By Brian Carnell

Wednesday, June 4, 2003

Kevin Mattson wrote a long (and largely boring -- where do they get these guys?) article about Michael Moore for the Spring 2003 issue of Dissent. Mattson goes on at length about the effect of Moore's version of guerilla theatre-style confrontations.

Mattson's argument, for all its verbiage, boils down to a basic criticism of Moore that has dogged him from the beginning -- that his theatrics might promote Moore and make him rich, but they don't do a whole hell of a lot to build a left-liberal movement (liberals and Leftists seem to constantly obsess in print over the best way to build a movement).

Mattson writes, for example, about Moore challenging Nike CEO Philip Knight to a foot race in "The Big One,"

Moore challenges Knight to a foot race for a factory in Flint; Knight, not surprisingly, declines. Moore ends this final segment of his film by saying, "I know what most of you're thinking: I sure would have liked to have seen that foot race. Well, maybe next movie." Which, if I read him correctly, suggests that this confrontation has become a humorous bust -- the problems of globalization remain while the audience awaits Moore's next bit of entertainment.

Mattson also notes Moore's history of being factually challenged, but also picks an odd point on which to congratulate Moore for his accuracy,

Besides, Moore's critics fail to recognize how much he depicts local news shows overplaying random acts of violence and thus sparking unwarranted fear. In Bowling for Columbine, for instance, he depicts local news shows overplaying random acts of violence and thus sparking unwarranted fear.

It's a bit absurd to congratulate someone who has made an entire documentary about an extremely rare event -- school shootings -- for pointing out how the media overly hype violent crime. The 1990s saw a significant decline in juvenile violence and in most years more children die from influenza and pneumonia than school shootings, though I doubt we'll ever see a Sneezing for Columbine documentary about it.

As Garance Franke-Ruta wrote for The American Prospect,

Indeed, though Moore does note that gun violence is down, he doesn't get into the issue of why. For a movie that's supposed to be concerned with getting to the bottom of things, he is awfully unconcerned with telling his viewers about the reasons -- such as the waning crack epidemic, changing demographics, changes in policing, the economic boom and, of course, gun control laws -- that caused gun murders to drop from 18,253 in 1993 to their present number, or what we can learn from the experience of the last decade to make sure that this rate keeps dropping. A decline in murders in New York City alone -- from 1,927 in 1993 to 643 in 2001 -- had, for example, a considerable impact on the declining national rate. Not a lot of those killers or victims were the sort of sports-hunters or militiamen Moore goes out of his way to interview and make fun of.

In fact Bowling for Columbine is marked by an almost relentless effort not to look too closely at the man behind the curtain.

For someone who objects to the style-over-substance nature of Moore's work, Mattson ends up arguing that it is, in fact, the style that matters more (emphasis added),

It's not the inaccuracies that matter as much as Moore's techniques. After all, his chosen tools -- imagery and entertainment -- have distinct limitations.

Mattson follows this with a long-winded complaint about Moore's use of decontextualized images of various U.S. military campaigns. But the inaccuracies are a much bigger problem than Moore's stylistic failings. Who really cares if Moore wants to show images of the U.S. in Vietnam, Central America and the Middle East and suggest that this is what led the Columbine killers to shoot up their high school? At least their are no inaccuracies in that argument and viewers can make up their own minds whether or not they by into this.

What is really damaging is when Moore engages in lies and distortions and then falls back to his "how can there be inaccuracy in comedy?" defense. This leads Mattson to complain that those who have pointed out the numerous factual errors in Moore's work tend to be on the Right,

These complaints about Moore's work often have more to do with politics than a commitment to factual accuracy. It was Forbes magazine that documented the errors of Bowling for Columbine [which is not really accurate], and I doubt its editors show a similar interest in, say, the errors of Republican Party spokespeople.

It amuses me to no end when some Right or Left winger pulls out this nonsequiter. Look, if you don't want your political opponents pointing out errors, then you need to do a better job of that yourself.

Conservatives weren't able to force left-liberals into gushing praise for Bowling for Columbine. It wasn't the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy that told The Nation to run a ridiculous defense of another factually challenged gun control advocate, Michael Bellisles, shortly before he was forced to leave Tufts over his invention of facts.

It is the truth that matters. Mattson compares Moore's work highly unfavorably to Edward Murrow's classic TV documentary about migrant workers, "Harvest of Shame." Whatever you think of that documentary, it did not simply invent facts wholly out of thin air. Murrow would never have shown a plaque too fuzzy to read and then simply lied about the text. And a political movement that doesn't hold Moore accountable for such nonsense, gets what it deserves.

Source:

Moore's the Pity: Bowling for Columbine and Michael Moore's urban phobia. Garance Franke-Ruta, The American Prospect, November 22, 2002.

Source:

The Perils of Michael Moore: Political Criticism in an Age of Entertainment. Kevin Mattson, Dissent, Spring 2003.

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