Whatever you think of Michael Moore — whether you love him, hate him, or (like me) believe that he’s an ingeniously captivating big-picture muckraker who can truly be great when he sticks to reality (which he often does), but is anything but great when he proves overly willing to bend it — few would deny that he’s the most prominent, incendiary, and headline-grabbing, the most influential feature documentary filmmaker of our time. (I would say that the other pre-eminent nonfiction Big Cheese is Ken Burns, who works on PBS in what is by now almost a form of his own.)
But who, exactly, does Michael Moore influence, and how? The conventional wisdom, which I’d pretty much bought for most of his career, is that a Michael Moore film — take, for instance, Bowling for Columbine (2002) — inevitably preaches to the converted, but that, in addition, it probably makes a number of converts as well, and that by showcasing an issue like gun control on a major, widescreen canvas (in the form of an immensely entertaining, audacious, and revealing movie), Moore ultimately helps to bring that issue to light.
My feelings about all this began to shift in the aftermath of Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). The movie was, at the time, the most present-tense and white-hot lightning rod of Moore’s career, an attack on a sitting president at a moment when many of the actions Moore was attacking were still warm. And so it was almost bound to provoke a counter-reaction as furious and vehement as the movie itself. In many ways, the film completed Moore’s evolution from controversial liberal-left filmmaker to scandalous leftist poster child in the new culture wars.
Here, though, is what started to nag at me. With Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore made one of his angriest but also his most recklessly sneering and brazenly propagandist films. He scored some sharp points, and he had a vengeful good time thumbing his nose at George W. Bush’s sins, but he also left himself open, more than usual, to the charge that he’d become a creator of factually slippery agitprop.
And that, in its way, was a gift — pure candy — to the embattled, spoilin’-for-a-showdown right wing. I can’t prove this, of course, but what my intuition told me at the time, and still tells me, is that when President Bush was re-elected less than six months after the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, one of the many reasons for his victory is that Michael Moore had won Bush more votes than he’d cost him. Moore may well have been preaching to the “progressive” choir, but in taking out the broad brush, he had alienated the cautious center, composed of voters who really don’t take to the notion of a filmmaker who’s a little too willing to mess around with, you know, the truth.
We now live in a Punch-and-Judy political culture. Sure, you can say that it was kicked off by the right wing — not just by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, but by the godfather of it all, Republican political operative Lee Atwater. He’s the one who proved, back in the 1980s, that you could get away with anything, even brazen lies, as long as they were crafted as cleverly prejudicial advertising bites. For years, folks on the left have defended Michael Moore, even in his excesses, by saying: You have to fight fire with fire. That is, if the folks on the right — Karl Rove, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. — are going to speak in a louder-than-life voice, are going to distort the issues in order to win the day, then there have to be voices on the other side who respond in kind.
The trouble is, it may ultimately be impossible to fight distortion with more distortion. If you do, then all you’re left with is a kind of pro wrestling mat of the mind in which one exaggerated, cartoon version of the truth squares off with another. The result may officially be a draw, but the real victor is…distortion. Cartoon thinking. The sheer loudness of the volume. What’s more (and this is what’s so insidious), a “draw” is always going to be, in effect, a victory for the forces who oppose “big government.” For if nothing ends up getting done, then they’ve effectively won. They’ve lodged a monkey wrench in the system.
How will Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, play in Peoria? I predict that some of it will go over well. Yet the movie, as I said in my review, is three-fifths of a great indictment. When Moore deals with the economic crisis by attacking the entire system of “capitalism,” throwing out the baby with the corrupt bathwater, he leaves himself open to the charge of a kind of knee-jerk anti-Americanism. And in doing so, I think it’s at least possible that he hands the right wing a weapon every bit as powerful as he wants his movie to be.
So what do you think? At this point, does Michael Moore truly influence people toward his own causes? Or, after 20 years of activist filmmaking, has he become the unintended, unacknowledged king of backlash?
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I just want to say, I don’t believe SICKO, SLACKER UPRISING, or this one are going to age well at all. If you think of the possible nightmare of where our planet is headed, aren’t these films becoming, ironically enough, lightweight?
This movie may become an entertaining afternoon for some and possibly inspire others, but in the end, bringing down Capitalism will take a man bigger and dumber than Michael Moore. And I agree with Justin, once the economy recovers, as it inevitably will, this will appear just another outdated attack on the “Man”.
SiCKO (2007) does NOT age… at least for now. Everything in there still applies today. A 2009 study on American Journal of Medicine shows that (1) 62% of all bankruptcies were linked to medical expenses, and (2) 80% of these people with “medical bankruptcies HAD HEALTH INSUARANCE at the time it happened (it was lower than 10% in the 80s). That is Moore’s point. If you think you are safe because you have medical insurance, think again! Michael Moore is Michael Moore. He just tells you real stories that you would not believe they could happen because you don’t want to believe they are happening. That, in a way, IS entertainment.
