Essay on "Analysis of Documentaries by Michael Moore"

Essay 8 pages (3244 words) Sources: 8

[EXCERPT] . . . .

For example, the documentary concludes through "Pat Boone" playing "Happy Birthday" to the Michigan State that turned a hundred and fifty years. While Boone sings " ... and 150 more ... " a tower block is shown falling down in slow motion. Pat Boone's triteness is intentionally compared with the harsh reality of today's Michigan, with clear dramatic effect. The power originates from juxtaposition of pictures (which is the careful placing of differing imagery), that is fake and has been engineered in the edit (Film Education, n.d). Affronted in a chain of events to get to Smith, Moore turned the mission into loopy skullduggery. "William Tell Overture" the theme song from "The Lone Ranger" is incorporated in the sound track in one of his periodic raids to give Smith a surprise attack; he positions himself as a stockholder at the yearly General Motors shareholders conference and has his microphone disconnected just a few moments prior to posing a question to the press (RAINER, 1990)

Question D

Michael Moore's bowling for Columbine that picked up a dark-comic appearance in the U.S., was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2003. The acceptance speech of the director entailed quite a Moore-like statement in opposition to the Iraq war. It was mentioned that we live at a time where we have a man sending us to war for fabricated reasons and that we are in opposition to this war. In addition, at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, the movie was awarded the Special 55th Anniversary Prize. The director initiated a one-man stage show, Michael Moore-Live in late 2002 at London and New York. The Walt Disney Company debarred Miramax from handing out Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 that critically assessed Bush's administration's handling of Iraq as well as the 'war on terror'. The movie also won the popular Palm d'Or at the Cannes Festival and finally became the very first documentary to win the weekend box office (biography.com, n.d). In order to make an influential documentary it has to successfully involve the audience into it. This is actually what drew me to Moore's work; the achievement of the Fahrenheit 9/11 falls in the manner through which Michael Moore engages his audience at all stages of the movie (Film Education).

Question e

The major subtext of the movie was the critical analysis of the presidency of Bush that is displayed and justified by Moore via certain occurrences. Another subtext of the documentary is that the powerless and needy are the main individuals whom we sent to fight in our battles and they end up losing their lives in those battles. This fact is well illustrated by Fahrenheit 9/11. Just one member of the Congress has his son in the armed forces at Iraq, Moore highlights, and he talks to several Congressmen outside the Capitol in Washington with the proposition that their own children should sign up to fight in the battle that they chose (Perez, 2004).

Various subtexts of Sicko include: political insinuation in support of Clinton with regards to her plan for national healthcare; nations are evaluated through means of which they treat their citizens and the United States scores quite badly. Healthcare is better in several nations outside the United States that ranks just above Slovenia. Health insurance providers utilize cruel techniques to obscure, holdup and/or get rid of health benefits from their insured citizenry and patients; monetary incentives and necessarily not the express interests of their constituency mostly inspire political leadership of the nation.

"Roger and Me" is basically a socialist documentary. We are left with an explicit of what is actually right and what is not, whereby capitalism emerges as the looser. To recap the position of Michael Moore: 1) Individuals are more significant when compared to profits; 2) Companies such as General Motors that gain from the profits are inclined to overlook individuals; 3) Hence, in affairs of society, it is either the individuals who manage the corporations, or the government manages the corporations on behalf of the individuals (Film Education, n. d)

Question F

Fahrenheit 9/11

"This has been my greatest challenge: because the current reality now seems so unreal, it's hard to make nonfiction seem believable. But you, my friend [Michael Moore], are able to do that."

Kurt Vonnegut (Goodreads, n.d.). Michael Moore to an interviewer when he asked how he responded to the critics who say that his films aren't documentaries:

"I make movies. I don't write nonfiction books. I don't call it nonfiction, I call it a book" (Hernandaz, 2009).

When an interviewer stated that there is politics in every frame of his movie, Michael Moore replied, "Oh, of course there is. Don't misunderstand me. There's politics right now in this discussion. There's politics in all aspects of our daily lives" (Lauer, 2004).

