The Sleeper Agent in Post-9/11 Media

Vanessa Ossa
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The Sleeper Agent in
Post-9/11 Media
Vanessa Ossa
The Sleeper Agent in Post-9/11 Media
 Vanessa Ossa

The Sleeper Agent in

Post-9/11 Media
Vanessa Ossa
Media Studies
University of Tübingen
Tübingen, Germany

ISBN 978-3-031-11515-8    ISBN 978-3-031-11516-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11516-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
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known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—
Project-ID 170320015—SFB 923
 Acknowledgments

This book is based on my PhD thesis Sleeping Threats: The Sleeper Agent
in Post-9/11 Media, which originated as a research result from my work at
the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 923 ‘Threatened Orders—
Societies Under Stress.’ Between September 2016 and May 2019, I had
the great fortune to be part of the CRC’s research group ‘Media
Reflections: Threat Discourse and the American Order Since the Attacks
of September 11, 2001,’ where we examined the social, cultural, and
political implications of ‘9/11’ within the conceptual framework of
‘threatened orders.’ I’m incredibly grateful for the intellectual input and
constant support from the members of the research group and the guest
scholars who visited us in Tübingen. These were mainly my fellow collabo-
rators David Scheu, Anne Ulrich, and Lukas R.A. Wilde; our principal
investigators and advisors Jan-Noël Thon, Klaus Sachs-Hombach, and
Georg Schild; and Richard Grusin and Michael C. Frank, who contributed
to the group’s research with invaluable insights into their own work—as
well as many additional international colleagues whom we were able to
invite or meet at conferences, thanks to the funding by the German
Research Foundation (DFG) for the CRC. I was very lucky to be able to
discuss the topic of my thesis with so many colleagues, and I would like to
thank all of them for their input and challenging questions.
This project would not have been possible without the people working
at the Collaborative Research Center, and I thank them for their unwaver-
ing support, intellectual input, and an infrastructure that provided invalu-
able opportunities for interdisciplinary and international exchange of
ideas. Working with concepts that were conceived as epoch-spanning and

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

interdisciplinary was certainly challenging and led to interesting discus-

sions beyond traditional divides between disciplines. Nevertheless, I am
particularly thankful to my fellow members of the Medial Reflections
Team, who generously allowed insights into their own research and pro-
vided feedback about first drafts and theories. In this regard, I am espe-
cially grateful for the feedback and support from my supervisor Jan-Noël
Thon, who guided me through the strenuous process of writing this thesis.
Anne Ulrich, Berenike Jung, Erwin Feyersinger, Lukas R.A Wilde, and
Marcel Lemmes took the time to read through some of the chapters and
provided last-minute feedback before the deadline. Stephan Packard was
also generous with his time and read parts of the final book. Last but not
least, I would like to express my gratitude to Wilfried Groll, my family, and
my friends, who helped me to finally finish the manuscript despite the
many challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
My argument about the sleeper agent as a hybrid character and the
close reading of Marvel’s Secret Invasion (2007–2008) in the fifth chapter
are already partially published in the edited volume Threat Communication
and the US Order After 9/11: Medial Reflections (Ossa et al. 2021), and
for the German-speaking readers, my chapter in the edited volume
Umbruch—Bild—Erinnerung. Relationen einer globalen zeithistorischen
Narration by Carolin Führer and Antonius Weixler (2022) adds an argu-
ment about invisible threats in cultural memory to my considerations of
United 93 (Greengrass 2006), Battlestar Galactica (Syfy 2003–2010),
and Secret Invasion.
The research for this book was funded by the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—
Project-ID 170320015—SFB 923
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Fiction, 9/11, and the Sleeper Agent  9

3 The Sleeper in Hollywood Cinema After 9/11 79

4 The Sleeper in US TV Series After 9/11155

5 The Sleeper in Comic Books After 9/11229

6 Conclusion315

Index321

vii
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 “The New Breed of Terrorist” in TIME Vol. 158, No. 13.
2001, 27–28 55
Fig. 2.2 “Manhunt in America,” in TIME Vol. 158, No. 15. 2001, 52–53 58
Fig. 3.1 “Clandestine terrorists at the airport” in United 9396
Fig. 3.2 “Aggressively shouting hijacker” in United 9397
Fig. 3.3 “Flying objects crash into a skyscraper” in Batman v Superman103
Fig. 3.4 “Superman before his impact into a building” in Batman v
Superman104
Fig. 3.5 “Clouds of ash in Metropolis’ streets” in Batman v Superman104
Fig. 3.6 “Metropolis’ ground zero” in Batman v Superman105
Fig. 3.7 “Veiled women” in The Manchurian Candidate127
Fig. 3.8 “Enemy posters” in The Manchurian Candidate128
Fig. 3.9 “A golf player reflected in Terry’s eyes” in Civic Duty136
Fig. 3.10 “Television news reflected in Terry’s eyes” in Civic Duty136
Fig. 4.1 “Confrontation between Farik and Darwyn” in Sleeper Cell,
2.8, Reunion 169
Fig. 4.2 “Detail shot of particles in the air” in Sleeper Cell, 1.2, Target 177
Fig. 4.3 “Soap bubbles on a baseball field” in Sleeper Cell, 1.5, Soldier 177
Fig. 4.4 “Philip with his family” in The Americans, 1.1, Pilot 187
Fig. 4.5 “Philip disguised as Clark” in The Americans, 1.1, Pilot 187
Fig. 4.6 “Identical copies of Number 6, 2, and 4” in BSG, Miniseries 208
Fig. 4.7 “Number 6 downloaded into another body” in BSG, 2.18,
Downloaded208
Fig. 4.8 “Surveillance footage of copies of Number 6” in BSG, 2.11,
Resurrection Ship Part 1 209
Fig. 4.9 “Centurion” in BSG, 4.9, The Hub 210

ix
x List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 “Skrull shouting ‘he loves you’ before the attack” in Secret
Invasion #1, 30 249
Fig. 5.2 “Skrull invasion in Manhattan” in Secret Invasion: Home
Invasion #2, 10 250
Fig. 5.3 “The two voices of Mar-Vell” in Mighty Avengers #19, 7 255
Fig. 5.4 “Skrull birth as Captain America” in New Avengers #43, 14 256
Fig. 5.5 “Skrull death as Captain America” in New Avengers #43, 8 257
Fig. 5.6 “Super-Skrull” in Black Panther #40, 19 258
Fig. 5.7 “Batman kneels in front of Damian” in Batman & Robin
Eternal, vol. 2, 219 269
Fig. 5.8 “Batman tells Damian to be himself” in Batman & Robin
Eternal, vol. 2, 220 270
Fig. 5.9 “Dick’s hallucination from fear toxin” in Batman & Robin,
vol. 1, 63 273
Fig. 5.10 “Tim’s hallucination induced by Azrael” in Batman & Robin,
vol. 1, 239 274
Fig. 5.11 “Jason reliving his trauma” in Batman & Robin, vol. 2, 88 275
Fig. 5.12 “Meru’s wiped memories in the background” in Mind
MGMT #7, 18 288
Fig. 5.13 “Hidden messages between the stitches” in Mind MGMT #2,
cover page 289
Fig. 5.14 “Hidden Morse code in the shape of the panels” in Mind
MGMT #9, 17 291
Fig. 5.15 “Different representations of Julianne’s memory loss”
in Mind MGMT #16, 14 292
Fig. 5.16 “Meru imagines herself as heroine” in Mind MGMT #14, 1 294
Fig. 5.17 “Julianne’s escape into fiction” in Mind MGMT #16, 2 295
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Terroranschläge: Sicherheitsdienste vermuten 100 ‘Schläfer’ in

