Monday, July 19, 2004
I don't hate Michael Moore
I don't love him, and he gives me pause, but I definitely don't hate on him. The hardest thing, I think, is figuring out exactly what the hell he's doing, and why. This post, by one of Salon.com's resident bloggers (God, is that a job I want), Scott Rosenberg (an HM alum, no less), makes a very good point.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked
Two decades ago I had the odd and daunting experience of defending my undergraduate thesis, on several of Shakespeare's plays, before a panel of scholars. While hardly as rigorous as the real orals a PhD thesis is supposed to be subjected to, this encounter was part of what my department at Harvard required for graduation, and I faced it with some trepidation.
When I walked in, I was introduced to William Alfred, the playwright, poet and English professor. I hadn't studied with Alfred, and had no idea what to expect from the rumpled man. He broke the ice with a simple question: At the start of "King Lear," Cordelia refuses her royal father's demand for a profession of love. There's a foreign phrase that describes her act in legal terms -- what is it?
I'm not sure how many layers of my brain I had to dig through to find it, but somehow I retrieved the desired answer, the medieval label for an injury to the royal office: "Lese majeste!" Alfred's eyes twinkled; my response seemed to satisfy my interrogators' basic requirement of literacy, and from there, all went swimmingly. (Alfred, a brilliant and generous soul with whom, alas, I only had a handful of further conversations, died in 1999.)
Of all things, this distant recollection popped into my head after I finally caught up with Michael Moore's much-debated "Fahrenheit 9/11." Many words have already been flung across the political spectrum about the movie. I will limit my contributions to this one phrase: What Moore has, I think, accomplished, particularly in the movie's more coherent and better-assembled first half, is an outrageous and highly effective act of lese majeste.
George Bush campaigned as an informal man of the people, and he did not carry a very dignified bearing into the Oval Office. (Remember that strange boil on his face during the Florida recount?) But from 9/11 on, his team of handlers began to weave a cocoon of larger-than-life pomp around him. Partly, it was what the nation wanted; it was also smart political opportunism. It has, to be sure, frayed some since the Iraq war and its attendant scandals. The "Henry V"-style bullhorn at ground zero struck a chord with many Americans; the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier stunt backfired.
But "Fahrenheit 9/11" methodically dismantles this president's carefully manicured dignity: It says to the viewer, "Pay attention to the man behind the curtain -- he's smaller than life." The movie's most indelible sequences are those that show our president as he really was in the face of the great crisis of 9/11: Not, as we were told by Showtime's "DC 9/11," a stirring take-charge commander, but a passive photo-op participant who sat paralyzed for achingly long minutes of "My Pet Goat" rather than take the initiative to say "excuse me" to the class and leave the room.
My colleague Andrew O'Hehir drew a connection between Moore and Dario Fo, the Italian playwright/performer most famous for his assaults on the dignity of the papacy. To be sure, Moore has none of Fo's skills as a physical clown and only a fraction of his instincts as an entertainer; Fo is an artist, while Moore is chiefly a propagandist. Still, it's a good comparison: The two men share a willingness -- more than that, a ferocious determination -- to strip away the niceties of ceremony from powerful men so that we can see their misdeeds.
That refusal of deference is, after you get past all the various problems with "Fahrenheit 9/11" as documentary and as history, what counts. The TV networks (though they thought nothing of rummaging through the details of Bill Clinton's tawdry sexual escapades) have decided to protect Bush from unflattering images. It falls to Moore to dig up the footage of protesters pelting his inaugural limousine with eggs, and play it for us again.
By the end of "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore has flung his own messy indictment at the presidential portrait, and it won't be easily cleaned up. The filmmaker is deliberately, methodically, overflowingly disrespectful at a moment in our history when there's far too much respect in the land. When the throne holds an ignorant, incompetent, profligate pretender, lese majeste becomes a patriotic duty.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked
Two decades ago I had the odd and daunting experience of defending my undergraduate thesis, on several of Shakespeare's plays, before a panel of scholars. While hardly as rigorous as the real orals a PhD thesis is supposed to be subjected to, this encounter was part of what my department at Harvard required for graduation, and I faced it with some trepidation.
