so i saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and i have to say that despite my many trepidations, i found it to be a pretty decent flick. mm's film making skills are top notch and this time he lays off the wacky-ass pseudo logic that plagued bowling for columbine. (the fact that defense contractors build missiles in colorado can in some way explain the actions of two fucked up teenagers? por favor!) thankfully, he doesn't say anything in f 9/11 that hasn't been reported elsewhere, and for the most part, (and this is merely an observation) i don't think anyone watching the film was SHOCKED by what they saw. for example, i think most americans know that bush and his daddy have been doing bidness with the saudis for several decades. yes, and we know that the saudis are two-faced, and yes, their own country is pretty much as far away from democracy as you can get, and yes they have a fat trillion invested in our country and yes, they get special treatment on account of that investment...OK, yes, yes, yes...we funnel down all of this info over the course of 2 hours, being reminded all the while that poor, disenfranchised kids from all over this country are (right now!) fighting a fucked up war that will make these same, reprehensible rich people even richer.
it's the same old story. it's the song we hate called "western civilization"...
and of course it's all well documented--the paper trails, the soundbites and film clips. mm takes care to cite the sources he pulls from--the wall street journal, the NY Times, Fox News, CNN...but it's not the individual bits of scandalous info that proove revelatory, it's the manner in which he puts them together and feeds them back to us that does the trick.
yes, feeds...that's the metaphor i want to explore...because while i think the film is good and worth seeing, it's the overall act of watching that i have a problem with. in more than one review, i've heard people describe how they left the theater feeling wiped out and depressed...and no wonder--the past four years are played back to us to the tune of "You Sure Got Fooled Again." we are the dupes, the stupid, well-meaning fucks who (on a daily basis) are overwhelmed by the circle jerk of media corporations and tricked by the rich, self-serving assholes who run our government, time and time again. according to the film, the only responsibility of the lowly citizen who is not an elected member of the government is that of the individual's responsibility to him or herself to survive--we see the soldiers "just trying to make it home" and get out of Iraq, we see a mother who has lost her son trying to come to terms with her grief and disillusionment in the country she used to love, we see the poor kids in flint, MI, just trying to get by and get an education...while all along cocky ass bush and his boys are giving great media head and making money hand over fist. mm never looks deeper, and he certainly doesn't offer any viable alternatives. he seems content to reinforce the idea that we are all just anonymous pawns, with nothing much to offer to the country as a whole. as a director, he at least has the camera, the enlightened consciousness and the connections who photocopy classified info for him--but we the people have nothing but to watch and learn.
how come he doesn't talk about why these dudes are so rich? how come he doesn't talk about why we are so beholden to oil, i.e., why doesn't he ONCE mention our country's love affair with the automobile? try counting the number of car commercials you see on TV sometime...it's outrageous! bush and his daddy and cheney and the saudis would be out of business if we refused to buy these gas guzzling machines. the trillion dollar investment would start to shrink if we agreed to raise the price of black gold per gallon to an amount that might actually curb our consumption of it...the reason these dudes are so rich is because YOU AND I ARE BUYING WHAT THEY ARE SELLING.
we can demand the implementation of alternative energy sources, we can car pool, we can take the subway, we can regulate fuel consumption
we can get off our fat, lazy, apathetic asses and start walking.
i saw f9/11 on times square, right around dinner time. just before it started i got on one of the 8 lines at the concession stand to get a bottle of water. all around me were fellow members of the f 9/11 audience, anxiously awaiting their turn to spend more money than the average iraqi sees in a month on a "snack". guts protruded over waistlines, dollar bills were clutched in fists...it was all i could do not to shout--"so this is what a revolution looks like in the year 2004!" this is how one gets their message across, in a super climate controlled setting, with extra cheese nachos and convenient bendy straws for super large cokes...
don't you see--y'all love yr lives. the comfort and greasy food and instagrat...you love yr brand new car and your plasma screen TV...
you love yr pills and yr potions, yr shrinks and yr televised emotions...in fact, if anything makes you sad it's that you want, no, you DESERVE MORE! more of everything! especially the right to point the finger at everyone else!
(and more than anything else right now we love DUBYA! yes, that's right! all of us, even me--i love him so much because he's the perfect bad guy for me to direct all my moral indignation upon)
we have become a nation of soft heads and bellies. we are greedy enough to believe we can "have it all" without anyone else having to suffer as a result.
the world, unfortunately, does not work that way.
in closing, i think f 9/11 is a good movie to see, because it accurately portrays one aspect of the problem...it shows just how wide we've allowed the gap between rich america and poor america to become. it also tears asunder the thin veils that our government put up between us and the "truth". in that, it is successful. but the important next step that mm does not take is to point out that it is WE who let it happen. it is time that WE wake up and get hard again. drop the fast food and get out of the car. shut off the TV and go outside...
the next step is to fucking do SOMETHING.
think
talk
read
write
free yrself from yrself for it is truly now or never.
you can start by writing a post for this site...
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