Roger & Me was a pretty great dissection of an issue—the collapse of America’s manufacturing base, and all of the attendant problems that have gone along with it—that I think a lot of people weren’t really paying attention to when it was made. I mean, hell, the media didn’t even start harping about jobs being “exported” until the 2000s.
Completely false. Michael Moore followed the unions’ lead- not vice versa. You won’t see this in Roger & Me because Moore doesn’t really like unions. Moore’s not interested in solutions.
Gringo Tex: I like this. It probably doesn’t make any sense but it reminds me of something Godard would say.
lmao
Gringo: Completely false. Michael Moore followed the unions’ lead- not vice versa. You won’t see this in Roger & Me because Moore doesn’t really like unions. Moore’s not interested in solutions.
Can you please expand on/substantiate this?
a pretty great dissection of an issue—the collapse of America’s manufacturing base
the reason Moore’s films are popular is because he is really good at doing just what you did – taking truth out of context
the truth: manufacturing jobs were exported in the 80’s
contextual truth: there was a tech boom and budget surpluses in
the 90’s
Notice what happens 1960 to 1982 and then 1982 to present
lol
Peabody: The movie came out in 1989. His point was to show that this is what happens, this what we’re left with, when we lose our manufacturing base. I’m not sure what context he missed there. The tech industry that was only just starting to emerge as a power player and, by and large, didn’t give work to those who previously had jobs in auto factories and other similar jobs in manufacturing. And even if they had, Moore wouldn’t have known that at the time.
Can you please expand on/substantiate this?
The cry against jobs being exported started in the 1960s when Japan was what China is today.
Gringo: Actually, that had nothing to do with jobs being exported. It had to do with Japan competing in markets that we’d previously dominated. Our corporations weren’t exporting jobs to Japan. That came later when American corps started building factories in Mexico and other developing countries in order to take advantage of cheap labor. To argue that Moore’s film isn’t topical is to argue that GM wasn’t, in fact, actually shutting down a factory in Flint, MI around the time the documentary was being filmed.
bolo tie: good point – Moore couldn’t have known, but Bruce certainly could have known.
Edit: actually the trend was in place when he made the movie and it should have been obvious then The DOW peaked right around 88-89
Gringo probably meant job lost = job exported
e.g. if a light bulb is made cheaper in Japan, then a GE worker loses a job in the US
I dunno about truth, but I demand integrity from my filmmakers. You know when you hear a very good singer, hitting all the notes bang on, then you look at the contorted face and you know they don’t mean a word of what is being sung? Here’s a boyband for you: Joe Wright, Guy Ritchie, Steven Spielberg (their floating vocalist), and old bland-eyes himself, Alan Parker.
Peabody: Gringo probably meant job lost = job exported
e.g. if a light bulb is made cheaper in Japan, then a GE worker loses a job in the US
But the two things are completely separate issues. Economic protectionism (high tariffs on imports, etc) can prevent more cheaply produced goods from killing the domestic market. The post-WW2 economic policy in America was largely protectionist in nature, so if Japan made things more cheaply or efficiently, it didn’t matter, because American manufacturers could still compete on price.
Job exportation wasn’t a real issue in America until the 1980s, which is when Moore made his movie about it. And it wasn’t a Lou Dobbs-esque issue, a buzzword on the tongues of massive numbers of people, until the 2000s, really.
24 lies per second, fellas
Roger & Me is about Flint, Michigan more than anything. I grew up an hour away from Flint, and I remember the plants leaving town and the extreme rise in crime and blight. I’m not sure that Moore was as concerned about all of these national/global economic issues that you give him credit for. He was concerned about the fact that his beloved hometown just went down the shithole. If he was concerned about national/global economic issues, it was only as far as it relates to Flint. Flint is a unique situation – not unlike others in eastern MIchigan – where GM basically laid the employment foundation for an entire city. When they pulled the rug out from underneath Flint, Moore was rightly incensed. Roger & Me is his best film, because it’s easily his most personal. Not only does he highlight the incredible story of a whole city washed away by corporate practices, but he manages at the same time to detail how larger corporations can shield themselves from civic responsibility.
