saving myself the pain of ... twice my burn.
after my last post, and the comments that were made to it, i felt it was necessary to go into detail about what i'm talking about when i critique michael moore. but i want to say a few things first.
a) the comment that bryan made, about the eagerness of many radicals to jump down the throats of figures in the left is a valid one. i restle with this. on the one hand, i support farenheit 9/11, and other works like it, because i think it's terribly important that people see this stuff and get that fucking lunatic out of office. on the other hand, i'm a cancer. i don't trust most people, but once i find out a few things about them that i like, i'll be loyal forever until they double-cross me, in which case i'll never let them live it down. what that means is that i feel a special allegiance to people on the left, and i expect more of them. i expect that if they are trying to do right, then they should do right, and when i see them making mistakes and (in some cases willfully) perpetuating the same crap as everyone else, i want to call it out. i don't want to let that shit slip by because it's important to me that it be done right the first time. no more mistakes; i'm tired of them.
b) regarding the michael moore is a white nationalist article: alli makes good points. and i think that it's really important that people discuss and debate that article. i think that for all its flaws (centering on black folk when some of its arguments apply to a much broader array of people, stating the obvious, not recognizing the difference between malicious white racism and the white racism that you automatically and perhaps regretfully embody as a white person, etc) it still has a bunch of really good points and connections. the connections are particularly essential because people need to understand that racism, sexism, whatever, isn't just some individual shit but is the same whether you are using it to bomb countries or make a film. i hope that people will not only look at these points, but also discuss the problems with the article.
ok, moving on.
so i wrote this paper. although a big chunk of it is about m.moore and bowling for columbine and racism and sexism, it is more an essay on the limitations of people and learning to frame critiques within an awareness of those limitations - in order to not only be more open but to also know what can be trashed as fairly one-sided. but in terms of my critique of michael, i have a couple of good points, which i'll keep in italics...
POINT ONE: The "experts" of Columbine are all white men. Whether it is hit cable TV show Southpark's Matt Stone ... the Canadian politican analyzing the validity of socialist programs in Ottowa, or Marilyn Manson and Professor Barry Glossner ruminating on sources of fear in the U.S., everyone seems to know more about violence than those who are most directly affected by it - poor people, people of color, queers, gender variant people, etc. ... A good documentary filmmaker should always be thinking about how their movie validates the work of those members of the communities their film is discussing.
POINT TWO: i talk about this a lot in the paper, so i'll summarize briefly: there are almost no women in this movie. the most often seen woman is some bikini-clad machine gun blonde woman. mostly, the women in this movie are crying or being discussed as the missing link in their son's violence (without being interviewed or even seen in the film at all). especially with the crying principle... it is extremely unfotunate that the role of one of the only two women of color should become "helpless victim," consoled/saved by a white patriarch.
POINT THREE: For Michael Moore ... violence on such a massive scale, such as that at Columbine high school five years ago, is a relatively new phenomenon. This is the phenomenon of young white men killing other white men out of a collective and intangible rage, as opposed to white men strictly killing women and people of color (out of habit). ... and thus narrows to almost nothing the definition of violence. examples of this can be seen in 9/11, too, but they are not as extreme. i feel like he actually did a good job of toning that down in 9/11.
however, the result of that is...
POINT FOUR: ...in narrowing that definition, Moore also makes a bold and extremely dangerous statement about who can perpetrate violence and who can have violence committed against them. Who can be an attacker and who can be a victim. how does he do this? well, out of the litany of violence perps he goes to the field with, only one is non-white and none of the serious interviewees are female. this puts people of color in a position where they either cannot commit violence or can only do so as victims... (it's weird for me to talk about agency in this way, where i'm talking about the agency to harm, but i think it's important to deconstruct.) columbine is about violence in schools but there is almost no looking at inner-city schools or non-white violence. - the one black perpetrator he does look at is six years old, so he is still a total victim of the system and can take no responsibility.
