Just because I think I'm now the only liberal pundit who hasn't done a review of SiCKO, let me link to Christopher Hayes' effort. I have to say that to me, health care sounds like a dull topic for a documentary but I hope it does really, really well since I can only imagine that good things would result from a stunning success.
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Hayes on Moore
28 Jun 2007 12:12 pm
Comments (27)
I have seen SiCKO and it is effective and not boring. It doesn't dwell on healthcare details, but people and their stories. For not writing a policy proposal (and instead making a moving condemnation of our system), David Denby at the New Yorker criticizes it (plus apparently healthcare reform is around the corner and SiCKO is superflous and "behind the curve):
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/07/02/070702crci_cinema_denby
Jesus H Christ, even the Nation can get through a Michael Moore movie review without a "rotund and slovenly" crack. And Helen Thomas is old and ugly! Edwards has girly hair!
One would hope that a Nation contributor would realize the pernicious influence of these memes, especially those promoted by the right wing, and try to eliminate them from their own analysis.
That should be: ... can't get through a review ...
Health care would be a great topic for a documentary. Maybe we could get a real documentarian to do one, instead of a propagandist who just pretends to make documentaries?
David Denby wishes a different movie had been made, and as soon as someone makes a movie that makes the same or similar points in an entertaining way and answers all of the questions Denby raises, I'll run right out and get tickets. It's probably playing now, on some higher Platonic plane.
Back here on Earth, Denby looks down his nose at Michael Moore for not getting ten pounds of, uh, taters into a five-pound bag -- I betcha that if Moore had followed all the Monday-morning quarterbacking advice Denby gives, Denby would have torn *that* movie a new one for being boring.
-F.
The reason why Denby's review was stupid was that the whole reason why Moore has so much appeal these days is that he treats the right wing "the same way that, he says, powerful people treat the weak in America—as dopes easily satisfied with fairy tales and bland reassurances." Feature, not a bug. It's emotionally satisfying, if nothing else, to see the forces of evil get a taste of their own medicine.
Moore's problematic mainly because he's a self-promoter and you're always wary that the next thing he does will be geared more towards getting himself noticed than actually advancing any causes in the real world.
In other words, the problem with being left of center in this country is that your best knife-fighters are rarely good soldiers, while your good soldiers are rarely good knife-fighters. The wingnuts don't have this problem.
Maybe we could get a real documentarian to do one
Oh, I'm just *dying* to see who Brett would trot out as a 'true' "documentarian" re: this subject. Likely the same guys who hired Reagan back in the day.
Oh, if only a documentarian had made this film, then the audience would be ten people watching C-SPAN at 3AM, and wouldn't that be great? It's cheap and easy to pitch labels around, but calling someone a propagandist doesn't make him one.
Michael Moore's film makes some points, but obviously doesn't make every point that could be made on the issue of health care. If someone, say, Brett Bellmore, wants to make those points, there are lots of places where that can be done. But if those other points haven't yet been addressed, it's silly to blame that on Michael Moore, as if he were the only one on the mediascape with the power to raise intelligent discussion of issues. Maybe the problem is that our media channels are all owned by entities that either profit directly from the current situation (through other corporate arms or through ad revenue), or have interlocking directorates with entities that do profit directly.
Certainly if you wanted to make a film that opposes Moore's, there would be lots of insurance- and pharmaceutical-industry bucks available to bankroll it. Of course, like the spate of movies released to counter Fahrenheit 9/11, those wouldn't likely be traditional, factually balanced (and considered "boring" by some) documentaries, either.
-F.
Matt: Be like your stablemate, Sully: Slam it, slam Moore, and slam those who don't slam Moore--without seeing the fucking film.
According to Denby, "at every stop, he pulls the same silly stunt of pretending to be astonished that health care is free." Sounds like every other Moore movie I've ever seen -- juvenile and repetitious. No, thank you.
juvenile and repetitious
Welcome to the world of mass-market visual media. If it didn't work in terms of messaging, they wouldn't do it.
I don't mind that he misses making points, or makes points I don't like. I mind that he engages in fabrication to make points. Like taking remarks made months apart, cutting them up, and splicing together something else out of the bits. Or staging events to show out of context.
There's truth in Moore's 'documentaries', but that's like saying a ransom note pasted together from a cut up copy of Shakespear contains "great literature".
Maybe you could get the Frontline guys to make a documentary. They're not terrible.
Moore's solution is simple: Get rid of the health insurance companies. Don't just tinker with the healthcare system, banish profit from the delivery of healthcare altogether. Socialize it. Make it a public good.