Is it biased? Hell, yes! But, if you’ve ever seen Flint, or the whole industrial corridor of eastern Michigan for that matter, you can understand where Moore is coming from.
Nathan: I think he pretty clearly uses a local issue to comment on what he sees as a larger problem. The hook is that he’s a Flint guy, so it hits especially close to home. But he could just as easily have made the movie about a number of similar situations. Small towns that depend on the existence of local manufacturing jobs aren’t exactly rare in America.
Bolo – You’re right, there are other situations he could have pointed to. But, he isn’t from any of those towns. His concerns in that film are extremely personal. I’m not trying to say that the film doesn’t comment on broader issues, but that his prime concern rests in the local, regional realities of Flint and Detroit.
You’re right, there are other situations he could have pointed to. But, he isn’t from any of those towns.
Exactly. Which is why he used Flint. He had the personal angle, and it didn’t hurt that it was a timely, and pretty much perfect example of the larger ideas Moore was trying to get at. So in terms of raw content, it’s about Flint, but I don’t think there’s any question that the implications spread to all like scenarios. He’s not saying “This only matters because it’s my town.”
But in any case, I just want to reiterate my original point, which is that I think Moore gets accused far too freely and without substantiation of lying to his audience.
Nathan: point well taken, and people still miss that point in referencing it otherwise
There is a lack of humanity in the way decisions were made – Stalin, Mao?
As sometimes happens on these threads, we have drifted away from the main topic to discuss (admittedly interesting) issues regarding trade policy and politics. The subtext was (I guess) that Micheal Moore was telling the LARGER truth about America’s loss of a manufacturing base (at least in the automotive industry), the decline of unions, and corporate greed.
Although I probably agree with Moore’s positions on many issues, my concern with his work is that he does not HAVE to use factual distortion, overt melodrama, and cheap shots to make his case. Furthermore, as some earlier posters indicated, using such techniques de-legitimizes the cause because it is easy for right-wingers (and others) to point out that he’s not always sticking to the facts. Sure, his films preach to the choir and keep up morale on the left, but the “truth” quotient is low in ALL of his movies, and that was the original intent of this discussion thread.
On the other hand, there are instances of just brilliant filmmaking in his movies: in Roger & Me, the tracking shot of abandoned houses and businesses in Flint, Michigan, while the Beach Boys are singing “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”; in Bowling for Columbine, the montage of newsreel footage showing violent U.S. interference around the world while Satchmo sings “What a Wonderful World,” etc. This is still propaganda for the cause, but it assembles factual footage (as far as I know) to make a case and uses irony (the music) to illustrate his point of view. That’s all legitimate. It’s when he plays with chronology, makes false claims, and distorts facts that his “truthiness” comes into question. The devil is in the details.
Whether you agree with Moore’s political beliefs or not (and I generally agree with him), the question is, is it OK to distort the record for a cause? Leni Riefenstahl certainly did.
As interesting as this is, I wasn’t talking about documentaries or Michael Moore productions, but rather narrative films based on actual people or events. I always think it’s interesting when a film is criticised for being factually or historically inaccurate rather than for any failings in its cinematic, storytelling or technical aspects.
Okay so let’s look at Moore from the POV of a medium and did he move the documentary to or beyond its limits in a search for truth?
Or did he get too personal and regress the documentary medium to entertainment?
JMHO. Roger & Me give us no new insights into man’s inhumanity to man.
he moved the documentary beyond its limits. or at least, he continually pushed it. the essay film is his form. hes a polemical filmmaker. with moore, the documentary becomes a form of journalistic editorializing. i think hes fairly unique for those reasons.
He may have moved it beyond a traditional definition, with what effect on truth?