Deutschland.
Über 1000 Schläfer in Deutschland.
Attentäter an Hamburger Hochschulen: Das Nest der Schläfer.
(German Newspaper Headlines after 9/11)

Before they committed the attacks of September 11, 2001, several of the
hijackers lived in Germany as part of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell. Accordingly,
the term ‘Schläfer’ (German for ‘sleeper’) became a prominent term in
German news media, as evident in headlines such as: “Terror Attacks:
Security Agencies Suspect Hundreds of ‘Sleepers’ in Germany” (FAZ
2001, translation VO), “More than 1,000 Sleepers in Germany” (Scherer
2001, translation VO), or “Assassins at Hamburg’s Universities: The
Sleepers’ Nest” (Butters et al. 2001, translation VO). Under these circum-
stances, my initial interest in the ‘sleeper agent’ as a character in post-9/11
media might have stemmed from a cultural bias as a German researcher. It
was therefore all the more surprising to me that the term ‘sleeper’ was not
as prominent in US newspaper headlines. As it turned out, the US public
discourse1 revolved mainly around the victims, heroes, and witnesses per-
sonally affected by the events of the day, and quickly focused on Osama
bin Laden as mastermind behind the attacks.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
V. Ossa, The Sleeper Agent in Post-9/11 Media,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11516-5_1
2 V. OSSA

Nevertheless, the hypothesis that the sleeper agent plays a significant

role in the representation of undetermined threats and the justification of
new security measures in post-9/11 discourse prompted the following
examination of US cinema, serial television, and comic books. As it turns
out, the discourse may openly concentrate on other issues, but the implicit
reliance on the concept of the sleeper is crucial. The sleeper is a silent pre-
requisite for narratives about hidden threats and the fear of future terrorist
attacks. Fictional representations of sleeper agents encompass a broad
range of more or less pronounced narrative patterns and touch upon sev-
eral larger cultural discourses beyond 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror.’2 As a
result, the case studies in this book include clear-cut terrorism narratives,
stories about clandestine espionage, fantastic science fiction scenarios, or
Cold War period pieces. The two most important frames of references
(that I found often intertwined) are enemy stereotypes from post-9/11
public discourse and already established cultural fantasies about hidden
sleeper agents from the Cold War. I will discuss the consistencies and dif-
ferences between the sleeper of the Cold War and post-9/11 fears of
Islamic terrorism and subsequently trace several residues of Cold War nar-
ratives within the fictional representations of the sleeper after 9/11.
Drawing a connection between post-9/11 discourse and aspects of the
Cold War is not unheard of. In July 2002, journalist Michael Wolff criti-
cized the narrative framing of al-Qaeda as enemy in the ‘War on Terror’ in
a previous New York Times article. The Times had written that after the
war in Afghanistan the organizational structure of al-Qaeda had further
dispersed and was now working with “Middle Eastern extremists across
the Islamic world” (Johnston et al. 2002, par. 1). Wolff remarked how the
Times had retroactively reframed the former structure under bin Laden to
look straightforward and centralized in order to present their new struc-
ture as an even looser network. He further noticed how the overall pattern
of the narrative seemed all too familiar to him:

It’s Cold War stuff. There is the ubiquitous and yet unknown and unknow-
able enemy. There’s the international jihad, which, with only minor adjust-
ments, replaces the international communist conspiracy. There’s the sudden
purported hegemony of the Muslim world—a new Soviet-bloc-style ideo-
logical monolith. There is the otherworldly dedication of operatives bent on
overthrowing the West. There are the cells. There is the myth of superhu-
man discipline. There is now, even, the developing Kremlinology of the next
tier of men who replace Osama. And at the center of the story, of course, is
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

the bomb. Whether in massive retaliatory form or as a dirty-bomb package,

it serves the same effect. (Wolff 2002, par. 16)

Several parts of this quote warrant closer examination: First, the descrip-
tion as ‘ubiquitous and yet unknown and unknowable’ characterizes the
enemy in the ‘War on Terror’ as (a) not visible or tangible and as (b) omni-
present, which implies a large group or rather a network of enemy agents.
Both characteristics also refer to the sleeper agent as an enemy in hiding
who usually operates as part of a larger organization. Second, the ‘cells’
refer to hidden sleeper cells as practice usually employed by al-Qaeda.
Wolff lists this strategy of global terrorism in a row with aspects of the
Cold War, therefore likening the sleeper agent as terrorist to the Soviet
sleeper of the McCarthy era. This kind of continuities and differences
between the sleeper agent of the Cold War and global terrorism will be a
recurring theme throughout this book. Many examples from fictional
media after 9/11 relate to narratives of the Cold War and are either adap-
tions of older narratives or situated in this period.
As the story of 9/11 seemed to be written in real time on day-to-day
media (Nacos 2016; Spigel 2004), opinions outside the dominant narra-
tive were quickly dismissed (see, e.g., Butler 2004; Didion and Rich
2003). However, Andrew Schopp and Matthew B. Hill (2009) point out
that a substantial part of the debate about the media event ‘9/11’ was
actually held in popular culture:

While most of America’s “public voices” sought to render the attacks a sim-
ple case of “us” vs. “them,” “friend” vs. “enemy,” and “good” vs. “evil,”
our popular culture reveals that America recognizes that the situation was,
and continues to be, far more complex and “knotted” than our leaders often
wanted to acknowledge. (Ibid., 20)

Following this suggestion, this book covers primarily fictional examples

from Hollywood cinema, US television, and mainstream comic books that
depict sleeper agents as enemies of the US.
Sleeper agents are often implied when terrorist networks are shown.
Enemy agents are almost always ready and in place when needed. They are
often an unspoken presupposition in many of the post-9/11 narratives
that discuss the increase in security and surveillance techniques. The depic-
tion of sleeper agents as actual enemies fits into neo-conservative narra-
tives that emphasize the necessity for more state surveillance. In contrast,
4 V. OSSA

the depiction of the mere fear of the sleeper agent might be part of
government-­critical narratives that reflect on post-9/11 policies as politics
of fear. However, typical Hollywood action movies with a “forward-­
moving development of plot” (King 2000, 2) often struggle to depict the
dormant phase of a sleeper. The hidden and inactive quality of the sleeper
presents a challenge for fictional stories that rely on portrayable events and
narrative progress for their entertainment value. Serial media formats,
however, provide more opportunities to explore the levels of deception
that clandestine agents need in order to hide in plain view. This might
explain why there are more relevant sleeper agents as main characters in
television shows than in feature films. Sleeper agents in comic books, how-
ever, pose another challenge, since many characters of traditional comic
book storyworlds are already fairly known as either friend or enemy.
Sleeper agents in this context are often already established characters who
undergo a certain change of identity, for example, through forms of shape-­
shifting or mind control. These distinctions between representations in
different media are often neglected since the majority of research into
post-9/11 media representations focuses on one single medium—primar-
ily on US cinema.3 A comparative approach to three different media allows
for an analysis of the commonalities in the representation of the sleeper
agent as transmedial concept while differentiating between the various
media and their specific narrative affordances. This broader perspective
responds to the convergence of media in the more and more diversified
media landscape of the twenty-first century.
The second chapter, “Fiction, 9/11, and the Sleeper Agent,” discusses
the concept of the sleeper agent and its place in a post-9/11 discourse.
The chapter starts with an investigation into the relationship between
political discourse and fictional representation in general and between fic-
tion and post-9/11 discourse in particular. This is followed by a brief
introduction to the cultural imaginary of terrorism (see Frank 2017) in
relation to 9/11 and the sleeper agent. Following this, several aspects of
the sleeper agent as a culturally contingent concept are introduced. For
example, the notions of sleep and unconscious action link the concept to
fantasies of brainwashing and practices of indoctrination. Sleeper agents
during the Cold War were closely associated with espionage and ideologi-
cal warfare, while the post-9/11 sleeper cell is predominantly related to
suicide terrorism and independent cells in a larger network. The 19 hijack-
ers of September 11, 2001, are certainly prominent twenty-first-century
incarnations of the sleeper agent and serve as a reference point for this
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

investigation into sleeper agents in fictional post-9/11 media.

