Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Fahrenheit 911. . . One week later
It was really quite amazing to see the dust being kicked up as Michael Moore's latest film was about to go public, more so because it was all pretty much coming from the right. Moore's film was being brutally demonized as shoddy propaganda by everyone from Matt Lauer on NBC to former liberal Chris Hitchens at Slate. The latter was particularly scathing--Hitchens wrote, "To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability."
This stuff has a way of permeating through the culture so much that even a lefty like myself went to the film last Friday expecting a good deal of polemic and Moore-style zingers that were more style than substance.
I was wrong. And we was duped, again!
Far from being over-the-top anti-Bush ranting (even lefty reviewers called it a "flawed masterpiece), Fahrenheit 911 was a great narrative. The greatest strength of the film was simply the way that Moore laid out the chronology of events, stories that we've by now all heard but in so many different contexts and time frames, and simply put them in order to tell his tale. To harsh on him for using footage of Bush preening and joking before announcing the start of his war is disingenuous. The nice wrap-up of his film (and I'll blow this for those who haven't yet seen it)is that it both starts and ends with all of the big players respectively prepping for and then concluding their performances. Without a commentary Moore communicates that really harsh truth, that it is just all "A Performance".
He also manages to spend a lot of time with wounded and dismembered American soldiers, something we see little of on the network news. He shows us proud family members of deceased servicemen who just want answers to questions of how and why that this government refuses to give. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, he reminds us of a universal truth: It is the poor people who fight wars. Especially in our modern era. He follows Marine recruiters who go to the 'poor' mall because they can do a lot better there than at the equally close 'upscale' mall.
The reality of warmaking is that it is taken up by the best connected and the most powerful who are trying to make themselves better connected and even more powerful. It's the poor shmoes from Flint, Michigan and Baghdad, Iraq who get to do the dying.
It was really quite amazing to see the dust being kicked up as Michael Moore's latest film was about to go public, more so because it was all pretty much coming from the right. Moore's film was being brutally demonized as shoddy propaganda by everyone from Matt Lauer on NBC to former liberal Chris Hitchens at Slate. The latter was particularly scathing--Hitchens wrote, "To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability."
This stuff has a way of permeating through the culture so much that even a lefty like myself went to the film last Friday expecting a good deal of polemic and Moore-style zingers that were more style than substance.
I was wrong. And we was duped, again!
Far from being over-the-top anti-Bush ranting (even lefty reviewers called it a "flawed masterpiece), Fahrenheit 911 was a great narrative. The greatest strength of the film was simply the way that Moore laid out the chronology of events, stories that we've by now all heard but in so many different contexts and time frames, and simply put them in order to tell his tale. To harsh on him for using footage of Bush preening and joking before announcing the start of his war is disingenuous. The nice wrap-up of his film (and I'll blow this for those who haven't yet seen it)is that it both starts and ends with all of the big players respectively prepping for and then concluding their performances. Without a commentary Moore communicates that really harsh truth, that it is just all "A Performance".
He also manages to spend a lot of time with wounded and dismembered American soldiers, something we see little of on the network news. He shows us proud family members of deceased servicemen who just want answers to questions of how and why that this government refuses to give. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, he reminds us of a universal truth: It is the poor people who fight wars. Especially in our modern era. He follows Marine recruiters who go to the 'poor' mall because they can do a lot better there than at the equally close 'upscale' mall.
The reality of warmaking is that it is taken up by the best connected and the most powerful who are trying to make themselves better connected and even more powerful. It's the poor shmoes from Flint, Michigan and Baghdad, Iraq who get to do the dying.
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