Iffy logic
Michael Moore is a hypocrite, pure and simple. He has declared that the rags-to-riches American dream must die, yet Moore (at one time an unknown who had to work for a living like the rest of us serfs) has a become a millionaire thanks to his films. So a blowhard like Moore is allowed to live the American dream but I’m not? Riiiight.
Do you think it is NOT work to get financing, produce, direct, write a documentary. A film doesn’t just magically appear. It’s about the way capitalism is being worked by the rich only for the rich. Ask your parents or grandparents how capitalism used to be.
WoW your logic is really just convoluted. His films don’t argue against people making money but rather people making money at the expense of others and taking advantage of the system. There’s a big difference between how he’s made his money(which isn’t as much as you think) and the CEOs of AIG.
Michael Moore may have some really good points, but I will never take to his “let me bash you over the head with how awful the situation I am uncovering is” film making. His angry words in the previews turn me off enough to have zero deisre to watch the rest of it. It isn’t a “left” thing either. I don’t like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for much the same reason. Hurling accusations and insulting the “other side” absolutely turns me off of whatever that person is saying. Free speech is great, but so is the freedom to turn the channel.
This.
Totally agree.
Agreed. We’ll never make any progress if both sides can’t compromise and collaborate. Attitudes like this don’t help the system. His harsh words towards capitalism make me wish that someone would put him on Elian’s raft and push him towards Cuba, see how he feels about capitalism then.
It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternative.
I like Moore. He is a sensationalist, and a truth stretcher, but he’s nowhere near the crazy right. Like the death panel people, the birthers, or that nutty a-hole Glen Beck boiling frogs on TV. Those people scare me. Moore is passionate, but he’s harmless compared to, say, Fox News, which is like a virus (or a cancer? Pervasive like cancer). He’s okay. His movies are interesting.
Agreed. Moore definitely goes a bit overboard at times, but at least he’s not stoking the fires of hate and anger and paranoia to the extreme degree Fox is.
And let’s be honest, even if Moore WAS more reasonable and measured, the right would still find a way to marginalize him.
Michael Moore is and idiot. So is Glenn Beck. So are the people who whoreship at either alter. The left and right both condemn the pundits on the other side and praise their own, hun=man nature I guess.
I prefer the movie “Stock Shock” which let the viewer decide how corrupt the stock market i
Great article, Owen!
oh i cant stand micheal moore. i don’t trust anyone who has to be so nasty to prove their points.
I really like Roger & Me, which no one discusses anymore. I am as liberal as you can get, but even I thought Farenheit 9/11 was a little over the top. So, I never saw Sicko.
I agree with everything you’re saying Owen. I absolutely loved Bowling for Columbine but was turned off by Fahrenheit 9/11 even though I agreed with some of what he was saying. From there on, it’s been downhill, and I don’t trust much of his content anymore; it’s okay to have bias and spin, but to deliberately distort the truth? I wish he’d return to the type of filmmaking he used to do.
I’ve always thought Michael Moore is an editorialist with a video camera. I dislike the way he plays with the truth to make his points. He’s closer to propaganda than actual reporting. I saw Roger and Me and that one was a nice little jab….. but in the 2000’s Mr. Moore should just get a Donkey tattooed on his cheek to show his affiliation. He has done one thing interesting: I used to think documentaries were objective, from him, at least, I know not to expect objectivity.
Good point. Watching his films has led me to believe that if a documentary is widely released, I’ll always take it with a grain of salt. I saw Religulous last year, and I still don’t know how I feel about it.
…….and I suppose you can say the same thing about Fox News….closer to propaganda than actual reporting ???
I can’t speak to Michael Moore’s influence, just my reaction to his films. I’ve always put about as much faith in a Michael Moore documentary as I do in a negative campaign ad. And though they are extremely well made negative campaign ads, I tend to tune them out the same way I do the ones on TV.
great article. I agree that the distortion doesn’t help anyone. It’s so bad on both sides that even people who care enough to try and figure out what’s going on can’t believe anything they read or hear. The prevailing attitude seems to be that as long as “my” side wins, the methods don’t matter. In the end, they all lose credibility, and Americans become even more apathetic because they know no one is telling the truth.
Never been here before. Great article. When you sacrifice truth in trying to acheive your ends, your ends will not stand atop the lies that prop them up. We need intellectuals not cartoons. Where are the Thomas Manns when we need them.
Micheal Moore is a great film maker and a purveyor of truth. Those who say his films are propaganda are those who believe all the right-wing lies. If what he says is so “untrue”, why are the 1% getting richer and the rest of you slobs just getting the crumbs…think about it.
Keep going Michael. To the above, please see ’sicko’ his most subtle and effective in his catalogue. Also mr. moore has repeatedly asked to be fact-checked by doubters at virtually every public forum. Let’s not add further distortion here folks.
Well said!