Consequently, the second chapter concludes by connecting post-9/11
discourse and the sleeper agent in a close reading of journalistic discourse.
The third chapter, “The Sleeper in Hollywood Cinema After 9/11,”
discusses several examples of sleeper agents in post-9/11 films. The chap-
ter includes a comparably large number of post-9/11 films. This is owed
to two aspects: (a) Hollywood’s reflection of 9/11 and ‘War on Terror’ is
thoroughly researched, and there are a substantial number of established
themes and narratives, and (b) the chosen examples demonstrate the
broad variety of sleeper agents in fictional cinema—as historic figure or as
frightening phantasm, as enemy agent or as potential ally, as puppet under
the control of a megalomaniac leader, or as media phenomenon. The
examples also draw attention to marginal side characters or subtle allego-
ries that contribute to the overall medial depiction of the sleeper agent.
The fourth chapter, “The Sleeper in US TV Series After 9/11,”
describes four pertinent television shows that feature sleeper agents as
main characters. The examples are contextualized as parts of already exist-
ing discourses of cultural anxiety, which continue to live on after 9/11 and
during the ‘War on Terror.’ The first example, Sleeper Cell (Showtime
2005–2006), helps to understand how the sleeper agent is connected to
fears of a violent ‘Other’4 that commits acts of crime and terrorism and
is—at least in recent decades—mostly connoted as Middle Eastern. The
second and third examples, Homeland (Showtime 2011–present) and The
Americans (FX Network 2013–2018), connect Cold War anxieties of infil-
tration and indoctrination with the paranoid atmosphere surrounding the
‘War on Terror.’ The fourth example, Battlestar Galactica (Syfy
2003–2010), displaces the political allegory of post-9/11 politics into a
science fiction setting. The sleeper agents are an example of a networked
enemy oscillating between fluid and stable identities. As such, Battlestar
Galactica connects to larger discourses of network society and liquid
modernity.
The fifth chapter, “The Sleeper in Comic Books After 9/11,” investi-
gates narrative strategies used to depict sleeper agents as fictional charac-
ters in comic books. Brian Michael Bendis’s Secret Invasion (2007–2008),
Scott Snyder’s Batman & Robin Eternal (2015–2016), and Matt Kindt’s
Mind MGMT (2012–2015) all include prominent narrative and esthetic
patterns that are part of the larger cultural imaginary of sleeper agents.
Thus, several elements already introduced in previous chapters reappear in
the three comic book examples and become subject to a more in-depth
6 V. OSSA

formal analysis. Special attention is drawn to the depiction of the internal

worlds of sleeper agents (that often differ from their outward appearances)
or hidden messages in the artwork.
Finally, the conclusion draws on the central arguments from each chap-
ter and points to similarities and differences in the representation of sleeper
agents across US cinema, serial television, and comic books.

Notes
1. The term ‘discourse’ is to be understood in the Foucauldian sense as the way
a given topic is discussed at a specific moment in history (Foucault and
Dotzler 2013, 192–93). The notion of ‘being discussed’ is of course prob-
lematic and lies at the heart of the methodological problems of discourse
analysis. I use events documented in US journalism, political speech, and
published government documents as examples of public discourse. However,
this is neither a claim of completeness nor of comprehensive US-wide
coverage.
2. Several critics of the Bush administration have contested the phrase ‘War on
Terror’ as an umbrella term for the political and military response to the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I choose to mark the phrase as a
rhetorical construct by using single quotation marks, even if I do not apply
them in the same way for 9/11 as shorthand for the attacks of September
11, 2001. See Richard Jackson (2005, 33) for an analysis of 9/11 as a tem-
poral shorthand that subsumes the different places of the attack and the
BBC News for a critique of the term ‘War on Terror’ by the UK Government
(Reynolds 2007).
3. Media historian David Slocum (2011, 184–85) names cross-media research
as one of the remaining challenges of research into 9/11 and media. The
analysis of fictional representations of the sleeper agent in additional media
such as computer games, literature, or theater presents a fertile ground for
further research but could not be included in this thesis.
4. “Ideological hegemony and privileging of one culture over another can cer-
tainly be observed where people within a dominant culture create a sense of
shared identity dependent on the construction of a counterpoint—an out-
sider group or culture that becomes a point of comparison and a rational-
izing mechanism for hegemony. We call this outgroup the Other” (Tuman
2009, 58).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Works Cited
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.
London: Verso.
Butters, Ingo, Cordula Meyer, and Caroline Schmidt. 2001. “Das Nest der
Schläfer.” Spiegel Online, September 14, 2001. http://www.spiegel.de/lebe-
nundlernen/uni/attentaeter-­a n-­h amburger-­h ochschulen-­d as-­n est-­d er-­
schlaefer-­a-­157489.html.
Didion, Joan, and Frank Rich. 2003. Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11. New York:
New York Review of Books.
FAZ. 2001. “Terroranschläge: Sicherheitsdienste Vermuten 100 ‘Schläfer’ in
Deutschland.” September 20, 2001. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesell-
schaft/terroranschlaege-­s icherheitsdienste-­v ermuten-­1 00-­s chlaefer-­i n-­
deutschland-­11274587.html.
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8 V. OSSA

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 CHAPTER 2

Fiction, 9/11, and the Sleeper Agent

Ever have a dream that was like a story…?

And at the end of the dream there’s a twist ending?
Some kind of shocking surprise?
How can your mind do that to you?
You’re creating the dream.
How can you surprise yourself?
(Matt Kindt, Mind MGMT)

While a lot has been written on medial representations of 9/11 and the
‘War on Terror,’ the focus on the enemy as sleeper agent adds a slightly
different perspective. This analysis starts with the role of the 19 hijackers
in post-9/11 discourse and embeds them into the greater cultural concept
of the sleeper agent—the fear of hidden enemies operating in one’s own
neighborhood. Instead of looking at the perpetrators as violent ‘terrorists,’
this framing foregrounds the aspects of ‘secrecy,’ ‘invisibility,’ and ‘omni-
presence’ as part of the fear of the sleeper agent and highlights the possi-
bility of an ‘enemy within’ as represented in fictional and non-­fictional
post-9/11 ‘threat communication’ (Ossa et al. 2021). Of course, it should
be noted that the ‘sleeper agent’ is yet another conceptual frame for a
‘universal adversary’1 and thus equally ambiguous as the term ‘terror’ as
enemy in the—often criticized—phrase ‘War on Terror.’ Nevertheless, I
believe that focusing on the sleeper agents in the cultural negotiation of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Switzerland AG 2022
V. Ossa, The Sleeper Agent in Post-9/11 Media,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11516-5_2
10 V. OSSA

