After reading all the commentary, I decided to watch Farenheit 911 again so as to allow me a chance to reflect more deeply. Partisan politics aside, what does this movie signify?
Simply put, this movie is political discourse in screen format, nothing more and nothing less. The movie basically breaks down into two segments, each aligned with the expectations of a television audience. The first contrasts the investigation of the 9/11 criminal case with the television culture's image of tough investigative work. This is first implied and then presented openly using a Dragnet segment.
The rest of the movie uses the familiar techniques of television newscasting, which is to say, it relies heavily on edited film footage and personal narrative. There is a certain irony here, since the network news has conditioned us to accept discussion of current events in such a format, even though our society supposedly disdains the anectdotal in favor of the statistic/scientific model for knowing the truth.
Throughout, a musical soundtrack plays -- a convention that no longer strikes anyone as strange or manipulative, even though the obvious purpose is always to raise emotional response at the expense of cognitive response.
One cannot discuss Moore's movie intelligently without recognizing that it is an example of "TV politics." This genre includes television newscasting, photo ops, staged political events aimed at the cameras (including those staged by the politicians and those staged by demonstrators), and even the print and radio content that has come to imitate and compete with such television events.
Note that it is very difficult to ARGUE with any of these sorts of things. You can whine that the TV news failed to show other events that day, but that is a losing battle because viewers SEE the events that were shown, and seeing is believing. You can fume that experts have stage managed and scripted to create an image of newsmakers that has little to do with the truth, but SEEING undercuts such critical thinking. You can poke holes in the details, but viewers's emotions are barely affected by such logic -- and, where humor is used, any criticism makes the critic appear to simply not get the joke.
For this reason, critics of Moore's film are in an unenviable position. The incorrect details have little to do with the overall impression. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves, and how can you argue with things viewers can SEE?
This effectively reduces the critics to calling Moore names, because their best hope is to convince people not to go see the movie. If people watch Fox News and its pictorial perspective of the world, they are going to see the world through Fox's eyes. If I don't want that to happen, I need to call Fox names, in the hope that my listener won't tune in.
This turns democratic principles on their head. The concept of the population being sovereign is based in a belief in the open marketplace of ideas. If people are exposed to competing ideas, they will intelligently select the best ones -- best for themselves, and best for their nation. If one does not believe this, how can one justify democracy? The alternative is mere superstition -- that the vote just magically leads our country in the right direction. Now, rather than present a better idea, I would be well advised to simply persuade you to not look at the other side's case
This, then is the problem with Moore and Limbaugh and Savage... and Fox and CBS... No, that's not fair... Rather than personalize it, this is what is wrong with the screen style of political discourse. It presents an essentially visual, anecdotal argument that does not invite counter-argument and the mutual understandings that come from argument. Rather this kind of political discourse invites name calling, and retaliation, in kind. We all bemoan so-called "negative" politics, but it is very difficult to argue with screen style political content, so the natural response to the other guy's message is to look to get even.
That is what Moore's movie is -- an eye for eye, so to speak. Bush, Fox, Limbaugh et al have presented one side using the entertainment format. As Moore points out in his movie, the left does not feel that the other major networks have provided a meaningful counterweight. So Moore has presented a more liberal perspective in a similar entertainment format.
From where I sit, the right's response goes something like this: Hey, public, you already know we are correct from the clever visual images we have fed America, so please act on your foolish sureness by not even looking at the clever visual images that Moore wants to feed America.
It helps to notice what Moore's opponents are NOT doing:
When Moore shows a close financial connection between the Bin Laden clan and Presdient Bush, the right does not flatly claim that it is not true, and they don't claim that although true it is justifiable -- logically speaking, the only two defenses. That is just as well, because, movie aside, those financial connections exist as a matter of fact. President Bush himself said so during the 2000 campaign. Further, the right may believe that those business ties are justifiable (unfettered rights of business, and all) but they are not going to commit political suicide by saying so. Rather, they mainly argue that their images are stronger -- the flags, the heroic man standing at ground zero, the aircraft carrier, etc. all say that this is a patriotic president, and the right mostly rests its case. (There are other silly statements about oil not being worth enough to invade for, and that the blacked out name doesn't prove much -- but both of these are side issues meant to distract, and totally miss the point.)
Similarly, notice what Moore himself is NOT doing:
Moore devotes a great deal of time to the recruiting and death of poor kids and the dearth of rich kids in battle. The mother of one dead soldier makes a riveting story, and the interviews of the congressmen make for entertaining TV. But isn't signing up for military service a matter of free choice? Shouldn't that poor kid have the option to join up? And might the vast majority of poor kids who join up be better off for having done so? Shouldn't the congressman's kid also have free choice? Or are you suggesting a draft? However, Moore is going none of these places because they are the realm of cognitive argument, not visual image.
I am depressed that political debate has become a contest of between people trying to create more entertaining and striking visual images, and althoug I hate to be a part of the "What is the world coming to" crowd, I have my doubts what democracy is coming to. However, I see a silver lining in this movie.
If I owned a corporation, I would very much want to know the truth about the people I hired to run it. I would not want their slickly packaged images, nor would I want slickly packaged counter images from their opponents. I would wish to have the same vantage point as their co-workers and employees have. Truly, I would wish to be a fly on the wall during work hours, to see for myself what these people do and how they do it.
As co-owner of my country, I want the same thing. It is an irony of the television era, when we FEEL that we have intimate access to our leaders, that that is exactly what we do not have. A local professor who once worked as a speechwriter for President Reagan and the first President Bush has gone so far as to say that EVERYTHING that we think we know about our leaders is a carefully constructed image, and that there is no way for a private citizen to catch even a glimmer of the truth. An army of experts invests a great deal of time and energy into maintaining this situation. According to this professor, we can choose to gullibly buy into the image, or we can cynically reject the entire image, but in neither case do we really know anything about the truth.
In recent times, the part of the media that made any real effort to circumvent this image control has been guided purely by entertainment values (President Ford's clumsiness, President Clinton's sex life, President Bush's verbal miscues). However, some important parts of Moore's movie show the country's leaders at work, in unscripted moments, just being human.
This sort of thing could go a long way to deflating the false images of leaders of all stripes. I like that.
