the exception which proves the rule
Since the only reason I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 was the role it played in public discourse, not spitting out my two cents seems pointless. And I had a request ;)

As a disclaimer, I haven't actually paid the slightest bit of attention to the public discourse around the film.

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The material itself - the critique of the Bush administration, the links between the oil elite in America and Saudi Arabia and what that says about the likely reasons for America's foreign policy actions, the process of lies and deception to maintain a climate of fear in which to pursue that agenda, and the cost borne by the poor who have to fight and die in that war - is reasonably uncontroversial to me. Indeed, to anyone who has been paying attention, this is a partial rendition of the litany. What is new is presenting it in the mass medium of film rather than in alternative media, books and whatnot.

Turning to the mode of presentation. Well, the way Moore stitched together images and soundbites to create a narrative was a bit blatant and dodgy. Some of the juxtapositions were cheaps shots. On the other hand, this is exactly the same process that happens every night on the television news, which can and is extensively and justififiably critiqued (eg www.fair.org). Media objectivity is a myth. The act of editing images and words together to make a narrative is inherently subjective. Ironically, the more that subjective narrative accords with your own subjective reality, the more objective you are likely to proclaim it.

Probably my favourite part was the Democrat senator who was a psychiatrist describing the manipulation of the public through constant fear stimulus. That and the Zytech safety box - an indestructible toilet cubicle in which you can be SAFE from the druggies, gangs and terrorists. (The next step would of course be to bury it six feet under the ground and call it a coffin. Satire, as I have said many times, has become almost impossible.) The manipulation of the public strikes a furious deep chord with me. Two years ago I wrote a song called "There is no War on Terror" (you can download it or read the lyrics at www.idlefaction.wadda.org), so I concede my position.

Anyway. So what was this film? Why I regard it as arguably magnificent is its intended audience. Because it understands the world it is in and the most direct way to effect change. In the last American elections around half of the eligible voters voted. Similar statistics abound in the first world, the reasons for it are another debate. The non-voters are overwhelmingly among the poor. These people have the largest direct ability to influence the american government, and hence american foreign policy, and hence the immediate fate of the world. In my opinion, Fahrenheit 9-11 is directed explicitly to the American non-voting poor, aimed at explaining what is going on to them and why they should not allow Bush to be re-elected. The entire manner of the film is structured as a conversation to these people from one of tehir own, saying the President is an incompetent liar serving the interests of his friends the wealthy elite who is willing to lie and manipulate you and send you off to fight and die in service of his agenda. The opinion of any other demographic is irrelevant.

To paraphrase (read:quote innaccurately from memory) Spider Jerusalem in Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan: "Journalism is a gun with one bullet. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world."

This is what Moore is attempting, I think. And I wish him well.