US Feature: The "I am an American" Project
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 6:12Pia Nottebaum writes for EA:
From Samuel Huntington's "Who Are We?" to the urgent appeal of Naomi Wolf's "The End of America", US commentators have reflected on 21st-century questions of democracy, multiculturalism, and national identity. Yet such debates take place largely at the level of elites, leaving out ordinary American citizens who have much to offer about the lived reality behind the phrase, “I am an American”.
Cynthia Weber set out on a journey across post-9/11 America in search of a deeper understanding of what it means to be a US American today. The outcome is 13 short documentary films and an alternative "I am an American" public service announcement, giving voice to ordinary citizens for whom the terrorist attacks of 2001 --- and their lingering aftermath --- live on in collective memory.
Considered together, these portraits also provide a sharp contrast to the idealised vision of Americanness frequently spun by media and politicians. Heartrending first-person testimonials reveal how the ongoing fear of terrorists and immigrants has betrayed America’s core values of fairness and equality, further weakened by polarising international and domestic responses.
Inspired by the Advertising Council’s famous Public Service Announcement (PSA) advertising campaign "I am an American", launched on 21 September 2001, Weber’s exploration of what it means to be an American goes far beyond mere notions of remembrance as she investigates the complexities of national identity, the meaning of citizenship, patriotism, culture and the politics of fear. She portrays US citizens of various ages, races, religions, and ethnicities with diverse and thought- provoking stories, such as:
*Saulito Arellano, the 8-year-old son of an undocumented Mexican immigrant mother
*James Yee, an US Muslim Army Chaplpain who was wrongly detained as a US enemy combatant
*Phil McDowell, who sought political asylum in Canada in protest of the US Army "stop-loss" order to return to Iraq
*“Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan, anactivist who attracted international media attention in 2005 for camping outside President George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch after her son had died in Iraq
*Chris Simcox, founder of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, which organises US civilian border patrols to discourage illegal immigration
The Board of the September 11 Memorial Museum has invited Weber to put the films in the museum’s permanent collection.
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