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FAHRENHEIT 9/11
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore has once again created a polemical pseudo-documentary. This one attempts to explore and expose the contested issue of the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s presidency, his business links to Saudi Arabia and his motivations for beginning the war in Iraq.
Moore uses the same personal, subjective on-the-spot investigative approach in Fahrenheit that he did in Bowling for Columbine in 2002. As he did in Columbine, he starts with a conclusion and sets out to prove it by choosing the filaments and spinning them together in a design of his own choosing.
Documentary films depict a slice of life, substantiated by facts and figures. We have come to believe that, because documentaries are supposedly true, they are objective. But media educators know that all media are constructed from a particular point of view because a human being always selects the topic, the shots and sequences, and how they are assembled there is no such thing as media objectivity.
I have defined Moore’s documentary as “pseudo,” that is, bogus or a sham, when compared to the style of documentaries we may be used to. It may, in fact, be a more honest documentary because Moore’s bias is pretty much in the viewer’s face from the very beginning. Whether or not the content facts and figures he has chosen to support his investigation coincide with reality is up to each viewer to verify.
To understand Moore’s starting point, it is useful to think of the film’s namesake, Fahrenheit 451 (1966), based on Ray Bradbury’s novel. Bradbury reportedly tried to have the title of Moore’s film changed. Fahrenheit 451 is the futuristic story of a man who burns books for a living because of government censorship, becomes aware that he is being manipulated through enforced ignorance and attempts to overthrow the political status quo.
UCLA film school instructor Laurie Hutzler wrote, “I don’t see Moore’s film as a documentary rather, I see it more as an old-fashioned broadsheet. It has all the fervor and call to action of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Instead of publishing his political tract on a printing press, Moore has laid out his position in” a film that “is not meant to be objective. The film is a political polemic, which has a long and venerable place in our country’s history and in the building of our nation’s democracy.”
Fahrenheit 9/11 challenges the current political status quo. It has upset people, some of whom have not seen it before speaking out. Reminds us of our obligation as people of faith and citizens of a democracy to be critical thinkers about the media and the political reality that organizes our life of which we are a vital part.
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