Had Adam not recommended this documentary to me, I probably would have skipped it, assuming it to be the work of yet another reactionary loser setting out to beat Michael Moore at his own game (the title doesn’t help). Instead it is a breath of fresh air, simply examining Moore’s work and revealing tactics and methods which are not exactly admirable.

The central message is not that Moore is a Big Fat Liar, so much as that in his quest to influence the American people he has lost sight of what a documentary is supposed to be— namely true, in such a way that what the audience comes away believing is in fact the truth (or at least part thereof). This is not an issue of bias, since as Moore rightly points out (when hassled by idiotic mainstream media) it is not his responsibility to present "both sides" in a fair and balanced way. Even in this post-post-modern era such a thing is impossible, and ironically the only people who might believe it to be otherwise are the FOX news viewers who may just swallow that official line.

The issue raised is mainly that of misrepresentation through editing and omission, as well as implications of links and causalities which may not actually exist. The film doesn’t really question Moore’s political stance, in fact it is just as effective as his own films at making conservatives look like misinformed religious freaks (but then it’s pretty easy to get a dumbass quote out of any group of people if you ask enough of them). It boils down to the issue of whether the end justifies the means, and watching this little doco while reflecting on Moore’s films it is easy to imagine that he is firmly in the YES camp on this issue, whether he acknowledges it or not.

I’ve always been fine with Moore’s unique blend of hyperbole and regular joe, there’s a logic to it and it seems harmless enough, but using quotes out of context and fiddling with timelines (and adding fictional content for dramatic/comic effect without marking it as such) is misrepresentation, and that kind of sucks, undermining his messages (and therefore any good that may come of them).

You can get Manufacturing Dissent on DVD or as a torrent from all good repositories. It’s probably good that it sounds more like a backlash movie than it is (and will likely be sold as such), because really what it does is remind us that nothing is as black and white as we would like to believe, and perhaps those who so passionately hate Michael Moore for the evil fat anti-american Satanic communist that he is will see this and be surprised that you can in fact criticize a person without trying to destroy them.

BTW I still think you should go see Sicko if you are a US citizen and you haven’t seen it already, because it is total bullshit that you guys don’t have universal healthcare :)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.