9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’ has the potential to add to the understand-
ing of the fictional representations of potential enemies in post-9/11 dis-
course. Film scholar Robert Cettl (2009, 7–8) describes the terrorist as a
character in primarily reactionary narratives from the mid-1980s who has
been depicted as cruel and deviant as well as prone to sudden outbursts of
violence and open excesses of mayhem. In contrast, the sleeper agent
became popular as a concept during the Cold War and is more likely to be
connected to an atmosphere of low-level paranoia, of ‘not-knowing’ who
one’s true enemy might be—a character one might expect to occur more
likely in a suspense thriller than in an action plot. While the terrorist is
characterized by self-determination (ibid., 9), sleeper agents are often
dependent on others in their actions. It is therefore important that the
decision to focus on the sleeper agent foreground aspects of post-9/11
discourse that are otherwise often subsumed under the discussion of ter-
rorism or security measures. This also means that the examples and litera-
ture discussed in this book represent a very selective sample and purposefully
neglect other aspects of the representation of the ‘War on Terror.’
I would like to argue two points in this chapter in order to draw a con-
nection between fictional representations and political discourse: (a) the
relevance of fiction for post-9/11 discourse and (b) the sleeper agent as
enemy stereotype in the ‘War on Terror.’ The relevance of fiction is made
evident by a detailed discussion of Tim Melley’s (2012) concept of the
‘covert sphere’ and Michael C. Frank’s (2017) notion of the ‘cultural
imaginary of terrorism.’ Both make a case for a specific relationship
between imagination (stirred by fiction and speculation) and factual infor-
mation with regard to terrorism in general and 9/11 in particular. This is
especially relevant within the context of discussing sleeper agents, since
their invisibility—or rather a lack of reliable information about them—is
one of their key characteristics. Thus, in order to understand the relevance
of sleeper agents in post-9/11 fiction, it is important to consider the role
of fiction for the epistemological conditions of 9/11 and terrorism in gen-
eral. This will serve as background to the analysis of sleeper agents in fic-
tional film, television, and comic books in subsequent chapters. The
second half of this chapter provides a typology of the various aspects of the
sleeper agent as a culturally contingent concept with indubitable ties to
the time of the Cold War and as part of the ‘War on Terror’ enemy stereo-
type. The latter—the sleeper agent as part of the ‘War on Terror’—
becomes evident in the first issues of TIME published after the attacks.
The analysis of the articles in these issues serves as an exemplary sample for
 2 FICTION, 9/11, AND THE SLEEPER AGENT 11

the public discourse after 9/11, and concludes this chapter with insides
into the depiction of the 19 hijackers as sleeper agents and the growing
fear of unknowable threats that are ostensive in articles of September and
October 2001.

9/11 and Fiction

Film and Television in Post-9/11 Discourse

Many of the academic commentaries on 9/11 revolve around the concep-
tual pair of ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction.’ The attacks were highly mediated in
television images, photographs, and drawings. The almost theatrically
choreographed setup of the two planes flying consecutively into the two
towers and the subsequent collapse of the buildings on live television pro-
vided striking imagery that turned the actions of the terrorists into a media
spectacle for a worldwide audience. The profound impact of the attacks
was not only measured in the extent of death and destruction but even
more credited to the symbolic value of destroying a very visible icon of
Western capitalism on US soil (Baudrillard and Turner 2002, 16–19; Žižek
2002b, 387). US citizens lost their sense of invincibility; the myth of
American security was severely damaged (Faludi 2008, 12; Holland 2009,
281–82).2 Again and again, the events were described as having a cine-
matic quality—as being ‘like a movie’3 (M. C. Frank 2011, 152; Holland
2009, 279–80; King 2005, 47; Nacos 2016, 115–19). The uncanny rec-
ognition of a familiar, yet fictional, idea in a real-world situation was under
consideration in several attempts to understand the substantial ramifica-
tions of the attacks. The most prominent arguments in this line of think-
ing probably came from the philosophers Slavoj Žižek and Jean Baudrillard.
Žižek related the events of 9/11 to violent phantasies in action and disas-
ter movies of the 1990s:

[T]he unthinkable which happened was the object of fantasy, so that, in a

way, America got what it fantasized about, and that was the biggest surprise.
[…] what happened on September 11 was that this fantasmatic screen appa-
rition entered our reality. It is not that reality entered our image: the image
entered and shattered our reality. (Žižek 2002c, 16)