It's like 80 years of Soviet communism never happened, and we should just try this all again. What an asinine view to have in 2008. For all the pooh-poohing of the Cato Institute that goes on on this site, the fundamental truth is this: government got into health care in the 1940s when it exempted employer-provided health care from the tax code. That created an insurance and health care industry unresponsive to individual needs and to costs. And it created powerful lobbying constituencies who have used patents to restrict competition, licensing to restrict medical provision to doctors, an FDA that drives up the cost of drug manufacture, and a quasi-governmental health care system that serves no one's needs well.
The answer is not to socialize the system, it's to tear it down.
Oh no, the commies are coming. Yes, by all means, let's go back to the health care system of pre-1940s America! (Or, for that matter, post-Soviet Russia!) That'll be a huge improvement.
It's like 80 years of Soviet communism never happened, and we should just try this all again.
No, Joe, you sad, little man. But your comment is as if more than half a century of national health insurance in every other industrialized country in the world -- all of whose populations live longer with lower infant mortality and higher satisfaction with their health care at between half and two-third of what the U.S. spends per person -- never happened.
But then, libertarians are always complaining that things that work just fine in practice don't work very well in theory.
Pinning your hopes on Moore is living in netroots fantasy land. His arguments are too easily deconstructed and his appeal too narrow. The best one can hope for from a Moore film is that it gets Moore fans talking about a certain issue, but that is simply preaching to the choir.
A persuasive film would not simply advocate, but honestly show all side of the issue and then show why his view is still the right one.
A persuasive film would not simply advocate, but honestly show all side of the issue and then show why his view is still the right one.
Corporate commercials and campaign ads are, by all accounts, very persuasive. Is this the strategy that they employ?
I think the difference is one is free, 30 seconds long and is played to a captive audience. No one is going to drive to the movie theater, pay $10 (plus food) to see an 113 minute polemic unless they are paying to feel good that their views are reafirmed. Someone who want's to educate themselves on the issue, im my opinion, won't spend the time and money to hear an incomplete version of one side of the story.
Pinning your hopes on Moore is living in netroots fantasy land. His arguments are too easily deconstructed and his appeal too narrow.
Yo, deconstruct this.
Too easy? H'mm, well then how about just some simple analytical answers to the easily-"deconstructed" arguments of which you speak? That wouldn't be excessively easy, would it?
A persuasive film would not simply advocate, but honestly show all side of the issue and then show why his view is still the right one.
That conceptual space certainly isn't taken. Moore didn't do it? Guess it's up to you then....
-F.
I dunno, Dave, no one wants to see a film they're not interested in. The market for policy papers and Frontline-style documentaries is pretty saturated, I think. I would argue that there's a much smaller market which would reach a much smaller audience for what you want Moore's documentaries to be. And they'd be less persuasive.
Michael Moore can mass-market persuasive documentaries to as large an audience as can be found for them. The people who are against his viewpoints probably aren't going to see them anyway. The people who agree probably will, leaving the persuadable to go either out of curiosity or because they're the friends/dates of the people who agree with him.
By all accounts, all of Moore's films are enjoyable. He's not trying to persuade the people who dislike him-- that voice has already been heard. He's trying to reach an audience who is interested in the issue. Once the audience is there, they can be persuaded. The visual mass-market media does tend to depend on being repetitious an simplified, but Moore tends to do a better job than the 30-second ads and soundbites which dominate our discourse on these issues.
Right, because if pharmaceutical companies can't make profits, they'll just do research out of the kindness of their hearts.
Pharmaceutical companies make plenty of profit in Europe and the rest of the world. While the prices of pharmaceuticals are lower:
a) A substantial proportion of the price drop is due to government subsidy, rather than low price;
b) Clinical trials are faster and much cheaper than the US;
c) Pharmaceutical companies receive a variety of subsidies for conducting research in these countries.
Re: Right, because if pharmaceutical companies can't make profits, they'll just do research out of the kindness of their hearts.
You are aware that a large fraction of medical (including biochemical) research is done at publicly funded universities and research centers and that Big Pharma basically piggy-backs on this for free, or at most, for a very small consideration?
What the apologists for Big Pharma are so afraid of losing isn't profits, per se, it's a decline in the obscenity level of those profits.
-F.
You want documentary? Errol Morris
Comments closed July 12, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Health care punditry may be a dull topic for a documentary.
But people losing fingers and limbs, death and agony due to lack of care, bankruptcy, etc etc, that could be interesting.
I agree, C-SPANs documentaries on health care don't generally hold an audience's interest.
Never saw this movie but thought it was about health care at heart, if prolly not well done, particularly.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251160/
Posted by blatherskite | June 28, 2007 12:27 PM