I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 on Friday night. First of all, I’d like to say that I am happy that Michael Moore was able to enter popular culture, it’s good for an alternate viewpoint to make headlines. So I can respect him that much. And I liked Bowling for Columbine, even if I don’t entirely agree.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is the type of film that makes me re-think the meaning of “The Truth.” It was clear that he used A LOT of propaganda tactics (hurt children, long scenes of weeping/upset people, extensive stereotyping), which led me to wonder who this was directed at. As a fairly political and historical saavy person I picked these tactics out right away, and although I won’t say I was unaffected by them (some of those war pictures are heartbreaking), I knew exactly what he was doing. I also believe that he probably needed to do much of this, to get his message across he needed to show people upset, he needed to show horrible war footage of children being hurt. It made the film really impact the people watching it, makes them remember it, makes them really see what war does.
I don’t believe all the stereotyping was necessary however. You figure that this film was intended for “regular” people, right? So, they showed this montage of clips with the Bush’s shaking hands with various arab men wearing their traditional arab dress. In this montage, Moore made no attempt to identify these people, it was just a whole bunch of “Bush shakes hands with dark skinned men in middle eastern costumes, look how evil Bush is.” I couldn’t identify them, so how can other people? Oh I see, we’re saying that any dark skinned man in a kaffiyeh is automatically a bad guy who the Bushes shouldn’t be associated with. Isn’t that the sort of message that Moore shouldn’t be proliferating?
Then there was the list of countries who supported us in the invasion of Iraq. The message was that they were small, insignificant countries that didn’t have a military, and Moore chose to take stereotypical footage from each one and use it to describe them. COME ON NOW! Why not show cowboys killing indians for our military then? Oh right, this is propaganda. I think he would have been much more effective to show the real truth about these countries, rather than old stereotype footage. Old stereotype footage makes me feel like I’m being lied to and manipulated.
As for the “truth” of the whole thing, I don’t know. I’m not horribly shocked by any of what he presented. Money and power are ALWAYS somehow linked. What did we expect when we elected a big US oil guy for president? That he wouldn’t have business and personal ties to other big oil families in the world? I think some of what he presented was coincidence as well. Just because a company some of the top US officials are involved with stand to make a lot of money from a catastrophe doesn’t mean they were involved (this was never said, but for some reason I felt it was implied). And it seems Moore made the corporations look evil (by listing a few) simply because they stood to and intended to profit from the terrorism. What do you expect? They are huge wealthy companies, we live in a capitalist society, do we think they will be charitiable? To a point, sure, but there is a bottom line to look out for. I don’t blame them for holding conferences, the services they provide are needed, why not come together to talk about it? I guess that’s easy to spin into “Corporations get together to make money off Mr. Johnson’s death on 9/11!”
I gave up on The Truth. I won’t try to pull apart pieces of what Moore said. Just like any angle of this situation, Moore has spinned it to produce a result. He has his sources, Bush has his sources, the NBC has their sources, Al-Jazeera has their sources. How can I tell who is telling the truth? There are problems with all their methods of reporting. Everyone has an agenda and a starting place in their mind for how to report something. Even if I had the money and resources there is no way for me, or anyone, to know the whole Truth of the world today.
So while I continue to watch NBC w
orld news (which is pretty childish, but the best 6:30pm US pop media news) and BBC world news, and read various news articles from around the globe, I realize that The Truth is simply what I choose to piece together in my head. Different, often opposing, viewpoints that I must think about and sort out to form a picture of what seems to me to be the most plausible explaination. At least I can sleep at night knowing that my opinions are educated and I’m not some sheep who follows what I read/watch on my favorite program or from my favorite pop culture figure.
Did I like the film? Not really. But I do think it has it’s place, and I’m mostly happy that it was released.
We went up to the Poconos Saturday afternoon, just stayed the night really, but it was nice. Michael’s mother got to give him his birthday gifts (his actual birthday is on Tuesday) and she fed us yummie food. We watched “Secret Window” which they had rented. Was pretty boring and predictable, the idea of the film has been done MUCH better in other films. I suppose I can’t really say more without spoiling it. It passed the time though, I think the worst part is that a neighbor was over watching it with us, and she’s the type who loves to talk through movies “Oh my gosh, is he dead? do you think he’s dead, he’s probably dead, I bet he’s dead.” I wanted to slap her and tell her to shut up.
Yesterday we moved our bedroom furniture into the bedroom we painted recently, now we’re getting ready to paint the other one. I started to spackle last night. We did some grocery shopping and had subs for dinner while we watched Clerks. That movie never gets old.
Today… not so sure what I’ll do Michael has the day off. Maybe some reading. Maybe take a nice long walk around some of the trails if the weather decides to hold.
*wanders off*
