Retroactive Edits: 9/11, Television’s Popular Archive, and Shifting Popular Memory

Occasionally, significant events occur after a television show’s production and/or first airing that necessitate changes to the text in reruns, DVDs, and other distribution platforms like Netflix. This phenomenon was on display after 9/11, when shows including 24, Family Guy, Friends, The Simpsons, and others had full episodes and/or specific scenes cut from distribution. This phenomenon demonstrates how television’s popular archive is mutable, popular memory acts as a site of social and political struggle, and production, ancillary markets, official and unofficial distribution, the cultural standing of television and its genres, and other factors interact to determine which aspects of television’s past are available to the public at different moments