For Žižek, the events marked the end of an era during which the US feared
the superficial, virtual quality of a postmodern reality that questioned the
Another random document with
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 As for the “front parlour” (which will form the main part of my
text), it was opened once or twice a twelve-month for high family
functions. A week beforehand, the cleaning woman (who received
six cents per hour in those blessed Neanderthal days) would arrive
with many mops and many brooms. The covers would be removed
from the antique furniture, the frames of the pictures would be duly
scrubbed. The carpets were submitted to a process which resembled
indoor ploughing and for fully half an hour each afternoon the
windows were opened to the extent of three or four inches.
Then came the day of the reception—the birthday party of the
grandfather—the betrothal of the young daughter. All the relatives
were there in their best silks and satins. The guests were there in
ditto. There was light and there was music. There was enough food
and drink to keep an entire Chinese province from starving. Yet the
party was a failure. The old family portraits—excellent pieces by
Rembrandt or Terborch—looked down upon grandchildren whom
they did not know. The grandchildren, on the other hand, were quite
uncomfortable in the presence of this past glory. Sometimes, when
the guests had expressed a sincere admiration of these works of art,
they hired a hungry Ph.D. to write a critical essay upon their
collection for the benefit of the “Studio” or the “Connoisseur.” Then
they ordered a hundred copies, which they sent to their friends that
they might admire (and perhaps envy) the ancient lineage of their
neighbours. Thereafter, darkness and denim covers and oblivion.
The history of our great Republic suffers from a fate similar to
that of these heirlooms. It lives in the “front parlour” of the national
consciousness. It is brought out upon a few grand occasions when it
merely adds to the general discomfort of the assisting multitude. For
the rest of the time it lies forgotten in the half dark of those
Washington cellars which for lack of National Archives serve as a
receptacle for the written record of our past.
Our popular estimate of history and the value of a general
historical background was defined a few years ago by Henry Ford.
Mr. Ford, having made a dozen flivvers go where none went before
and having gained untold wealth out of the motor-car industry, had
been appointed an ex-officio and highly esteemed member of our
national Council of Wise Men. His opinion was eagerly asked upon
such subjects as child-raising, irrigation, the future of the human
race, and the plausibility of the Einstein theory. During a now
memorable trial the subject of history came up for discussion, and
Mr. Ford (if we are to believe the newspaper accounts) delivered
himself of the heartfelt sentiment that “history is bunk.” A grateful
country sang Amen!
When asked to elucidate this regrettable expression of dislike,
the average citizen will fall back upon reminiscences of his early
childhood and in terms both contrite and unflattering he will
thereupon describe the hours of misery which he has spent reciting
“dreary facts about useless kings,” winding up with a wholesale
denunciation of American history as something dull beyond words.
We cannot say much in favour of late Stuarts, Romanoffs, and
Wasa’s, but we confess to a sincere affection for the history of these
United States. It is true there are few women in it and no little
children. This, to us, seems an advantage. “Famous women of
history” usually meant “infamous trouble” for their much perturbed
contemporaries. As for the ever-popular children motif, the little
princes of the Tower would have given a great deal had they been
allowed to whitewash part of Tom Sawyer’s famous fence, instead of
waiting in silken splendour for Uncle Richard’s murder squad.
No, the trouble is not with the history of this land of endless
plains and a limitless sky. The difficulty lies with the reader. He is the
victim of an unfortunate circumstance. The Muses did not reach
these shores in the first-class cabin of the Aquitania. They were
almost held up at Ellis Island and deported because they did not
have the necessary fifty dollars. They were allowed to sneak in after
they had given a solemn promise that they would try to become self-
supporting and would turn their white hands to something useful.
Clio, our revered mistress, has tried hard to live up to this vow.
But she simply is not that sort of woman. An excellent counsellor, the
most charming and trusted of friends, she has absolutely no gift for
the practical sides of life. She was forced to open a little gift-shop
where she sold flags and bunting and pictures of Pocahontas and
Paul Revere. The venture was not a success. A few people took pity
on her and tried to help. She was asked to recite poetry at patriotic
gatherings and do selections from the “Founding Fathers.” She did
not like this, being a person of shy and unassuming character. And
so she is back in the little shop. When last I saw her, she was trying
to learn the Russian alphabet. That is always a dangerous sign.
And now, lest we continue to jumble our metaphors, let us state
the case with no more prejudice than is strictly necessary.
The earliest settlers of this country brought their history with
them. Little Snorri, son of Gudrid and Thorfinn Karlsefni, playing
amidst the vines of his father’s Labradorian garden, undoubtedly
listened to the selfsame sagas that were being told at the court of
good King Olaf Tryggvason in distant Norway. The children of San
Domingo shared the glories of the Cid with the boys and girls who
visited the schools of Moukkadir’s ancient capital. And the long-
suffering infants of the early New England villages merely finished an
historical education that had begun at Scrooby and had been
continued at No. 21 of the Kloksteeg in Leyden.
During the 17th century, the greater part of the Atlantic coast
became English. The Dutch and the French, the Spanish and
Swedish traditions disappeared. The history of the British Kingdom
became the universal history of the territory situated between the
thirtieth and the fiftieth degree of latitude. Even the American
Revolution was a quarrel between two conflicting versions of certain
identical principles of history. Lord North and George Washington
had learned their lessons from the same text-book. His Lordship, of
course, never cut the pages that told of Runymede, and George
undoubtedly covered the printed sheets which told of the fate of
rebels with strange geometrical figures. But the historical inheritance
of the men who fought on the left bank of the Fish Kill and those who
surrendered on the right shore was a common one, and Burgoyne
and Gates might have spent a profitable evening sharing a bottle of
rum and complimenting each other upon the glorious deeds of their
respective but identical ancestors.
 But during the ’twenties and ’thirties of the 19th century, the men
of the “old régime”—the founder and fighters of the young Republic
—descended into the grave and they took their traditions, their
hopes, and their beliefs with them. The curtain rose upon a new time
and upon a new people. The acquisition of the Northwestern
Territory in 1787 and the purchase of Napoleon’s American real-
estate in the year 1803 had changed a little commonwealth of
struggling Colonies into a vast empire of endless plains and
unlimited forests. It was necessary to populate this new land. The
history of the Coast came to an end. The history of the Frontier
began. English traditions rarely crossed the Alleghanies. The long
struggle for representative government took on a new aspect in a
land where no king had ever set foot and where man was sovereign
by the good right of his own energy.
It is true that the first fifty years of the last century witnessed the
arrival upon these shores of millions of men and women from Europe
who had enjoyed a grammar school education in the land of their
birth. But dukes do not emigrate. Those sturdy fellows who risked
the terrors and horrors of the Atlantic in the leaky tubs of the early
forties came to the country of their future that they might forget the
nightmare of the past. That nightmare included the biography of
Might which was then the main feature of the European text-book.
They threw it overboard as soon as they were well outside of the
mouth of the Elbe or the Mersey. Settled upon the farms of Michigan
and Wisconsin, they sometimes taught their children the songs of the
old Fatherland but its history never. After two generations, this
migration—the greatest of all “treks” since the 4th century—came to
an end. Roads had been made, canals had been dug, railroads had
been constructed, forests had been turned into pastures, the Indian
was gone, the buffalo was gone, free land was gone, cities had been
built, and the scene had been made ready for the final apotheosis of
all human accomplishment—civilization.
The schoolmaster has ever followed in the wake of the full
dinner-pail. He now made his appearance and began to teach.
Considering the circumstances he did remarkably well. But he too
worked under a disadvantage. He was obliged to go to New England
for his learning and for his text-books. And the historian of the
Boston school, while industrious and patient, was not entirely a fair
witness. The recollection of British red-coats drilling on the Common
was still fresh in the minds of many good citizens. The wickedness of
George III was more than a myth to those good men and women
whose own fathers had watched Major Pitcairn as he marched forth
to arrest Adams and Hancock. They sincerely hated their former
rulers, while they could not deny their love for the old mother country.
Hence there arose a conflict of grave consequence. With one hand
the New England chronicler twisted the tail of the British lion. With
the other he fed the creature little bits of sugar.
Again the scene changed. The little red school-house had
marched across the plains. It had followed the pioneer through the
passes of the Rocky Mountains. It had reached the shores of the
Pacific Ocean. The time of hacking and building and frying with lard
came to a definite end. The little red school-house gave way for the
academy of learning. College and University arose wherever a
thousand people happened to be together. History became a part of
the curriculum. The schoolmaster, jack of all learned trades and
master of many practical pursuits, became extinct. The professional
historian made his appearance. And thereby hangs a sad tale which
takes us to the barren banks of the Spree.
Ever since the Thirty Years War, Germany had been the
battlefield of Europe. The ambitions of the Napoleon who was four
feet tall and smooth shaven and the prospective ambitions of the
Napoleon who was five feet tall and who waxed his moustachios,
had given and were actually giving that country very little rest. The
intelligentsia of the defunct Holy Roman Empire saw but a single
road which could lead to salvation. The old German State must be
re-established and the kings of Prussia must become heirs to the
traditions of Charlemagne. To prove this point it was necessary that
the obedient subjects of half a hundred little potentates be filled with
certain definite historical notions about the glorious past of Heinrich
the Fat and Konrad the Lean. The patient historical camels of the
Teutonic universities were driven into the heart of Historia Deserta
and brought back those stupendous bricks of learning out of which
the rulers of the land could build their monuments to the glorious
memory of the Ancestors.
Whatever their faults and however misguided the ambition of
these faithful beasts of burden, they knew how to work. The whole
world looked on with admiration. Here, at last, in this country of
scientific precision, history had been elevated to the rank of a
“Wissenschaft.” Carrying high their banners, “For God, for Country,
und wie es eigentlich dagewesen,” all good historians went upon a
crusade to save the Holy Land of the Past from the Ignorance of the
Present.
That was in the blessed days when a first-class passage to
Hamburg and Bremen cost forty-six dollars and seventy-five cents.
Henry Adams and John Lothrop Motley were among the first of the
pilgrims. They drank a good deal of beer, listened to many excellent
concerts, and assisted, “privatissime and gratis,” at the colloquia
