Bad Mercury Rising
Professional antagonist Michael Moore goes global in Fahrenheit 9/11
The Upside: Michael Moore doing what Michael Moore does best- stirring up trouble.
The Downside: Does the phrase "preaching to the choir" mean anything to you?
I fed the hungry and they called me a saint; I asked why they were hungry and they called me a communist.
-Anonymous
Michael Moore is, at heart, more interested in social rather than political justice. There is a reason why each of his films has, in some way, taken him back to his hometown of Flint, Michigan, a perfect picture of American corporate abandonment- at one point a resident humorously laments that Iraqi homes after the American invasion look as torn up as the ones in Flint, and it didn't take bombs to get the ones in Flint looking that way.
When Moore makes a movie like Fahrenheit 9/11 there are plenty of things that can be taken issue with. First, Moore will never fall under Fox News' laughable slogan, "Fair and balanced news." Just like any right-when ideologue such as Sean Hannity and Michael Savage who gets the notion to put their views into print, Moore has an agenda, he has a frame to his world view, so if you walk out crying that there is no objectivity then you really, really need to lie down and take a nap. Second, Moore's technique and his blind determination don't always make the message coming out ring true. As much as I admired this movie, I had to take issue with one moment that tried to make life in Iraq under the dictator Saddam Hussein seem tranquil. Absolutely, it may have been better than living in bombed-out homes and dodging car bombs, but let's let some reality soak in, okay? And just like Moore's previous film, Bowling for Columbine, Moore's mixture of go-for-the-throat rabble rousing and the almost Vaudevillian way he attacks his subjects has made him a hero to those who, if they haven't already come to the same conclusion as Moore, are only a short walk from it.
On their surfaces, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 are films about America's love affection with A) guns and B) George W. Bush. Some have gone as far as argue that Fahrenheit is nothing but a thinly glossed personal attack on Bush. They are right- it is, in a microcosm. However, both films, along with Moore's seminal Roger and Me, are angry rages at a stratified social and economic system in the United States. In Bowling he says that it is the "fear" that the media tries to instill in us of those living below the poverty lines that has made us feel the need to be one of the most heavily armed nations on Earth. Fahrenheit's view is deeper, more trenchant. It is from these ranks of the poor that we get people who have no other option but to work in service for this country, whether it be signing up for the military or working the drive-thru line at McDonald's. War in America, Moore argues, is an exercise conceived by the rich to be carried out by the poor. Think he's off base? During one scene Moore and a Marine recruiter travel to D.C. and visit the Capital, where only one member out of over 500 has a child serving in Iraq. He stops senators and congressmen asking if they believe so much in both the United States' mission in Iraq and the noble sacrifice of military service, would they consider convincing their own children to sign up and go over there? The way Moore is brushed off over and over again says more than any full-length commentary in an op-ed page could. At the same time, he follows another pair of recruiters who stake out a mall in the impoverished section of Flint, pouncing on potential candidates for service, and then mocking them behind their backs.
There is no doubt of what Moore's feelings on Bush are, however, they can be attributed less to Moore's disagreement with Bush's policies (which he, no doubt, does in spades) than to Moore's picture of him as a self-serving social hypocrite who cares nothing about the common people he claims to represent. He lauds the men and women in uniform at the same time he cuts their salaries by 30%. He is infamous for his cries that he is the victim of a leftist elite, yet in one scene we see him giving the toast at a party of big money contributors, saying "What we have here are the haves and the have-mores! Some people would call you elite- I call you my base." And then look at the almost surreal moment when, standing on a golf course (which, through the course of this movie seems to become a consistent backdrop for the man) he says, "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now, watch this drive." If anyone still thinks that Bush is not a boy-king who has lived the sheltered life of a rich man's son, ask yourself one question: Do you honestly believe he would be where he is now if he had the same sort of beginnings as Bill Clinton? Don't all raise your hands at once.
The reason I most like Fahrenheit 9/11, and the reason for the rating I give it, comes not only in my evaluation of the film itself (it is flawed, definitely), but from the reassuring fact that it exists. More and more I am amused by neo-conservatives who trot out their tired line of "It is war! We need to stand behind the President!" Of course, this didn't stop the impeachment talk and Lewinsky jokes when Clinton was in office. What is it you say? We weren't at war then? Oh, well I guess having troops in and bombing Bosnia doesn't count, along with missions in Somalia, the bombing of the USS Cole, two American embassies destroyed in Africa... Moore may be a little bit of a loose screw, not all of his facts may line up, but he provides the valuable service of getting us to ask questions we normally wouldn't ask, talk about things we normally would be afraid to talk about. He is the kind of muckraker who, if we never had, we would still be sending our 8-year-old children to work and making pennies per hour on the job. They say the price of freedom is eternal vigilance- and it is people like Moore who keep everyone on their toes. A-