Film/Video

Michael Moore in the Age of the Popular and Politicized Documentary

The box-office of success of a number of documentaries indicates the increasing polarization in the American political landscape , wherein the battlefield has extended to this media form that had been often reserved for classrooms and public television . Michael Moore 's darkly comic sensationalistic and suggestive style has prompted a number of documentary film directors and critics to reexamine how and why such movies are produced . Moore unapologetically takes a side , previously seen as something of a minor sacrilege in the industry

. It is not that previous films presented information objectively ' in fact many of the great documentary film makers such as D . A . Pennebaker and Errol Morris established political positions but did so with less fanfare and perhaps less self-righteously . Moore has been criticized for cutting corners by not presenting both sides of the story , he has been accused of manipulating situations on screen to present a skewed picture of events , and his disinterest in complexity in favor of simplistic emotional appeals has garnered some of the most severe criticism (Pereboom and O 'Connor . There are certain expectations of documentary films , i .e . that they document ' rather than inspire or inflame , or that they function historiographically rather than narratively , and if these are the characteristics that Moore 's films are judged by then the consensus seems to be that his work operates more in a propagandist emotivist mode (Nolley . It is of course an open question as to whether or not the concept of documentary must be restricted in this sense , and indeed a further question as to where Moore 's work fits in this paradigm . In an attempt to deal with these questions , this will analyze a number of Michael Moore 's films from a number of different perspectives : politically , rhetorically and thematically . Though references will be made to Moore 's robust filmography , this inquiry will be restricted to primarily Sicko (2007 ) and Fahrenheit 9 /11 (2004 These two movies are especially good choices because they represent Moore 's most mature efforts and interestingly enough two rather different filmic strains in his oeuvre , as will be shown

One of the most vexing issues in dealing with the work of Michael Moore is its relation to truthfulness or reality . We differentiate documentary from standard film fare based explicitly on the assumption that a documentary is meant to represent reality (Nolley 13 . The arrival and ubiquitous nature of postmodern theoretical sensibilities has tended to make such a restriction laughable if not highly suspect . However , there is some sense that there is a reality out there ' to be represented and a documentary film makes has some responsibility to at least respect such an admonition . But Moore seems to flirt rather recklessly with this notion , often walking the tightrope between a healthy postmodern suspicion about the nature of truth ' and outright filmic manipulation . In one instance , Moore 's production company contacted a journalist in regard to selling footage of American soldiers...