I think truth matters to him….
dp
“Notice what happens 1960 to 1982 and then 1982 to present”
since when is the stock market a reliable indicator of the health of american workers. moore’s point wasn’t that the entire economy was in the shitter, but that while ceo’s and the rest of the economic elite were raking it in, workers were being screwed (wage stagnation, union busting, outsourcing, etc.). that graph could actually reinforce moore’s argument that wealth was being unfairly distributed upwards. its easy to excuse layoffs if the stock market is plummeting.
“JMHO. Roger & Me give us no new insights into man’s inhumanity to man.”
i dont think thats his aim. if your saying moore is not a great or an especially profound filmmaker, you’ll get no argument from me. im not really impressed by his work. he’s simply a polemicist, and i think his films mostly succeed on that modest level. i do wonder what all these accusations of “factual distortion” in his work refer to. he does choose his facts, but i think those he chooses are generally accurate. the main right wing criticism of him is that he’s biased, which of course he’d admit to. given that moore is pretty much the only left wing voice granted any sort of attention by the media, and that he represents a perspective which is otherwise systematically excluded from the national political dialogue, it is ridiculous to expect him to iterate the main arguments of the dominant center-right narrative in the name of “fairness” or “objectivity”. as if we dont hear the opposing viewpoint 24 hours a day on every cable news channel.
as for truth in film overall, i think it depends in part on how a film is presented/marketed. if some truth/accuracy claim is used to appeal to viewers, or give the film a kind of credibility, then it can be justly criticized for containing inaccuracies. a non film example would be that whole debacle over james frey’s “million little pieces” faux-memoir.
@Hooka: “i do wonder what all these accusations of “factual distortion” in his work refer to. he does choose his facts, but i think those he chooses are generally accurate.”
Well, I wonder why you wonder. Moore’s distortions have been documented in many quarters, both in print (Newsweek did several exposes) and on the Internet (and not just by right-wing bloggers). Just Google “Michael Moore” and you’ll find REAMS of distortions, with SPECIFIC instances and examples. I could list a dozen off the top of my head, since I wrote an encyclopedia article on “Propaganda” for the Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, but why don’t YOU do the research instead of just “thinking” that Moore chooses facts accurately?
And this comes from a person who is probably more of a leftist than you are. I just happen to think that the Left ought to make its case accurately and convincingly, so that it can’t be easily dismissed as “loony” or “filled with lies.”
Here’s my lengthy encyclopedia entry:
New Comic Propaganda
More recently, the American Michael Moore has gained both notoriety and acclaim for his “documentary” films, which are unabashedly tendentious—and funny. Although comedy is not usually associated with propaganda, muckraker Moore uses irreverent satire and wry humor in Roger & Me (1989), Bowling for Columbine (2002), and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). Most documentaries have taken liberties with veracity but also hold up objectivity as a goal. Moore, however—using a first-person, polemical, and postmodernist style—often overtly restructures chronology, intercuts events unrelated to a scene’s focus, and adds music and narration to make a political point—or get a laugh. He has even admitted that Roger & Meis not a documentary at all.
Roger & Me is an exposé of corporate greed at the highest levels of General Motors (GM), especially as it relates to the economic devastation of the director’s hometown of Flint, Michigan. Moore personifies the villain in the elusive figure of Roger Smith, GM’s CEO, and takes on the hero’s role for himself—appearing onscreen and proffering a voice-over narration throughout the film. Other villains appear as Moore finds that tracking down his prey is increasingly difficult. Miss Michigan, Deputy Sheriff Fred Ross, the GM public relations man Tom Kay, Anita Bryant, Pat Boone, the television celebrity Bob Eubanks, corporate (and United Auto Workers [UAW]) flunkies, and rich ladies at a golf club all make insensitive, if not cruel, comments about the auto plant closings, but Moore’s editing and voice-over add a more polemical dimension. For example, as the camera tracks past rows of abandoned homes and businesses, the Beach Boys’ song “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is played. When UAW union leaders and unemployed workers (including a woman forced to sell rabbits “for pets or meat”) are lampooned as well, Moore’s progressive point may be lost.
