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Seeing Stars and Stripes

 

            Jennifer de Poyen was born in Canada but she is also American because of her father, so de Poyen is consider a binational citizen. de Poyen is an artist and scriptwriter. She works for the San Diego Union-Tribune as a dance and theater critic, and she is also a columnist. In the article "Seeing Stars and Stripes," she writes about people's response to the American flag before and after 9/11. To some Americans, the American flag represented possibility, freedom, and liberty, but to others it represented pain, alienation, and an object of advertisement to begin a true American.
             de Poyen as well as many Americans regarded the flag differently before 9/11. de Poyen saw the flag as an object that "had been the property of right-wing so-called 'patriots,' who had appropriated it to promote certain ideas of what it means to be American."(116). She saw it more like something the government would use to promote how a true American should be. Some Americans saw "the flag for what it is meant to represent: freedom, liberty, and possibility"(116). It brought hope for them and they felt protected by it. de Poyen says in the article that Paul Taylor stated,"'When you used to see a flag on a car, it usually meant a redneck"', for others it was just the American flag that were all supposed to cherish(117). After 9/11 some Americans began to change the way they viewed the American flag.
             After 9/11 the way people treated and responded to the flag changed in terms of new respect for the flag. de Poyen expressed that, "After the devastation of sept. 11, there was renewed interest [.], presumably for the same reason that there was renewed interest in the flag itself: as a locus for grief about the missing, the dead and the devastated; [.] as an expression of defiance in the face of fear and loathing for those who had attacked us, and would attack again", many Americans began to care more about the flag because it was a sign of solidarity they felt that they were supporting the family of those who died(117).


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