I am sure I was not alone in feeling a crushing wave of boredom come over me when I heard that Michael Moore [1] was about to release another of his activist documentaries [2]. The boredom however became a faint sense of nausea when I heard that it was to be a caustic attack on ‘capitalism’. Wow. Moore had finally caught up with the radical thinking of mid to late 19th century Europe. What next, I wondered — a devastating assault on critics of Copernicus? A bold expose of the slave trade? Or perhaps an assault on the tyranny of King George III?
Anyway, my fears were compounded when I saw the trailer, which showed the well- nourished multi-millionaire shuffling about in his trademark baseball cap, shamelessly flogging the same old working class hero schtick. There he was standing outside the HQ of AIG, loudspeaker in hand, claiming he had come to carry out a citizen’s arrest on its directors. If he is on his usual form the film will no doubt include at least one scene in which he humiliates a low ranking employee of a company, asking them questions they are not empowered to answer, reducing a complex issue to a crude parody of itself for the sake of a cheap n’easy emotional effect. And so on.
Fuck me, I thought but doesn’t he just hate himself for doing this? Doesn’t he feel as if he is standing outside his body, watching all that sweaty flesh go through the motions for the umpteenth time? Years ago when his show TV Nation [3] was on British TV, the stunts were still cynical and calculating, yet entertaining and occasionally thought provoking. But now — watching Michael Moore in action is like seeing Bret Michaels emoting his way through Every Rose Has Its Thorn [4] for the millionth time at a County Fair. There’s a sad, middle aged man trying to recapture past glories, inhabiting a persona that was invented by someone younger and more inspired.
Moore himself seems to be aware of this slow death. In a 2007 ABC interview [5] he lamented that he had made all these activist films, designed to change the world, and yet the world just kept getting worse:
“There’s a big part of me that feels like a failure, in the sense that I started out by making a film about General Motors to save my hometown of Flint, Mich., and … Flint today is in far worse shape than when I first made the movie,” Moore said.
“I made [“Bowling for Columbine”] in the hopes that there wouldn’t be anymore school shootings, and look? We’ve gone through another tragic school shooting. & ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’? Bush was re-elected a few months later. You have to understand that there’s a part of me that feels like, geez, when are you going to make a movie that can actually get something done? So I’m hoping that this film, ‘Sicko’ will do just that.”
Well as for Sicko, even the most optimistic of commentators would have to admit that Obama’s dog’s breakfast of legislation(s) appears unlikely to satisfy many on either side of the debate, meanwhile foisting massive debt on generations to come. And as for guns well, last month Obama signed off on a law permitting individuals to carry loaded guns in national parks [6], thus expanding the empire of the firearm into virgin territory. And now with this track record of failure behind him, Moore has turned his sights on Capitalism, which the USSR, with its vast nuclear arsenal failed to destroy in 70 years of trying. Moore meanwhile appears to be as bereft of a sense of irony as the most naive, Warren Jeffs- worshiping Colorado ultra-Mormon: as a good capitalist himself he has identified a market, responding to the economic crisis with a film attacking the easy targets that people today most hate. No doubt he will make a lot of money, reaping the benefits of the system he professes to despise.
Indeed were I of a conspiratorial mindset I might argue that Moore is a secret agent of the very powers he claims he has come to dethrone. His films — filled as they are with well- documented distortions — are not really documentaries, and as he himself admits have been totally ineffective as agitprop. What we are left with then is a kind of political pornography for bien pensants in which Moore carefully orchestrates and manages his scenes and arguments to arouse a sense of anger and moral outrage in an audience which he knows desires to be thus titillated. Moore then feeds a series of stimulating scenes to the viewer, keeping that engorged muscle of angry indignation fully enflamed, until a climactic release at the end of the film. But once that climax has been reached, the world has not changed and the viewer has not participated in any meaningful form of protest, rebellion or dissent. This is ultimately an experience without real contact, without consummation, or the exchange of any bodily fluids. The energy of outrage is dissipated and fades away. The manipulated viewer simply returns to his life, most likely carrying on as a good servant of Capitalism.
Alas, I don’t think Moore is all that complex. There is no sinister conspiracy. There’s just old Michael Moore gurning for the cameras, entirely unthreatening, going through the charade of critiquing the system that rewards him so handsomely. Well, good luck to him. His political erotica has made him a very rich man, and he has been showered with rewards and acclaim by the critical and cultural establishments of the Western world. The sad truth however is that he is little more than a pet provocateur, defanged and unthreatening, a figure of fun, not even remotely hardcore.
He is, in other words, the Hugh Hefner [7] of activist film- making.
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Daniel Kalder [10]
Latest posts by Daniel Kalder (Posts [11])
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