Fahrenheit 9/11

[pauraque_bk]

Tonight keladryb invited me out to the late showing of Fahrenheit 9/11.

Is it propaganda? Of course it is. I didn't expect to like it, and I didn't. It was artistically well done, but all propaganda makes me want to do is find out how the other side would rebut it. There were too many instances where I wondered where they got this or that number (you've heard figures as high as 630 billion? you've heard? from where?), too many times when footage was shown with no date or other identifying information. Too many for me to like it, I mean -- for what he was trying to do, it was fine, and cohered extremely well as a narrative.

Someone on my flist complained that they wished Moore had made a different movie, one more likely to persuade swing voters. I don't know if that objection is well-founded. The fact is that people react to propaganda, they react to strong visuals and are taken in by biased reporting. People are stupid: That's why it works. I wouldn't be surprised if many people were persuaded against the war by this movie, and came away questioning Bush's integrity when they hadn't before. These are people who hadn't considered their positions carefully to start with, and don't understand what these filmmaking techniques do to your brain, and I think there are a lot of them.

That's not to say that if the movie makes you think Moore's onto something, you're stupid -- far from it. If it raises questions and makes you want to find out more -- wonderful. I certainly want to find out more, particularly about the pipeline in Afghanistan, which I hadn't heard of before tonight.

To me, though, this is really two movies. One about corruption in the Bush administration, which presents a lot of complex connections and really needs unbiased information to be fully convincing, and one about the horror of war.

I am a pacifist. To me, images of war need no explanation or illumination. It's killing, it's organs ripped out in the street, it's people becoming murderers. That's reality, a reality that's been kept from us. That makes me viscerally angry in a way that the oil connections don't. It makes my heart beat faster, makes my hands shake. It's killing, and I hate it so savagely that I have difficulty finding words.

It could be my own bias, but I wouldn't be surprised if more people were convinced by this movie of war's inherent wrongness, than of any specific corruption.

I guess that's about it.


[EDIT: keladryb's thoughts are here.]

Comments

[noblerot.livejournal.com]

It could be my own bias, but I wouldn't be surprised if more people were convinced by this movie of war's inherent wrongness, than of any specific corruption.

I don't think that's going to happen. War has become an integral part of human culture, unfortunately. God is always on someone's side. There's always someone fighting for a "good cause." There's always a crusade (to quote our president's ill-chosen term).

My disappointment with F911 -- though there was much of it that I liked -- came in the fact that I expected it to be a better piece of propaganda than it was. I had hoped for a film that would make the case against the Iraqi invasion and the Bush administration's born-again imperialism accessible to mainstream America. F911 didn't do that; it just preached to the choir (which I happen to be a part of.)

I deliberately chose to see the film in Daly City instead of SF, because I wanted to try, in some small way, to get away from my usual liberal echo chamber. Was curious to see the responses of a slightly broader audience. In the end, the theater was so quiet it was difficult to tell what anyone thought -- though I did ask a few people their opinions, which were generally positive.

I suspect, though, that farther afield, in the the red states of the Midwest, F911 going to alienate more than it convinces. And considering what's at stake, that's just depressing.

[bardsmaid.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Eo. I've been having similar reservations about seeing the film (the propagandistic angle, etc., though I'm certainly no lover of the current administration.) I don't want a pre-tinted presentation. Just give it to me straight and I'll sort out the facts for myself; I have a brain.

But it's disturbingly true how many people don't think for themselves, or analyze. Unfortunately, you've hit it on the head ("People are stupid: That's why it works.")

As to war, while it seems to be inherent in human nature, you're right that much of it is a reality that's kept from us (probably because, if you're not in the thick of it, it clearly makes no sense.) One of the worst aspects of war to me is what huge numbers, historically, of ordinary people's sons are sacrificed to stabilize the political positions--or satisfy the ambitions--of a few leaders. The other is the fact that by sending people into war, you change them as surely as if you'd exposed them to harmful radiation. Read Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front; it's a textbook of what war does to the people who fight it. Paul and Ben, who ate this book up when they were at the fourth and fifth grade level (okay, so we got to a lot of things early by 'normal' school standards) always maintain that anyone going to war should read this book beforehand to know what they're in for.