(the other problems with the buell elementary case - where the six year old black boy kills the white girl - are numerous. Due to ... age ... it is much asier for Moore and Columbine's viewers to blame the shooting on poor parenting - something the film was able to escape in its discussion of the Columbine High shooters, whose parents are never mentioned. It just so happens that in this case the bad parent is a single black mother on welfare. ... Blaming poor black women for raising thugs is so familiar a means for dodging challenging cultural critique that it has ceased to be accurate, yet Moore falls into this trap... not only this, but by using a case where a black person shoots a white person, Moore is able to dodge all discussion of intra-racial violence amongst people of color. and then finally, Whether it was his intention or not, Moore lumped all the people of color in Columbine into a fifteen minute chapter of the film, and inexplicaly excluded the violent experiences of any other racial groups besides African Americans. When violence is such a problem in communities of color (both in terms of volence committed by members of those communities, as well as the violence committed against them), ... this lack of attention seems nonsensical.)
in 9/11, moore seems very dedicated to white people, and then occasionally black people. this is particularly awkward during the part on the patriot act where NO MIDDLE EASTERN OR MUSLIM PEOPLE are interviewed or filmed or discussed. instead, we see an expose on a white man arrested at a gym. what?? is that really who the patriot act is affecting the most? there is also "us""we" and "them" language thrown around in the film which is particularly disconcerting after i hear quotes from michael saying things like, "my heart is still in flint, michigan." using "them" to refer to poor people - which 9/11 does explicitly on more than one occasion - makes it seem like maybe this film wasn't made for the largely unemployed people of flint at all. and finally, and probably most annoying for me, was the coalition of the willing segment of the film. discussing places like morocco, costa rica, and south east asian states, and then showing very old footage of snake charmers and monkeys running around just doesn't fly for me. i understood his point - they have no army, are coerced by/(arguably) pawns for the u.s. - but the footage was just a bit too much.
****
so those are my thoughts, summarized. if anyone wants to talk about them, i'd love to hear what other people think. also, if anyone wants footnotes for any of this, you know where to holla.
a) the comment that bryan made, about the eagerness of many radicals to jump down the throats of figures in the left is a valid one. i restle with this. on the one hand, i support farenheit 9/11, and other works like it, because i think it's terribly important that people see this stuff and get that fucking lunatic out of office. on the other hand, i'm a cancer. i don't trust most people, but once i find out a few things about them that i like, i'll be loyal forever until they double-cross me, in which case i'll never let them live it down. what that means is that i feel a special allegiance to people on the left, and i expect more of them. i expect that if they are trying to do right, then they should do right, and when i see them making mistakes and (in some cases willfully) perpetuating the same crap as everyone else, i want to call it out. i don't want to let that shit slip by because it's important to me that it be done right the first time. no more mistakes; i'm tired of them.
b) regarding the michael moore is a white nationalist article: alli makes good points. and i think that it's really important that people discuss and debate that article. i think that for all its flaws (centering on black folk when some of its arguments apply to a much broader array of people, stating the obvious, not recognizing the difference between malicious white racism and the white racism that you automatically and perhaps regretfully embody as a white person, etc) it still has a bunch of really good points and connections. the connections are particularly essential because people need to understand that racism, sexism, whatever, isn't just some individual shit but is the same whether you are using it to bomb countries or make a film. i hope that people will not only look at these points, but also discuss the problems with the article.
ok, moving on.
so i wrote this paper. although a big chunk of it is about m.moore and bowling for columbine and racism and sexism, it is more an essay on the limitations of people and learning to frame critiques within an awareness of those limitations - in order to not only be more open but to also know what can be trashed as fairly one-sided. but in terms of my critique of michael, i have a couple of good points, which i'll keep in italics...