Bowling for Columbine, the winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary of 2002, offers a forceful anti-gun message, focusing on the Columbine high school shootings and other gun death tragedies in the United States. At times, however, Moore is overly aggressive in his pursuit of celebrities. For example, one scene involves Moore’s hounding of Dick Clark, who—Moore claims—is culpable in a little girl’s death because of the celebrity’s financial ties to a fast-food chain. Moore’s “logic” runs like this: Clark’s restaurant pays minimum wage salaries, forcing a young mother to take a second job and leave her son with relatives; the lonely boy finds a handgun in his uncle’s home and accidentally uses the weapon to kill a playmate; ergo, Dick Clark is somehow responsible for the child’s death. Moore ambushes Clark as he enters a van and peppers the music impresario with questions about his restaurant’s pay scale, trying to link low wages and gun violence directly.
At the end of Bowling for Columbine, Moore goes even further in making questionable connections. Charlton Heston, president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), grants the filmmaker an interview. The discussion soon moves to the subject of gun violence and the NRA’s legislative agenda. Moore poses a seemingly innocent question: “Why does Canada have a lower rate of gun deaths than the United States?” to which Heston opines that racial tensions cause more murders in America. The filmmaker first attempts to turn this comment into a rabidly racist remark and then ambushes the doddering star as he walks away from the camera. Moore adds a voice-over plea for “Mr. Heston” to come back and continue the interview and, further, to apologize for the Columbine shootings. Finally, the director shamelessly lays a photo of a dead child in the star’s driveway, as if Heston were somehow personally responsible. Such sanctimony is not uncommon in propaganda films; however, in the past, journalistic objectivity prevented many documentarians from attempting to arouse emotions so blatantly. Today, the pastiche-like “personal” postmodernist documentary knows no such restraint.
Fahrenheit 9/11 was the highest-grossing documentary film of all time and also won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2004. Although it is apparently riddled with factual inaccuracies, suggests that events occurred in a different chronological order than they actually did, and takes cheap shots at celebrities and government officials, its satirical passion and rage against the administration of George W. Bush found an audience willing to suspend logic and its customary demand for truth. Even when the scenes are factually accurate—perhaps a vestigial concept in a postmodernist documentary—Moore still uses ad hominem attacks and chicanery to skewer the regime. For example, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is seen wetting his comb with saliva and slicking back his hair before a TV interview. This unhygienic practice certainly makes him look foolish, but does it say anything substantive about the Iraq War? Furthermore, does Wolfowitz’s minor attempt at TV stage management compare with Moore’s major manipulation of TV news footage?
Many in sympathy with Moore’s anti-war agenda argued that he did not have to resort to falsification to critique the president and his post-9/11 policies: the public record and the administration’s own words, they said, provided enough fodder to support Moore’s points. There is biting humor and irony in showing Bush playing golf while the United States prepares for war, but President Bill Clinton also played golf while the nation was at war in Bosnia. Likewise, while Bush’s look of stupefaction when informed that the Twin Towers had been attacked on 11 September 2001 suggests that he was incompetent, it is an ambiguous image. Although Bush continues to read a book, My Pet Goat, to schoolchildren for seven minutes after he is told the news, the president may have been trying to maintain an air of calm while his staff investigated. But Moore goes for the easy explanation.
Indeed, Moore is rarely interested in subtlety. He takes great pains to prove that: (1) the U.S. presidential election of 2000 was rigged; (2) Bush was in cahoots with the royal house of Saud and even Osama bin Laden—“facts” that have been challenged by the findings of the nonpartisan September 11 commission; (3) the president was a Vietnam-era deserter; and (4) the Iraq war was instigated to please the administration’s wealthy backers. Whether Moore proves these allegations beyond a reasonable doubt is not the point; his chief concern was to create a dramatic and engaging film that marshals images and sounds (often his own voice-over commentary) to show that Bush is an incompetent, dishonest warmonger—and to affect Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004. Moore wanted the film to “become a part of the national conversation” in the months before the 2004 election, and it did. It was not, however, sufficiently influential in the election-year debate to sway the result, even though the film contains powerful scenes of emotional blackmail, including a grieving mother who lost her soldier son in Iraq weeping in front of the White House, horrific scenes of Iraq war amputees in the Walter Reed Medical Center juxtaposed with the president addressing a fundraiser full of fat-cat contributors, and dead Iraqi youngsters positioned next to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s assurances about “the humanity that goes into our conduct of the war.”
