (SUNY Press) combines autobiography with film scholarship to explore the tensions within Hollywood genre films in the aftermath of 9/11 and the resulting war. In response to these events, Ben-Youssef argues, filmmakers mobilized iconic American character archetypes — the superhero, the cowboy, the femme fatale — to simultaneously normalize state violence and critique human rights violations.

Paw in print

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The cover of PAW’s February 2025 issue, featuring a photo of Frank Stella leaning back with his hands behind his head.