When I walked in, I was introduced to William Alfred, the playwright, poet and English professor. I hadn't studied with Alfred, and had no idea what to expect from the rumpled man. He broke the ice with a simple question: At the start of "King Lear," Cordelia refuses her royal father's demand for a profession of love. There's a foreign phrase that describes her act in legal terms -- what is it?
I'm not sure how many layers of my brain I had to dig through to find it, but somehow I retrieved the desired answer, the medieval label for an injury to the royal office: "Lese majeste!" Alfred's eyes twinkled; my response seemed to satisfy my interrogators' basic requirement of literacy, and from there, all went swimmingly. (Alfred, a brilliant and generous soul with whom, alas, I only had a handful of further conversations, died in 1999.)
Of all things, this distant recollection popped into my head after I finally caught up with Michael Moore's much-debated "Fahrenheit 9/11." Many words have already been flung across the political spectrum about the movie. I will limit my contributions to this one phrase: What Moore has, I think, accomplished, particularly in the movie's more coherent and better-assembled first half, is an outrageous and highly effective act of lese majeste.
George Bush campaigned as an informal man of the people, and he did not carry a very dignified bearing into the Oval Office. (Remember that strange boil on his face during the Florida recount?) But from 9/11 on, his team of handlers began to weave a cocoon of larger-than-life pomp around him. Partly, it was what the nation wanted; it was also smart political opportunism. It has, to be sure, frayed some since the Iraq war and its attendant scandals. The "Henry V"-style bullhorn at ground zero struck a chord with many Americans; the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier stunt backfired.
But "Fahrenheit 9/11" methodically dismantles this president's carefully manicured dignity: It says to the viewer, "Pay attention to the man behind the curtain -- he's smaller than life." The movie's most indelible sequences are those that show our president as he really was in the face of the great crisis of 9/11: Not, as we were told by Showtime's "DC 9/11," a stirring take-charge commander, but a passive photo-op participant who sat paralyzed for achingly long minutes of "My Pet Goat" rather than take the initiative to say "excuse me" to the class and leave the room.
My colleague Andrew O'Hehir drew a connection between Moore and Dario Fo, the Italian playwright/performer most famous for his assaults on the dignity of the papacy. To be sure, Moore has none of Fo's skills as a physical clown and only a fraction of his instincts as an entertainer; Fo is an artist, while Moore is chiefly a propagandist. Still, it's a good comparison: The two men share a willingness -- more than that, a ferocious determination -- to strip away the niceties of ceremony from powerful men so that we can see their misdeeds.
That refusal of deference is, after you get past all the various problems with "Fahrenheit 9/11" as documentary and as history, what counts. The TV networks (though they thought nothing of rummaging through the details of Bill Clinton's tawdry sexual escapades) have decided to protect Bush from unflattering images. It falls to Moore to dig up the footage of protesters pelting his inaugural limousine with eggs, and play it for us again.
By the end of "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore has flung his own messy indictment at the presidential portrait, and it won't be easily cleaned up. The filmmaker is deliberately, methodically, overflowingly disrespectful at a moment in our history when there's far too much respect in the land. When the throne holds an ignorant, incompetent, profligate pretender, lese majeste becomes a patriotic duty.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Liverpool v. AS Roma. August 3rd. Giants Stadium.
Anyone wanting tickets should email or call me post haste: I'm going to call TicketMaster tomorrow. So far, Jacob, Seema, Ben, Ruthie, Natty and Roz (incoming Londoners) have expressed interest. I'm going to call as soon as I get up, which is around 11am. Tickets will be $40.
 |  |
 | |
 | |
 | |
| Graphic Design Job |
