All Posts Tagged With: "moore"
More on Moore
I was going to move on but Tom Hall made a post about SiCKO that I have to respond to, as I fear my previous post may be misleading. (No worries Tom, debate is healthy and no offense taken…)
Tom writes, “What John Pierson and Agnes Varnum get wrong in their separate pieces on Moore and his work is this earnest belief that documentary is reportage, that the ultimate goal of making a film and telling a story by way of documentary is somehow beholden to a literal presentation of events as they happened.”
For the record, I don’t believe that documentary is reportage. There is an expansive history of films that are called documentaries that use an equally expansive toolbox of technique and form. This wide spectrum of possibility is at once the form’s strength and weakness, for each piece must be approached on its own terms, not by some predefined rules of the form.
I’ve expressed admiration for Werner Herzog who continually espouses Truth over form, and I find myself aligned to some degree with this thinking. There are some films, even ones marketed as narrative/fiction (American Splendor comes to mind) that to me are more true than many documentaries. If I have an earnest belief, it is in media literacy, as in, some way to tease out elements of the form and to understand the point of view as well as the larger Truth.
Pierson’s Rant
Late Friday, I got a note from indieWIRE.com’s editor-in-chief Eugene Hernandez that a First Person letter by John Pierson to Michael Moore was posted. I went straight to it and was a bit puzzled by the nature of it. Pierson was at the SXSW screening of Manufacturing Dissent, as he is from Austin and appears in that film. He has been rather vocal in docs circles about how his students reacted to the “revelation” that Moore might not be the progressive he paints himself to be. But, as the minor ripples caused by Manufacturing Dissent have dissipated, and SiCKO is now out wide this weekend, it seems odd for Pierson, at this late hour, to admonish Moore to “get out of the damn way.” That train has already left the station, hasn’t it?
How do you feel about Michael Moore?
There was a lot of buzz going into SXSW about Manufacturing Dissent, a new documentary by Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine. They are doc filmmakers based in Toronto and the perception of the project, as intimated in John Anderson’s Feb. 25 article, “Michael & Them: Filmmakers Chase Moore,” in the NY Times, was that they are progressives yet the project would somehow expose Moore (as what, I’m not quite clear). The very idea seemed enough to irritate lefties who think that whatever might be bad about Moore, he does more good than harm in film and politics and shouldn’t be a target of progressives. Of course, the righties have been on to Moore for a long time and abhor the fact that he wields so much influence when he fictionalizes items in his films. They have tried unsuccessfully to discredit him by uncovering half-truths and fictional elements of his movies.
My position going into the film is that of a passionate advocate for media literacy: thinking critically when viewing any media; so while I tend toward progressive ideals, I also think that no media message is exempt from critique. What are the modes of production? How does the message influence our collective consciousness? Who is paying for the production? It doesn’t matter whether the media is Fox News or Michael Moore, I see them all as targets for critique.
Manufacturing Dissent
There is an unsettling sequence near the end of An Unreasonable Man, Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan’ biopic about Ralph Nader, where they show Nader’s 2000 campaign rally with famous Dems like Eddie Veder, Susan Sarandon, Bill Murray and Michael Moore out in support of Ralph as a candidate for president. I’m not quoting exactly as it’s been a couple of months since I last saw the film, but during the ‘00 scene, Moore is telling the audience to vote their conscience, that Nader is the conscientious choice. Later, in 2004, grasping for a Democratic victory, Moore tells an audience that they shouldn’t vote for Nader even if they feel like they should; that voters should vote against their conscience and go with the candidate they need to see win. That was when my Micheal Moore halo popped violently.
For others, it is and will be seeing Manufacturing Dissent, a new doc premiering at SXSW by Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk. There was an article in this week’s Times about the difficulty the filmmakers had in making a film that examines Moore and his muck-raking. The filmmakers where even throw out of an event by Moore’s sister. That is the kind of behavior we’ve come to expect from people who have something to hide, courtesy of Moore’s work in not so small ways.
It’s interesting how his politics and his use of the documentary form have somehow become intertwined with the documentary industry in such an integral way - with everyone commenting in the article how on one hand, he’s great for business, but that he partakes in some unethical practices which most would like to distance from documentary.
The old objective vs. subjective debate is never more alive than when examining his work, but for me it all goes back to media literacy - a movie is a movie, and just because a distributor or marketer of some stripe or another calls it a doc doesn’t mean you can suspend your brain at the door and trust that everything in it is true. Same goes for nightly news, or what you read in a newpaper. Fiction is crafted in so many ways, and every story has a point of view. But nevertheless, looking forward to March 10 at 9:30 PM>>
I'm really looking forward to this one and was excited to see the trailer posted, but it looks like the ...
Thanks for the feedback Mark, I'll keep that in mind :) 
Wow, that does look great!
More video, Agnes! I love when you post cool stuff like this! 
Right on! I thought the exact same thing when I read the times article. I think its also ...