Screening and Discussion of Fahrenheit 9/11
Anyone who has seen the DVD cover of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and who still defines the film as a documentary has ignored a clue as big as the state of Texas that Moore is working within a different but equally respectable genre: satire. The image on the DVD shows Moore and President Bush holding hands and smiling as they walk across the White House lawn. What better introduction to the fact that the film relies on the manipulation of images for its power? The image on the cover is factual in its constituent parts, but those facts are placed in a different context than the ones in which they originally existed. Moore has created not a documentary but a parody of one.
The satiric tradition in which Moore works is the one worked by the Roman writer Juvenal and the great British satirists of the 17th and 18th centuries, authors I routinely teach in my courses. Although the cover of Fahrenheit 9/11 is an example of truth in advertising, the material of the film has no intention of being truthful in the sense that documentaries are assumed to present the truth. Satire is never truthful, though it may present facts that are quite true. Satire distorts the facts to present a biased picture, story, or account. Its intent is to rile people up. Think of every political cartoon you have seen: each contains distortions and exaggerations. In fact, exaggeration is the point. It makes us think. It challenges us to argue.
Let me give you a few examples from the 18th-century writers I teach. Some of you may be familiar with Jonathan Swift and his book Gulliver's Travels. In the first section of the book, the one most people have heard of, Gulliver (who represents the British politicians Oxford and Bollingbroke, whom Swift admired) finds himself shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput, where the inhabitants are six inches tall. From Gulliver's perspective, everything about the Lilliputians--who represent the English--seems petty and insignificant. For example, the first minister of the government, obviously meant by Swift to be Prime Minister Walpole of England, maintains his position in the government by performing on a high wire. Compared to the other politicians, he jumps higher and lands more steadily upon the wire. Gulliver notes that in the year before he arrived, the Lilliputian minister had actually fallen off the wire during one of his gymnastic exercises and had landed on one of the "King's Cushions." Swift is making reference to the help Walpole received from one of the King's mistresses in repairing relations with the King after Walpole had "fallen from grace" in 1721. Is Swift presenting a true, factual image of Robert Walpole? Of course not. Swift is writing satire, not journalism.
Another example of satire from the period is by John Dryden, the poet and playwright who served as English Poet Laureate under King Charles II from 1668-1688. Dryden wrote a long poem attacking a rival playwright named Thomas Shadwell, who ironically replaced Dryden as Poet Laureate when William and Mary took the throne. Dryden portrays Shadwell as an incompetent and dull writer whose best material was stolen from other, better writers, and he uses a number of incidents and characters from Shadwell’s plays as evidence of his claims. Most of these pieces of “evidence” are, like Michael Moore’s film clips of President Bush and members of the Cabinet, taken out of context. The central scene of the satire is one in which Shadwell enters London in triumph after being crowned the new king of dull poetry. In this scene, Dryden recalls Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, but instead of colorful coats and palm branches, Dryden has Shadwell riding into London on streets strewn with pages of Shadwell’s books that had failed to sell as literature and had instead been used by bakers to wrap their breads and pies, and used by other people as some of our grandparents used the Sears Catalog—as toilet paper. Crass image? Absolutely. But the interesting thing is that while few people in the 21st century have ever heard of Thomas Shadwell, almost every English major has heard of John Dryden and has probably read the poem I have just described, “Mac Flecknoe.”
To return to Swift and Gulliver, it is worth mentioning that at one point in the Travels, the royal castle of Lilliput catches fire, and in an effort to put the fire out as quickly as possible, Gulliver urinates on the flames. He succeeds in saving the castle, but the Queen and the court are so disgusted by his methods that Gulliver is banned forever from the palace grounds. What better image for Michael Moore: in an attempt to put out what he sees as a dangerous fire in Washington, he has done the equivalent of what Gulliver did. In both cases, what we notice and remember is the urine, not the fire.
Satire is not meant to change the behavior of the people it targets. It isn’t supposed to be even-handed and fair. It isn’t even terribly concerned with being truthful, though one of its strengths is in making use of facts. Satire is designed to evoke a powerful reaction and to make its targets and their supporters look stupid or dangerous—and sometimes both.
Here’s the deal with Fahrenheit 9/11—after you finish seeing the film you are faced with a choice: you can side with the supporters of President Bush who are portrayed either as evil (members of the Cabinet, members of the Saudi Royal Family) or as stupid (Brittany Spears), or you can side with Moore. Given Moore’s focus on the plight of the poor in America and the compassion he shows to the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who would want to side instead with the “have mores,” the warmongers, and the airheads?
The audience of the film last night resisted the either-or choice that Moore and most satirists present in their work. Over and over, people suggested that what must happen is that voters must seek out the truth rather than depend on propaganda. I suspect that Moore would approve of such a reaction: satire is designed not so much to inform as to make people think.