docta of many highly learned Geheimräte, and departed before they
had suffered serious damage. Others did not fare as well. Three—
four—five years they spent in the company of the Carolingians and
the Hohenstaufens. After they had soaked themselves sufficiently in
Ploetz and Bernheim to survive the Examen Rigorosum of the
Hochgelehrte Facultät, they returned to their native shore to spread
the gospel of true Wissenschaftlichkeit.
There was nothing typically American in this. It happened to the
students of every country of the globe.
Of course, in making this point, we feel that we expose ourselves
to the accusation of a slight exaggeration. “How now,” the industrious
reader exclaims, “would you advocate a return to the uncritical days
of the Middle Ages?” To which we answer, “By no means.” But
history, like cooking or fiddling, is primarily an art. It embellishes life.
It broadens our tolerance. It makes us patient of bores and fools. It is
without the slightest utilitarian value. A handbook of chemistry or
higher mathematics has a right to be dull. A history, never. And the
professional product of the Teutonic school resembled those later-
day divines who tried to console the dying by a recital of the Hebrew
verb abhar.
 This system of preaching the gospel of the past filled the pulpits
but it emptied the pews. The congregation went elsewhere for its
historical enlightenment. Those who were seriously interested turned
to the works of a few laymen (hardware manufacturers, diplomats,
coal-dealers, engineers) who devoted their leisure hours to the
writing of history, or imported the necessary intellectual pabulum
from abroad. Others took to the movies and since those temples of
democratic delight do not open before the hour of noon, they spent
the early morning perusing the endless volumes of reminiscences,
memoirs, intimate biographies, and recollections which flood the land
with the energy of an intellectual cloaca maxima.
But all this, let us state it once more, did not matter very much.
When all is peace and happiness—when the hospitals are empty of
patients—when the weather is fine and people are dying at the usual
rate—it matters little whether the world at large takes a deep interest
in the work of the Board of Health. The public knows that
somewhere, somehow, someway, there exists a Board of Health
composed of highly trained medical experts. They also appreciate
from past experiences that these watchful gentlemen “know their job”
and that no ordinary microbe can hope to move from Warsaw to
Chicago without prompt interference on the part of the delousing
squad. But when an epidemic threatens the safety of the community,
then the public hastens to the nearest telephone booth—calls up the
Health Commissioners and follows their instructions with implicit
faith. It demands that these public servants shall spend the days of
undisturbed health to prepare for the hour of sickness when there is
no time for meditation and experiment.
The public at large had a right to expect a similar service from its
historians. But unfortunately, when the crisis came, the scientific
historical machine collapsed completely.
In Germany, the home country of the system of historische
Wissenschaftlichkeit, the historian became the barker outside the
Hohenzollern main tent, shouting himself hoarse for the benefit of
half-hearted fellow citizens and hostile neutrals, extolling the
ancestral Teutonic virtues until the whole world turned away in
disgust. In France, they arrange those things better. Even the most
unhealthy mess of nationalistic scraps can be turned into a palatable
dish by a competent cook of the Parisian school. In England, the
historian turned propagandist, and for three years, the surprised
citizens of Copenhagen, Bern, and Madrid found their mail boxes
cluttered with mysterious bundles of state documents duly stamped,
beautifully illustrated, and presented (as the enclosed card showed)
with the compliments of Professor So-and-so of Such-and-such
College, Oxford, England. In Russia, a far-seeing government had
taken its measures many years before. Those historians who had
refused to be used as cheval de bataille for the glory of the house of
Romanoff, were either botanising along the banks of the Lena or had
long since found a refuge in the universities of Sofia and Geneva. I
do not know what happened in Japan, but I have a suspicion that it
was the same thing, the entire world over.
The historian turned apologist. He was as useful as a doctor who
would show a partiality to the native streptococcus on the grounds of
loyalty to the land of his birth.
What happened on this side of the ocean after the first three
years of “peace without victory” had given place to “force to the
uttermost” is too well known to demand repetition. Long before the
first American destroyer reached Plymouth, the staunch old vessel of
history had been spurlos versenkt in the mare clausum of the
Western hemisphere. Text-books were recalled, rehashed, and
revamped to suit the needs of the hour. Long and most deservedly
forgotten treatises were called back to life and with the help of
publishers’ blurbs and reviews by members of the self-appointed
guardians of national righteousness they were sent forth to preach
the gospel of domestic virtue. Strange encyclopædias of current
information were concocted by volunteers from eager faculties. The
public mind was a blank. For a hundred years the little children had
learned to dislike history and grown-ups had revaluated this
indifference into actual hate. This situation had been created to
maintain on high the principles of scientific historical investigation.
Let popular interest perish as long as the Truth stand firm. But in the
hour of need, the guardians of the Truth turned gendarmes, the
doors of Clio’s temple were closed, and the public was invited to
watch the continuation of the performance in the next moving-picture
house. At Versailles the curtain went down upon the ghastly
performance.
After the first outbreak of applause the enthusiasm waned. Who
had been responsible for this terrible tragedy? The supposed
authors were branded as enemies of mankind. Nations tottered and
ancient Empires crumbled to dust and were hastily carried to the
nearest historical scrapheap. The ambitious monarch, who for thirty
years had masqueraded as a second Charlemagne, made his exit
amidst properties borrowed from the late King Louis Philippe. The
gay young leader of the Death Head Hussars developed into the
amateur bicycle-repairer of the island of Wieringen. International
reputations retailed at a price which could only be expressed in
Soviet rubles and Polish marks and no takers. The saviour of the
world became the invalid of the White House. But not a word was
said about those inconspicuous authors of very conspicuous
historical works who had been the henchmen of the Oberste and
Unterste Kriegsherren. They went back to the archives to prepare
the necessary post-mortem statements. These are now being
published at a price which fortunately keeps them well out of reach
of the former soldiers.
In certain dramas and comedies of an older day it was
customary to interrupt the action while the Chorus of moralising
Villagers reviewed what had gone before and drew the necessary
conclusions. It is time for the “goat-singers” to make their
appearance.
“Are you, O Author,” so they speak, “quite fair when you
pronounce these bitter words? Are we not all human—too human? Is
it reasonable to demand of our historians that they shall possess
such qualities of detached judgment as have not been seen on this
earth since the last of the Mighty Gods departed from High
Olympus? Has a historian no heart? Do you expect him to stand by
and discuss the virtues of vague political questions, when all the
world is doing its bit—while his children are risking their lives for the
safety of the common land?”
 And when we are approached in this way, we find it difficult to
answer “no.” For we too are an animated compound of prejudice and
unreasonable preferences and even more unreasoning dislikes, and
we do not like to assume the rôle of both judge and jury.
The evidence, however, gives us no chance to decide otherwise.
What was done in the heat of battle—what was done under the
stress of great and sincere emotions—what was written in the agony
of a thousand fears—all that will be forgotten within a few years. But
enough will remain to convince our grandchildren that the historian
was among those most guilty of creating that “state of mind” without
which modern warfare would be an impossibility.
Here the music of the flutes grows silent. The Chorus steps back
and the main action of our little play continues. The time is “the
present” and the problem is “the future.” The children who are now in
the second grade will be called upon to bear the burden of a very
long period of reconstruction. America, their home, has been
compared to an exceedingly powerful and influential woman who is
not very popular but who must not be offended on account of her
eminent social position. The folk who live along our international
Main Street are not very well disposed towards a neighbour who
holds all the mortgages and lives in the only house that has
managed to survive the recent catastrophe. It will not be an easy
thing to maintain the peace in the neurasthenic community of the
great post-war period. It has been suggested that the Ten
Commandments, when rightly applied, may help us through the
coming difficulties. We beg to suggest that a thorough knowledge of
the past will prove to be quite as useful as the Decalogue. We do not
make this statement hastily. Furthermore, we qualify it by the
observation that both History and the Decalogue will be only two of a
great many other remedies that will have to be applied if the world is
to be set free from its present nightmare of poison gas and high-
velocity shells. But we insist that History be included. And we do so
upon the statement of a learned and famous colleague who passed
through a most disastrous war and yet managed to keep a cool
head. We mean Thucydides. In his foreword to the History of the
Peloponnesian War he wrote: “The absence of romance in my
history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be
judged by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past
as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of
human things, must resemble, if it does not reflect it, I shall be
content.”
When we measure out achievements in the light of this ancient
Greek ideal, we have accomplished very little indeed. An enormous
amount of work has been done and much of it is excellent. The great
wilderness of the past has been explored with diligent care and the
material lies, carefully classified, in those literary museums which we
call libraries. But the public refuses to go in. No one has ever been
able to convince the man in the street that time employed upon
historical reading is not merely time wasted. He carries with him
certain hazy notions about a few names, Cæsar and Joan of Arc
(since the war) and Magna Charta and George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln. He remembers that Paul Revere took a ride, but
whither and for what purpose he neither knows nor cares to
investigate. The historical tie which binds him to the past and which
alone can make him understand his own position in relation to the
future, is non-existent. Upon special occasions the multitude is given
the benefit of a grand historical pyrotechnic display, paid for by the
local Chamber of Commerce, and a few disjointed facts flash by
amidst the fine roar of rockets and the blaring of a brass band. But
this sort of historical evangelising has as little value as the slapstick
vespers which delight the congregation of Billy Sunday’s circus tent.
We live in an age of patent medicines. The short-cut to success
is the modern pons asinorum which leads to happiness. And
remedies which are “guaranteed to cure” are advertised down the
highways and byways of our economic and social world. But no such
cure exists for the sad neglect of an historical background. History
can never be detached from life. It will continue to reflect the current
tendencies of our modern world until that happy day when we shall
discontinue the pursuit of a non-essential greatness and devote our
energies towards the acquisition of those qualities of the spirit
without which human existence (at its best) resembles the proverbial
dog-kennel.
For the coming of that day we must be as patient as Nature.
Hendrik Willem Van Loon
 SEX

