[Reader-list] F-9/11...

[sanjay ghosh]

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Subasri's comments on Fahrenheit 9/11 echo my own thoughts on the film when I first saw it a month ago. I think most of us  expect a 'certain' kind of film to win the Palme d'Or. Even compared to Moore's previous effort Bowling for Columbine, this one is a poorer film. Innumerable academics have done a superior job articulating the issues at the heart of Fahrenheit 9/11. Yet what Moore does with his films and books is that he takes these issues to that vast American audience indifferent to an academic tone of argument. An audience 'protected' from dissenting information within a 'free' society structure.

Much is made of the stoic resolve of the Vietnamese not holding a grudge against the American public even after the butchering of 1.5 million people. Chomsky has often said that on the basis of their actions every post WWII American President can be tried for war crimes. Chomsky has maintained his rant for close to five decades now, yet how many outside the academic world are familiar with his writings. This 'vegetable' mass of America which acts as a fig leaf for the US authorities needs to be reached. Michael Moore reaches them in a language they understand, from a point of view they are likely to consider. The 'Idiot' is popular not because of his intellectual chops. Unsettling him necessitates a 'folksy' discourse which academics shun like cancer.

Fact that Disney won't distribute it says a lot about how much Fahrenheit 9/11 bothers a section of the American establishment. Stupid White Men was on NYT's bestseller list for months but never reviewed. An 'improper' political documentary breaking US box office records is a huge phenomenon - with potential indirect benefits for the rest of the world.

regards,
Sanjay

PS : I think this article from the Guardian articulates these matters much better ...


The beginning of history 

Fahrenheit 9/11 has touched millions of viewers across the world. But could it actually change the course of civilisation? 

John Berger
Tuesday August 24, 2004
The Guardian 

Fahrenheit 9/11 is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event. Most commentators try to dismiss the event and disparage the film. We will see why later. 

The artists on the Cannes film festival jury apparently voted unanimously to award Michael Moore's film the Palme d'Or. Since then it has touched many millions across the world. In the US, its box-office takings for the first six weeks amounted to more than $100m, which is, astoundingly, about half of what Harry Potter made during a comparable period. Only the so-called opinion-makers in the media appear to have been put out by it. 

The film, considered as a political act, may be a historical landmark. Yet to have a sense of this, a certain perspective for the future is required. Living only close-up to the latest news, as most opinion-makers do, reduces one's perspectives. The film is trying to make a small contribution towards the changing of world history. It is a work inspired by hope. 

What makes it an event is the fact that it is an effective and independent intervention into immediate world politics. Today it is rare for an artist to succeed in making such an intervention, and in interrupting the prepared, prevaricating statements of politicians. Its immediate aim is to make it less likely that President Bush will be re-elected next November. 

To denigrate this as propaganda is either naive or perverse, forgetting (deliberately?) what the last century taught us. Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast. Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite. 

This single maverick movie is often reflectively slow and is not afraid of silence. It appeals to people to think for themselves and make connections. And it identifies with, and pleads for, those who are normally unlistened to. Making a strong case is not the same thing as saturating with propaganda. Fox TV does the latter; Michael Moore the former. 

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events. It's a tricky question because two very different types of power are involved. Many theories of aesthetics and ethics revolve round this question. For those living under political tyrannies, art has frequently been a form of hidden resistance, and tyrants habitually look for ways to control art. All this, however, is in general terms and over a large terrain. Fahrenheit 9/11 is something different. It has succeeded in intervening in a political programme on the programme's own ground. 

For this to happen a convergence of factors were needed. The Cannes award and the misjudged attempt to prevent the film being distributed played a significant part in creating the event. 

To point this out in no way implies that the film as such doesn't deserve the attention it is receiving. It's simply to remind ourselves that within the realm of the mass media, a breakthrough (a smashing down of the daily wall of lies and half-truths) is bound to be rare. And it is this rarity which has made the film exemplary. It is setting an example to millions - as if they'd been waiting for it. 

The film proposes that the White House and Pentagon were taken over in the first year of the millennium by a gang of thugs so that US power should henceforth serve the global interests of the corporations: a stark scenario which is closer to the truth than most nuanced editorials. Yet more important than the scenario is the way the movie speaks out. It demonstrates that - despite all the manipulative power of communications experts, lying presidential speeches and vapid press conferences - a single independent voice, pointing out certain home truths which countless Americans are already discovering for themselves, can break through the conspiracy of silence, the atmosphere of fear and the solitude of feeling politically impotent. 