Sicko

An interviewer asked Moore how the situation of America can be changed with the politicians being bribed. "It can't. We have to change the way - we have to remove money from our political system. It is totally corrupted, the system" (Stratton, 2014).

The interviewer also asked what the film has to say to the Australians. "Well, I hope that this film acts as a warning to the people of Australia because John Howard and his government have been trying to snip away at the social safety net that you have in Australia" (Stratton, 2014).

Times Magazine asked whether Moore had picked an easy target audience with Sicko because many people are not happy with the health section of the country. Moore replied, "This film does not cut across party lines. Everybody gets sick; everybody has had a problem with insurance or the prescription drugs they are supposed to be taking or an elderly parent who needs care. On the surface, it does seem that the only people who are going to be upset are the executives of insurance and pharmaceutical companies" (Kluger, n.d.).

Roger and Me

Michael Moore on Roger and Me, "GM was dealt with a serious blow by the film. There was a good five-year period where they stopped closing factories in Flint because they didn't want the attention" (Knight, 2014).

"When I made that film, there were still 50,000 people working at General Motors in Flint. I mean they had eliminated 30,000 jobs, but there were still some jobs there" (CNN, n.d.).

Larry King asked Moore what he wants GM to do now. "President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we're going to use this money to save these jobs, but we're not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer" (CNN, n.d.).

Question G

Others viewed Fahrenheit 9/11 as a brilliant accusation of the lead-up to an unfair battle. Some viewed it as an unsubstantiated liberal propaganda structured to provide the Democrats a helping hand in the lead-up to the 2004 United States presidential elections; however, according to me, the film utilized numerous psychological methods of influence and it also offers a good introduction to methods of propaganda.

As a filmmaker, Moore did a brilliant job demonstrating the point that health care in our nation is a disaster. Universal health care can never be a solution to our problem. Even if every individual in the United States is insured, the health care system shall still not improve to be significant enough.

According to me, "Roger and Me" is actually a courageous, if brash breath of fresh air in the American movie production. It takes into consideration one of the real problems in America currently -- that is not, if the hero shall be capable of saving the girl from the drug kingpin, or of the two eccentric cops shall be capable of getting along, or if the other individual in bed with you is a slasher, but instead if the conventional American ethic of fair-play amidst the employer and their employees has been substituted by a paganistic corporate worship of the bottom line (Ebert, 1990).

Bibliography

Adams, Mike. Why Michael Moore's SiCKO is a health care documentary every American must see. 19 June 2007. 17 October 2015. Retrieved fromhttp://www.naturalnews.com/021906_SiCKO_Michael_Moore.html

Michael Moore Biography. n.d.. Retrieved 17 October 2015 from http://www.biography.com/people/michael-moore-9542483

Castaldi, Jacopo. A Genre Analysis of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, 2007.

Corn, David. SiCKO Is Michael Moore's Best and Most Powerful Documentary. 22 June 2007. 17 October 2015. Retrieved from http://www.alternet.org/story/55049/sicko_is_michael_moore's_best_and_most_powerful_documentary

CNN. (n.d.). Moore: Automakers never listened to workers, consumers. CNN.com. Retrieved from: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/U.S./11/20/lkl.michael.moore/index.html?iref=hpmostpop

Dean, Jeremy. 9 Propaganda Techniques in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. 02 November 2007. 17 October 2015. Retrieved from http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/11/9-propaganda-techniques-in-michael.php

Ebert, Roger. ATTACKS ON 'ROGER & ME' COMPLETELY MISS POINT OF FILM. 11 February 1990. 17 October 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/attacks-on-roger-and-me-completely-miss-point-of-film

Film Education. n.d.. Retrieved 17 October 2015 from http://www.filmeducation.org/pdf/film/Fahrenheit-911.pdf

Film Education. n.d.. Retrieved 17 October 2015 from: http://www.filmeducation.org/pdf/film/RogerMe.pdf

Goodreads. (n.d.). Quotes about Michael Moore. Retrieved from: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/michael-moore

Gowans, Stephen. A Review of Michael Moore's "Sicko." 12 July 2007.. Retrieved… READ MORE

How to Reference "Analysis of Documentaries by Michael Moore" Essay in a Bibliography

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