EVENT
FAHRENHEIT 9/11
and
MICHAEL MOORE
I don’t believe in judging something prematurely, or rather, I think judgment should be restrained in proportion to firsthand knowledge.
Still, so many issues of importance to me are brought to bear in both this particular film and in Michael Moore’s career as a whole.
Let me summarize my take on Moore so far.
Flint made his career. Even though his projects have each been more successful than the last, it was Roger and Me that “launched” him. It also made him despised by not only conservatives, but most of Flint’s socially conservative Democrats.
As Andrew Heller beautifully states: “it could be that he’s not even aware that half the people around here resent the psychological and economic impact “Roger & Me” has had. (It’s an arguable point: Did the movie in part cause GM – which certainly is capable of corporate resentment – to move more jobs out of town and fewer in?)”
As a senior in high school, Moore was described to me as a deceptive, manipulative, self-serving ego-maniac (with little justification for such pride) who dumped on one of America’s third-world cities; his own city, profited from it, and flew to greener pastures. Gee… kind of like GM.
And as a senior in high school, I more-or-less hated the man and his movie before I had seen either.
Roger and Me is beyond manipulative and biased; it is often incorrect and occasionally flagrantly deceptive. Events are depicted out-of-context and sometimes years out of order… the layoffs Moore examines were spread out over a decade, not three years… many of the failed initiatives and civic projects were conceived, funded, and even executed prior to major GM withdrawal. This is all true.
After seeing the damn film five times in four years, however, I began to see another side. I began to make concessions that didn’t forgive its faults, but mitigated them. His inexperience and lack of mature collaboration, his limited resources, and his lack of formal training all played a part. However, one concession trumped the others: the film’s intended scale.
What most critics of Roger and Me failed to consider was that it was never intended for a national audience. Roger and Me, while he certainly drove it as far as it would go, was filmed primarily to galvanize and unify progressive unionists (a dying breed) in Michigan. This audience would’ve been familiar with the liberties Moore was taking… they would’ve felt the emotional punch his rhetorics inspire, but attached relatively little importance to when AutoWorld was built, or what Anita Bryant really thought about homosexuals.
This fact alone, I believe, forgives much of Roger and Me.
I still dislike the film.
I am convinced it has injured Flint in both tangible and intangible ways.
I am also convinced its flaws were more a product of error than malice.
Bowling for Columbine struck me with another truth about Moore’s career. His maturation and precision as a documentarian must be accelerated by his growing popularity.
I commented in an email today: ‘While many people seized upon the credibility problems for Bowling for Columbine, I was thinking, “wow, this is such an improvement over Roger and Me. It’s much more objective and balanced.”‘
The fact that so much of his audience that had accepted Roger and Me unconditionally objected to comparative trifles (eg. the presentation of homicide statistics as raw numbers and not per capita) astounded me. I realized not only that Flint was truly disenfranchised and in cultural isolation, but more importantly, that people tend to observe both politics and history globally, not locally.
My sense (and hope) is that Moore realizes this as well. A subject of national prominence may attract more attention, but with more attention comes additional scrutiny.
In the last year-and-a-half (ever since that weird oscar acceptance speech) he’s been more serious, direct, and rigorous than I’ve ever seen him.
Fahrenheit 9/11 might not disappoint me in this regard.
A New York Times article on the subject reads: “He also hired outside fact-checkers, led by a former general counsel of The New Yorker and a veteran member of that magazine’s legendary fact-checking team, to vet the film. And he is threatening to go one step further, saying he has consulted with lawyers who can bring defamation suits against anyone who maligns the film or damages his reputation.”
So what are my feelings on Fahrenheit 9/11 going in?
I have high hopes.
And what are my feelings for Michael Moore?
He means well.
He’s gotten a lot better.
Some day I’d like to meet the most fascinating personality to make it big from my home shithole.
Anything else?
Yes.
Moore’s critics have a tendency to, as Moore himself has said, not see the forest for the trees.
This makes sense; his critics have always been at their strongest there. It’s easy to argue that some one is devious, is manipulative, plays to the lowest common denominator… is fat. We’ve mastered this by the age of eight… it’s a capable defense that we can always fall back upon, and Moore makes himself vulnerable.
The challenge I’d give to my conservative friends, and the challenge I’d give to myself in 12th grade is this:
FORGET ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK OF MICHAEL MOORE.
IS WHAT HE’S SAYING TRUE?
Did Bush and his administration deceive us?
Did they deceive us?
Did they deceive us?
Did they deceive us?
That is the more important question.
One that affects us far more than whether or not this one filmmaker happens to be an asshole.
~ Connor