It's a movie that speaks of obstinate faraway desires in a period of disillusion. A movie that tells jokes while the band plays the apocalypse. A movie in which millions of Americans recognise themselves and the precise ways in which they are being cheated. A movie about surprises, mostly bad but some good, being discussed together. Fahrenheit 9/11 reminds the spectator that when courage is shared one can fight against the odds. 

In more than a thousand cinemas across the country, Michael Moore becomes with this film a people's tribune. And what do we see? Bush is visibly a political cretin, as ignorant of the world as he is indifferent to it; while the tribune, informed by popular experience, acquires political credibility, not as a politician himself, but as the voice of the anger of a multitude and its will to resist. 

There is something else which is astounding. The aim of Fahrenheit 9/11 is to stop Bush fixing the next election as he fixed the last. Its focus is on the totally unjustified war in Iraq. Yet its conclusion is larger than either of these issues. It declares that a political economy which creates colossally increasing wealth surrounded by disastrously increasing poverty, needs - in order to survive - a continual war with some invented foreign enemy to maintain its own internal order and security. It requires ceaseless war. 

Thus, 15 years after the fall of communism, a decade after the declared end of history, one of the main theses of Marx's interpretation of history again becomes a debating point and a possible explanation of the catastrophes being lived. 

It is always the poor who make the most sacrifices, Fahrenheit 9/11 announces quietly during its last minutes. For how much longer? 

There is no future for any civilisation anywhere in the world today which ignores this question. And this is why the film was made and became what it became. It's a film that deeply wants America to survive. 

· John Berger is a novelist and critic 

On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 Subasri Krishnan wrote :
>Hi,
>
>In all my years that i have been coming to Sarai (however sporadic!),
>I have never seen the kind of crowd that i saw yesterday to watch a
>film (or anything for that matter). Few random, not really
>well-thought out thoughts...
>
>I am not going get into the number of things the film does not address
>or the fact that it fails to make linkages between a complex set of
>realities.
>To say that its a simplistic film meant for an American audience is I
>think a fair assessment of the film, yet there are a few glaring
>ommissions that one can't help but notice. The crux of the film is the
>War against Iraq that the Bush regime started. What Moore fails to
>address is the fact that the American administration had already been
>waging a war against Iraq for over a decade through sanctions.
>Thousands of Iraqis had already been dying, and this when a Democrat
>was the President! You don't need to go blow someone's head off to
>kill someone...'Operation Destroy Iraq' was set in motion much before
>'the idiot' (as we all love to call him) decided to bomb the
>country...but there is no admission of that even once in the film. The
>other thing that bothered me about the film was the way it ended - the
>glorification of the 'men who give up their lives for us' (the
>Americans). I mean how different is it from a Speilberg film? You know
>this belief system that individuals are doing what they have to do -
>its their job and they are doing it courageously under the given
>circumstances. And as Robert Jensen rightly points out in his article
>there is no representation of any non-white people who are part of
>peaceful resistance in the US. After watching the film i was left with
>the same feeling i had after i read his much touted book (Stupid White
>Men) - that after a point, Moore's gimmicks and rationale (if one can
>call it that) borders on the ridiculous!
>
>I have been talking about the film with my friends since yesterday and
>i am constantly told that its a 'campaign film', and that it should be
>seen in that frame of reference...and that the point of the film is to
>get The Idiot out of power. But seriously I don't see what difference
>it's going to make. I am sure most of you have thought about this -
>but really how is Kerry going to be any different? And hence, i can't
>engage with it just as a 'campaign film' and ignore what I think are
>glaring blunders (i use that word for the lack of a better one). Sure
>I want The Idiot to never come back to power, and maybe this film
>might play a part in making sure that happens. But then what??? That
>is a question that Moore never bothers to address!
>
>cheers
>subasri
>PS:Christopher Hitchens ('journalist-historian', former Trotskyite,
>current poster boy for the neo-conservatives and one of the champions
>of the War in Iraq) has written a review of the film. The review is
>virulent at the best of times and I recognize that Hitchens has his
>own agenda in trashing the film...but it might be worth a read:
>http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/
>
>PPS: Having said what a lot of people have already
>said/written/thought about, i loved watching the film. It was
>thoroughly entertaining. Moore should think about directing a feature
>film in Hollywood someday!!!
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