Sunday, September 13, 2009
Fahrenheit 9/11 -- Ethan Feldman
First off, I'd like to say I love the way that you keep bringing in the perspective of The Onion, very interesting source. I am in partial agreement with the comments made by Tobias regarding the validity and style of Fahrenheit 9/11. He states that the documentary is "a mixture of speculation and low blows," and I could not agree more. While the points made by Michael Moore strike deep and many are very important, his presentation of information bothers me. That is, Moore presents information, at times, without giving credentials for how true it may be. He states information and seems to believe that his saying it should be enough for it to be believed. Moreover, I was particularly bothered by one of the early scenes, in which more lambastes President Bush for staying in the classroom and reading to the children while the attacks were occurring. While I do agree that it may have been better if he had cut the conference short, or at least taken a moment to speak the the people with him and what was happening, it may be going overboard to insult the man's intelligence by painting him as a plain faced fool who sat silently. In all, I felt that while some of the film seemed accurate and strongly portrayed, there was too large a sentiment of "let's all hate President Bush." I'm not one to go out in support of the man or what he did but the situation is much larger than him and all of the blame should not be left on his shoulders, at times Moore even made it seem as though the President was at fault for 9/11, a claim which is beyond absurdity to me.
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You certainly have a point, Ethan, when you write that Moore often does not provide the source or evidence for his claims in the film (though he sometimes is fairly specific with it -- such as with Bush's military record). One question purely from the documentary filmmaking perspective, however, is: aren't you going to lose your viewers if you try to be exhaustive with your sources? After all, you can't have footnotes in a film in the same way you can in an article; in addition, can't the viewers be held responsible for verifying the truth of the claims themselves?
ReplyDeleteOn the focus on Bush, you also have a point: *every* presidency (not to mention US government) is larger than one person, and we often neglect this (though it must be said that our governmental structure encourages this thinking) -- is Obama, for instance, as Rush Limbaugh repeatedly claims, responsible for the economic disaster that he walked into and hasn't immediately fixed? However, Moore does give a fair amount of attention to Rumsfeld and others (Tom Ridge, Paul Wolfowitz, etc.), so he doesn't focus on Bush exclusively. (Interestingly enough, Cheney is seen rarely, so his conscious effort to never be in the spotlight seems to have been effective.)