Monday, July 12, 2004
Fair-and-Hyped 9/11
For those who correctly believe the above to be pretty much the worst blog post title ever, you would be well advised to stop reading right now.
So, for those of you who tire of reading reviews of Farenheit 9/11 by reviewers more lucid and eloquent than myself, I present you with my thoughts.
First of all, either the Cannes judges were just trying to make a political statement of some kind (in which case they could have just implemented a new category called something like "Worst Performance in Leading the Free World"), or they were subjected to an unusually weak crop this year, because of the three Moore movies I've seen (the others being Bowling for Columbine and Roger and Me), this was easily the worst. It was disjointed, harped on facts of questionable relevance, and came across as highly manipulative.
For example, who cares if the Bushes and the Saudi Royal family are tight? *All* rich oil families who also happen to govern nations are tight. I'll bet you could find some ties between the Saudi royals and the Roosevelts too, if you wanted to. Likewise, the community of American rich people is sufficiently small (and, inevitably, well-connected), that I'd wager that I could find as many suspicious looking ties between Clinton and businessfolk who benefitted from Democratic policy as Moore did with Bush.
As for manipulative, when you make a film featuring a woman who has lost a son in war, you can spin it pretty well however you like - Moore could just as easily put together a film that garnered support for the "War on Terror" by having the mother blame Al-Qaeda for her son's death. Therein lies the danger of using anecdotal evidence, which is why it's a favoured tool of propogandists and not of credible analysts.
But then it hit me, around the time that Tom Daschle was pledging his willingness to give Bush the authority he needed to fight the WoT. Michael Moore has always delighted in portraying the Democrats as Republicans-lite, and yet, in this movie, he acquiesces with a single clip of a single Democrat. Why? Because this film is propaganda - that is to say, its primary objective is neither to entertain nor inform, but to achieve a political aim, in this case the defeat of George Bush. So, rather than making a movie whose target audience is people who already agree with Moore, and featuring in it cerebral analysis of his point and well-documented evidence to back it up, he made a movie that uses all of the traditional tools of the propagandist, and which aims to make its case to the Great Unwashed. On some level, those conservative groups who are trying to get advertising for the film regulated as third party advertising in the Presidential election have got it right - Michael Moore is pulling out all the stops to get John Kerry elected, even if it means glossing over some facts, exaggerating others, and appealing to a region about a foot and a half south of his viewership's brains. Michael Moore is nothing less than the Joseph Goebbels of the American left.
Is this a bad thing? To those who view Moore as a beacon of truth in a murky world, yes. But really, Bush certainly has his share of propagandists in his corner, and in a political era of big money and simple messages, perhaps the best way to ensure that coverage is, in total, fair and balanced is to give each side the means to spout an equal amount of propaganda. If you know any Americans, make sure they see this movie.
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For those who correctly believe the above to be pretty much the worst blog post title ever, you would be well advised to stop reading right now.
So, for those of you who tire of reading reviews of Farenheit 9/11 by reviewers more lucid and eloquent than myself, I present you with my thoughts.
First of all, either the Cannes judges were just trying to make a political statement of some kind (in which case they could have just implemented a new category called something like "Worst Performance in Leading the Free World"), or they were subjected to an unusually weak crop this year, because of the three Moore movies I've seen (the others being Bowling for Columbine and Roger and Me), this was easily the worst. It was disjointed, harped on facts of questionable relevance, and came across as highly manipulative.
For example, who cares if the Bushes and the Saudi Royal family are tight? *All* rich oil families who also happen to govern nations are tight. I'll bet you could find some ties between the Saudi royals and the Roosevelts too, if you wanted to. Likewise, the community of American rich people is sufficiently small (and, inevitably, well-connected), that I'd wager that I could find as many suspicious looking ties between Clinton and businessfolk who benefitted from Democratic policy as Moore did with Bush.
As for manipulative, when you make a film featuring a woman who has lost a son in war, you can spin it pretty well however you like - Moore could just as easily put together a film that garnered support for the "War on Terror" by having the mother blame Al-Qaeda for her son's death. Therein lies the danger of using anecdotal evidence, which is why it's a favoured tool of propogandists and not of credible analysts.
But then it hit me, around the time that Tom Daschle was pledging his willingness to give Bush the authority he needed to fight the WoT. Michael Moore has always delighted in portraying the Democrats as Republicans-lite, and yet, in this movie, he acquiesces with a single clip of a single Democrat. Why? Because this film is propaganda - that is to say, its primary objective is neither to entertain nor inform, but to achieve a political aim, in this case the defeat of George Bush. So, rather than making a movie whose target audience is people who already agree with Moore, and featuring in it cerebral analysis of his point and well-documented evidence to back it up, he made a movie that uses all of the traditional tools of the propagandist, and which aims to make its case to the Great Unwashed. On some level, those conservative groups who are trying to get advertising for the film regulated as third party advertising in the Presidential election have got it right - Michael Moore is pulling out all the stops to get John Kerry elected, even if it means glossing over some facts, exaggerating others, and appealing to a region about a foot and a half south of his viewership's brains. Michael Moore is nothing less than the Joseph Goebbels of the American left.
Is this a bad thing? To those who view Moore as a beacon of truth in a murky world, yes. But really, Bush certainly has his share of propagandists in his corner, and in a political era of big money and simple messages, perhaps the best way to ensure that coverage is, in total, fair and balanced is to give each side the means to spout an equal amount of propaganda. If you know any Americans, make sure they see this movie.
