[lit-ideas] Re: fahreheit

Since you've seen it perhaps you can answer a pragmatic question.  Jim and I 
plan to see it some evening this week.  My 12 year old daughter wants 
desperately to accompany us.  The discussion of it w/ Peter Jennings (or 
someone) led 
me to believe that it includes a fair amount of explicit war violence from 
footage in Iraq.  My daughter has not exactly been sheltered (her father w/out 
my 
knowledge allowed her to watch Ghost Ship (I think I mentioned here once) 
which, when I found out what it was, horrified me).  But again I'm back to the 
discussion of what the difference is between children watching what they know 
to 
be pretend violence in a fictional film and watching real violence (remember 
the teachers who allowed the Nick Berg footage to be watched in their 
classrooms)....  How bad is the violence and how much is there?
Julie Krueger

========Original Message========
Subj:[lit-ideas] fahreheit
Date:6/28/2004 7:16:24 PM Central Daylight Time
From:dsavory@xxxxxxxxx
To:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent on:    


I saw Fahrenheit 9/11. I think â??Bowling for Columbineâ?? was better. (I think 
Morgan Spurlockâ??s â??Supersize Meâ?? was better than both of them.)

There are, however, plenty of sound bites cleverly edited to convince you if 
you werenâ??t convinced already that Dubya is indeed a moron and not just 
someone who can be rendered inarticulate with a newscamera in his face. But 
come on, has there been a softer target in the history of politics than Bush? 
And the problem with American foreign policy is surely not that there is a 
moron at the helm but that it follows the same pattern of exploitation, 
humiliation and oppression as it has for over one hundred years with Bush 
doing exactly what every other president has done. 

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a little scattershot: Moore is so full of anger he doesnâ??t 
develop a coherent case. Unlike Chomsky who marshalls facts into a series of 
objections that are at least consistent within a singular theme, Moore is 
kind 
of all over the map. He presents someone claiming there are more cops in 
Manhattan than troops in Afghanistan attempting to root out Osama bin Laden, 
but whatâ??s the point? Should there have twice as many troops deployed? Ten 
times? He makes a lot of ominous connections between the Saudi royal family 
and the Bush family and leaves us with the â??stunnerâ?? that Saudis own 
something 
like 7% of America but whatâ??s the point? That Osama bin Laden (who is 
actually 
quite close to all the other bin Ladens) would destroy something that they 
have a huge financial stake in? Are we supposed to think Osama is as stupid 
as 
Dubya?

Still, Moore does some things pretty well. I think he makes a nice case that 
the soldiers in the war are not very clear why theyâ??re in Iraq and he does a 
really nice job with a woman who went from being pro-war to anti-war after 
her 
son was killed. This proves the charge that heâ??s anti-soldier is wrong.

Itâ??s appropriately funny in spots and horrifying in others but this should 
have been a deeper dissection of the corporatist assumptions that govern the 
political culture in Washington not a driveby bash at a moron.

David Savory
Vancouver


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