Introduction: Surveillance and Terror in Post-9/11 British and American Television

Abstract

This introductory chapter frames the purpose and scope of this book and explains the choices made in terms of the book's focus on British and American post-9/11 television programs about surveillance, social control, and terror and their relationship to earlier literary and popular narratives about these concerns. This chapter answers questions about the parameters of the book: Why focus on only U.S. and U.K. post-9/11 television? Why a historical approach to these programs? And, why state apparatuses of surveillance and control—specifically, the prison, the police, and the national intelligence agency? Along with elucidating these choices, this introductory chapter also addresses the theoretical framework used in subsequent chapters in terms of integrating television, surveillance, and textual studies.