“The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.”

IN one of the popular plays of last season, a melodrama toned

up with snatches of satire and farce, the wife was portrayed as a
beaten dog heeling her master after he has crushed her down
across the table the better to rowel off her nose. Not until the would-
be mutilator was finally disposed of by an untrammelled Mexican did
the woman feel free to go to her lover, and even then she took little
or no satisfaction in the venture. As for the lover, he had to be
robbed of his pistol by the husband and shot at, and then—the
husband out of the way—threatened by the bandit with the loss of
the woman, before he felt free to take her. The two New Englanders
were made happy in spite of themselves—and in accordance with
the traditions or conventions of the audience.
To leave a husband for a lover is in theory un-American, unless
the husband gives a legal ground for divorce and the divorce is
secured. In several States cruelty is a legal ground, and so the
conjugal fidelity of the stage-heroine was perhaps overdrawn. But
the feeling that she was presumed to share with the audience—that
the initiative towards freedom in love should not come from her—is a
characteristic trait of American morality. If your husband is
unrestrainedly a brute or a villain, you may leave him, in fact it
behooves you to leave him, but if he is merely a bore, or perhaps a
man you like well enough as a friend, but only as a friend, you must
stay on with him in an intimacy where boredom readily becomes
aversion and mere friendliness, disgust. The fact that you do not love
a person is no reason at all, in American opinion, for not living as if
you did.
 This opinion or attitude is explicit in American divorce law. In
none of the States is divorce granted either by mutual consent or at
the desire, the overt desire, of either person. In fact collusion, as
mutual consent is called, is accounted a reason against granting
divorce, and desire for divorce on the part of one remains ineffectual
until the other has been forced into entertaining it. He or she must be
given due ground. Disinclination to intimacy is not of itself due
ground. You must express disinclination in a way so disagreeable
that he or she will want to get rid of you. The law sets a premium on
being hateful, declares indeed that in this case it is an indispensable
condition to not being miserable.
The grotesqueness, from either a social or psychological point of
view, would be too obvious to emphasize, if the implications of this
attitude towards divorce were not so significant of American attitudes
at large towards sex—attitudes of repression or deception. Of
deception or camouflage towards divorce there is one other
conspicuous point I should like to note. “Strictness of divorce” is
commonly argued to be protection of marriage for the sake of
children, since brittle marriage is destructive of the family life. It is
safe to say that from no contemporary discussion of divorce will this
argument be omitted; and it is equally safe to say that the rejoinder
that divorce laws should therefore discriminate between parents and
non-parents will, by the opponents of divorce, pass unheeded. That
this distinction should be so persistently ignored is accountable only,
it seems to me, on the ground of emotional self-deception. What else
but a covert emotional attitude could make tenable the irrationality,
and what else is that attitude but that joy in mating is of negligible
value, that sex emotion, if not a necessary evil, is at any rate a
negligible good, deserving merely of what surplus of attention may
be available from the real business of life? Indifference towards sex
emotion is masked by concern for offspring.
In France, we may note, this confusion between parenthood and
mating does not exist. The parental relation in both law and custom
is highly regulated, much more regulated than among English-
speaking peoples, but it is unlikely that it would be argued in France
that mating and parenthood were inseparable concepts. Unlikely,
because the French attitude towards sex differs so radically from the
Anglo-Saxon.
To the French, as to many of the Continental peoples of Europe,
sexual interest is normally to be kept stimulated, neither covered
over nor suppressed. And in this case stimulation is seen to depend
largely upon the factor of interrelation. Sex-facts are to be related to
other facts of life, not rigidly or a priori, as in the American view that
mating is inseparable from parenthood, but fluently and realistically,
as life itself moves and finds expression. And sex-facts in European
opinion are to be interrelated in a philosophy of sex. Failure to make
these interrelations, together with the attitude of suppression, seem
to me to be the outstanding aspects of the characteristically
American attitude towards sex.
There is no need in this post-Freudian day of dwelling upon the
effects of suppression of sex instinct or impulse. Suppression leads,
we are told, either to sublimation, in which case it is diversion, rather
than suppression, or it leads to perversion or disease. Unfortunately
sex-pathology in the United States has been given little or no study,
statistically. We have no statistical data of health or disease in
relation to the expression or suppression of sex instinct, and no data
on the extent or the effects of homosexuality or of the direction of the
sex impulses towards self. Opinion therefore becomes merely a
matter of personal observation and conclusion, observation of
individuals or small groups. My own conclusion or guess in regard to
perversion in this country is that part of the commonly observed spirit
of isolation or antagonism between the sexes, and part of the spirit of
competition between individuals, are associated with homosexual or
masturbatory tendencies which get expressed in varying degrees
according to varying circumstances. More particularly the lack of
warmth in personal intercourse which makes alike for American bad
manners and, in the more intellectual circles, for cheerlessness and
aridity is due, I think, to failure of one kind or another in sex relations.
I mean cultural failure, not merely individual failure.
May not some such theory of sex failure account also for that
herd sense which is so familiar a part of Americanism, and which is
not incompatible with the type of self-seeking or pseudo-
individualism of which American individualism appears to be an
expression? It is a tenable hypothesis that sexually isolated
individuals become dependent upon the group for stimulus, whether
of emotion or will, whereas persons in normal sex relations, although
they may contribute to the group or co-operate with it, remain
comparatively independent of it, finding stimulus in sex and its
sublimations.
If this theory is valid, we may expect to find a comparatively
large number of sex failures in those circles which are characterized
by what Everett Dean Martin has recently called crowd behaviour,
reform circles intolerant of other mindedness and obsessed by belief
in the paramountcy of their own dogma.

“Leur printemps sans jeunesse exige des folies,

Leur sang brûlant leur dicte des propos amers,
L’émeute est un remède à la mélancolie,
Et nous aurions la paix si leurs yeux étaient clairs,
Ou leur femme jolie.”