POINT ONE: The "experts" of Columbine are all white men. Whether it is hit cable TV show Southpark's Matt Stone ... the Canadian politican analyzing the validity of socialist programs in Ottowa, or Marilyn Manson and Professor Barry Glossner ruminating on sources of fear in the U.S., everyone seems to know more about violence than those who are most directly affected by it - poor people, people of color, queers, gender variant people, etc. ... A good documentary filmmaker should always be thinking about how their movie validates the work of those members of the communities their film is discussing.
POINT TWO: i talk about this a lot in the paper, so i'll summarize briefly: there are almost no women in this movie. the most often seen woman is some bikini-clad machine gun blonde woman. mostly, the women in this movie are crying or being discussed as the missing link in their son's violence (without being interviewed or even seen in the film at all). especially with the crying principle... it is extremely unfotunate that the role of one of the only two women of color should become "helpless victim," consoled/saved by a white patriarch.
POINT THREE: For Michael Moore ... violence on such a massive scale, such as that at Columbine high school five years ago, is a relatively new phenomenon. This is the phenomenon of young white men killing other white men out of a collective and intangible rage, as opposed to white men strictly killing women and people of color (out of habit). ... and thus narrows to almost nothing the definition of violence. examples of this can be seen in 9/11, too, but they are not as extreme. i feel like he actually did a good job of toning that down in 9/11.
however, the result of that is...
POINT FOUR: ...in narrowing that definition, Moore also makes a bold and extremely dangerous statement about who can perpetrate violence and who can have violence committed against them. Who can be an attacker and who can be a victim. how does he do this? well, out of the litany of violence perps he goes to the field with, only one is non-white and none of the serious interviewees are female. this puts people of color in a position where they either cannot commit violence or can only do so as victims... (it's weird for me to talk about agency in this way, where i'm talking about the agency to harm, but i think it's important to deconstruct.) columbine is about violence in schools but there is almost no looking at inner-city schools or non-white violence. - the one black perpetrator he does look at is six years old, so he is still a total victim of the system and can take no responsibility.
(the other problems with the buell elementary case - where the six year old black boy kills the white girl - are numerous. Due to ... age ... it is much asier for Moore and Columbine's viewers to blame the shooting on poor parenting - something the film was able to escape in its discussion of the Columbine High shooters, whose parents are never mentioned. It just so happens that in this case the bad parent is a single black mother on welfare. ... Blaming poor black women for raising thugs is so familiar a means for dodging challenging cultural critique that it has ceased to be accurate, yet Moore falls into this trap... not only this, but by using a case where a black person shoots a white person, Moore is able to dodge all discussion of intra-racial violence amongst people of color. and then finally, Whether it was his intention or not, Moore lumped all the people of color in Columbine into a fifteen minute chapter of the film, and inexplicaly excluded the violent experiences of any other racial groups besides African Americans. When violence is such a problem in communities of color (both in terms of volence committed by members of those communities, as well as the violence committed against them), ... this lack of attention seems nonsensical.)
in 9/11, moore seems very dedicated to white people, and then occasionally black people. this is particularly awkward during the part on the patriot act where NO MIDDLE EASTERN OR MUSLIM PEOPLE are interviewed or filmed or discussed. instead, we see an expose on a white man arrested at a gym. what?? is that really who the patriot act is affecting the most? there is also "us""we" and "them" language thrown around in the film which is particularly disconcerting after i hear quotes from michael saying things like, "my heart is still in flint, michigan." using "them" to refer to poor people - which 9/11 does explicitly on more than one occasion - makes it seem like maybe this film wasn't made for the largely unemployed people of flint at all. and finally, and probably most annoying for me, was the coalition of the willing segment of the film. discussing places like morocco, costa rica, and south east asian states, and then showing very old footage of snake charmers and monkeys running around just doesn't fly for me. i understood his point - they have no army, are coerced by/(arguably) pawns for the u.s. - but the footage was just a bit too much.
****
so those are my thoughts, summarized. if anyone wants to talk about them, i'd love to hear what other people think. also, if anyone wants footnotes for any of this, you know where to holla.