While Moore’s films may be among the most freely manipulative of documentaries, ultimately, to an extent, all films (whether documentary or fictional) are propagandistic in that they are products of a particular culture at a particular moment in its history. Thus, films cannot help but reflect (and influence) that culture. In short, movies are social acts in that they contribute to depicting a certain vision of society and say something—consciously or unconsciously—about the culture that produces them. That is very close to the definition of propaganda.
a slight inaccuracy, i think, regarding clinton and our nation. we were not at war in bosnia. that was a UN mission. we never declared war against bosnia or any of the ex-yugoslav states, officially or otherwise. and we bombed serbia, not bosnia. we were still not at war with them though.
im not sure either about your definition of propaganda, and that all films fit within it. propaganda is polemical to varying extents. if all films are cultural products tied to history, i dont know that it means they are all polemical, therefore propaganda. yes, films reflect and influence culture. and they are social acts, true.
if all films are propaganda, maybe they are only so on the level of propagandizing for their production companies. but we should probably rethink our definition of propaganda here, to see if truly all films fit within it.
dp
since when is the stock market a reliable indicator of the health of american workers
Since its inception – it is proxy for the trend in the economy.
If you prefer, you could use a graph of federal tax receipts – it will show close to the same thing as the DOW
And no, it doesn’t help Moore’s case, that wealth was being created and distributed by pension plans to retiring auto workers, teachers and firemen
If you read through the thread the conclusion was that Moore’s interest was persona – not worldly.
robert: when a corporation fires its workers in moves production to the third world, its stock often goes up. and yet, the unemployed workers dont rejoice. go figure. most of the wealth created since the mid seventies has gone into the hands of an elite few. the rest have gotten by on credit expansion (leading to the current credit crisis). the stock market has a ponzi scheme character, the more people buy into it, the more it goes up, etc. increasing federal tax receipts during the years you mention were due mostly to asset inflation.
but oh, im forgetting rule #1 of reaganomics, wealth “trickles down”!
frank: well, i admit i havent spent much time googling michael moore. im not really interested in the guy, havent even seen all his films, and disagree with some of his views (loyalty to dems) and many of his tactics (clownish confrontations). and your right, there are many valid left wing critiques of his work (i have no interest in getting into a “lefter than thou” debate). in my experience, though, i generally find that accusations by his opponents of rampant factual inaccuracies usually rely on one or two examples from f. 9/11, or else simply fall back on the “bias” issue. this is what i was addressing. but im done defending mr. moore (regretting i even got started!)
bolo tie
Bruce: Roger & Me was a pretty great dissection of an issue—the collapse of America’s manufacturing base, and all of the attendant problems that have gone along with it—that I think a lot of people weren’t really paying attention to when it was made. I mean, hell, the media didn’t even start harping about jobs being “exported” until the 2000s. And Sicko was a prescient examination of healthcare that cleverly presaged all the stuff we’re going through right now. I think that, in both these cases, the amount of work that he’s done to highlight the ongoing structural problems (whether it be in the auto industry, which has recently collapsed for the most part, and the healthcare industry, which is unsustainable at its current rate of growth) are incredibly beneficial outside of the rubric you’ve presented (i.e. giving the conservatives ammo).
You could make the same claim about any left-wing personality who dares step forward with a set of criticisms, that they’re just providing the right with ammo. I don’t see why Michael Moore is singled out as this intolerable case. Have you ever even watched a Michael Moore film?