Were a set of tests for sex failure or sex fulfilment applied to the
more outstanding propagandists of this country, likewise, of course,
for comparative purposes, to an adequate number of non-
propagandists, the results might be of considerable significance. I
recommend the undertaking to the National Research Council in co-
operation with some organization for social hygiene.
Meanwhile in what measure propagandism of various sorts may
be a perversion of sex or a sublimation remains speculative; and in
applying theory one should be thoroughly aware that from the day of
Sappho and before to the day of Elizabeth Blackwell and after, even
to the Russian Revolution, sex failure of one kind or another, the kind
considered at the time most despicable, has commonly been
imputed to persons or groups disapproved of on other grounds or
reprobated. Some sublimation of sex in the United States there must
be, of course, not only, in propaganda movements, but in other
expressions of American culture, in American art and letters and
science, in philanthropy, in politics, finance, and business. By and
large, however, in all these cultural expressions does one see any
conspicuous measure of sex sublimation? Is not the concern
practical rather than devotional, a matter of getting rather than
giving, of self-advancement or family support rather than of interest
in ideas and their forms or in the values of taste or of faith?
Interest in impersonal subjects in general is not an American
trait. Personal concrete terms are the terms commonly used.
Americans, as we say, are not given to abstract thought or
philosophy. They are interested in facts as facts, not as related to
other facts. How expect of Americans, therefore, that kind of curiosity
about sex which leads to a philosophy of sex? Sex curiosity in
American life does not lead past curiosity about isolated facts, and
that means that it leads not to philosophy but to gossip and
pruriency. Not long ago I was talking with a woman about a common
acquaintance to whom I referred as singularly free through
sophistication and circumstance to please any man she liked. “What
do you mean? Have you heard any scandal about her?” snapped out
my companion, not at all interested in the general reflection, but avid
of information about illicit affairs.
Facts which are not held together through theory call for labels.
People who do not think in terms of relations are likely to be insistent
upon names. Labels or names for sex disposition or acts are, as a
matter of fact, very definite in the American vernacular. “Engaged,”
“attentive,” “devoted,” “a married man,” “a man of family,” “a grass
widow,” “a good woman,” “a bad woman”—there is no end to such
tags. Again, intimacy between a man and a woman is referred
definitely to the act of consummation, a sex relation is strictly
classified according to whether or not it is physically consummated.
In this attitude towards sex boundaries or captions may lie the
explanation, incidentally, of what is a constant puzzle to the
European visitor—the freedom of social intercourse allowed to the
youth of opposite sexes. Since consummation only constitutes
sexual intimacy in American opinion, and since consummation, it is
assumed, is utterly out of the question, why raise barriers between
boys and girls? The assumption that consummation is out of the
question is, by and large, correct, which is still another puzzle. To
this some clue may be found, I think, in our concluding discussion.
Fondness for captions and for the sort of classification that is so
likely to paralyze perception of the finer distinctions and to arrest
thought, are natural enough in a child, learning language and so
pressed upon by the multiplicity of phenomena that in self-protection
he must make rough classifications and remain unaware of much.
The old who are dying to life are also exclusive, and they, too, cling
to formulas. Is American culture in the matter of sex childish and
immature, as Americans imply when they refer to their “young
country,” or is the culture representative of the aged; are Americans
born old, as now and again a European critic asserts?
Such terms of age are figurative, of course, unless we take them
in a historical sense, meaning either that a new culture was
developed in this country—or rather that there were fresh
developments of an old culture—or that an old culture was
introduced and maintained without significant change. This is not the
place to discuss the cultural aspects of Colonial America, but it is
important to bear in mind in any discussion of merely
contemporaneous sex attitudes in this country the contributions of
European, and more particularly, English morality. Without recalling
the traditions of early Christianity or of English Puritanism, those
attitudes of ignoring or suppressing the satisfactions of the impulses
of sex to which we have referred were indeed incomprehensible and
bewildering—mere psychological interpretation seems inadequate.
But viewed as consequences of the sense of sin in connection with
sex, which was a legacy from Paul and his successors in English
Puritanism, interpretation is less difficult, and the American attitude
toward sex becomes comparatively intelligible—the attitude seen in
divorce and in the melodramas, and in the standardizing of sex
relations, in accordance with that most significant of Pauline dogmas
that marriage is the lesser of two evils, that it is better to marry than
to burn. Without the key of Paul and of the obscenities of the early
Christian Fathers how explain the recent legislation in Virginia
making it a crime to pay attention to a married man or woman, or
such a sermon as was recently preached somewhere in the Middle
West urging a crusade against the practice of taking another man’s
wife in to dinner or dancing round dances? “At a dinner of friends let
every man take his own wife on his arm and walk in to their seats
side by side at the dinner table to the inspiring music of ‘Onward
Christian Soldiers,’” urged the minister. As to dancing, whenever a
man is seen to put his arm around a woman who is not his wife, the
band should cease playing. I do not quote the words of the latter
injunction, as they are rather too indecent.
Turning from the historical back to the psychological point of
view—in one of those circles of cause and effect that are composed
now of cultural inheritance or tradition, now of psychological trend or
disposition—the American case of sex, whether a case of
adolescence or of senescence, may be said to present symptoms of
arrested development. Together with the non-realism of childish or
senile formula, there is here the kind of emotionalism which checks
emotional vitality and which is fed upon the sense of crisis; we may
call it crisis-emotion. Life at large, the sex life in particular, is
presented as a series of crises preceded and followed by a static
condition, and in these conventional times of crisis only, the times
when the labels are being attached, are the emotions aroused. In the
intervals, in the stretches between betrothal, marriage, birth,
christening, or divorce, there is little or no sense of change—none of
the emotions that correspond to changing relations and are
expressions of personal adjustment. The emotions of crisis are
statutory, pre-determined, conventionalized; neither for oneself nor
for others do they make any demands upon imagination, or insight,
or spiritual concern.
Here in this psychology of crisis is the clue—before mentioned—
to an understanding of the freedom allowed our youth, of “bundling,”
as the Colonials termed it, or, in current phrase, “petting.” In general,
“keeping company” is accounted one kind of a relationship,
marriage, another—one characterized by courtship without
consummation, the other by consummation without courtship.
Between the two kinds of relationship there is no transition, it is
assumed, except by convention or ritual. So inrooted is this social
attitude that the young cannot escape adopting it, at least the very
young to whom, at any rate, uncritical conservatism seems to be
natural. Indeed the taboo on unritualized consummation partakes
enough of the absolutism of the taboo, shall we say, on incest, to
preclude any risk of individual youthful experimentation or venture
across the boundary lines set by the Elders.
Given these boundary lines, given a psychology of crisis, all too
readily the sex relations, in marriage or out, become stale, flat,
colourless, or of the nature of debauch, which is only another aspect
of crisis-psychology. Sex relations perforce become limited to two
conventions, marriage and prostitution. Prostitute or wife, the
conjugal or the disorderly house, these are the alternatives. In
formulaic crisis-psychology there may be no other station of
emotional experiment or range of emotional expression.
That a man should “sow his wild oats” before marriage, and after
marriage “settle down,” is becoming throughout the country a
somewhat archaic formula, at least in so far as wild oats means
exposure to venereal disease; but there has been no change, so far
as I am aware, in the attitude towards the second part of the formula
on settling down—in conjugal segregation. The married are as
obtrusively married as ever, and their attitude towards persons of the
opposite sex as dull and forbidding. Few “happily married” women
but refer incessantly in their conversation to their husband’s opinion
or stand; and what devoted husband will fail to mention his wife in
one way or another as a notice of his immunity against the appeal of
sex in any degree by any other woman? Shortly after the war, a
certain American woman of my acquaintance who was travelling in
France found herself without money and in danger of being put off
her train before reaching Paris and her banker’s. She found a fellow-
countryman and told him her predicament. He was quite willing to
pay her fare; she was an American and a woman, but she was
informed firmly and repeatedly that her knight was a married man,
and besides, he was travelling with his business partner. Soon after I
heard this anecdote I happened to repeat it to a Chicago lawyer who
promptly joined in the laugh over the American man’s timidity. “Still, a
married man travelling can’t be too prudent,” he finished off.