I just got through watching Robert Greenwald’s Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and while I found some of the information and statistics interesting, on a whole I was turned off by the film. Aside from the horribly cheesy effects, music, text, etc., the whole movie just reeked of a one-sided bias and cheap plays for emotion. I certainly don’t think a film maker isn’t entitled to making a movie that is as opinionated as they please, but a more balanced perspective (at least for me) would make for more convincing material.
Naturally, Michael Moore is an even more (in)famous example of this type of sensationalist documentary. When I watch his films, I’m always torn between an interest in the content he’s putting forth and a distaste for the way he presents it.
So I guess what I’m wondering is if anyone finds these sort of documentaries effective?
Eep, had I known this would end up in GD I’d have posed a more debate-worthy question. So, a rephrase:
I think many would claim that the likes of Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald bank on the notion that the average movie-goer is more taken in by sensational claims, scary statistics (accompanied by requisite scary music), and flagrant plays for emotion more than a balanced, rational view of the issues. If this is true, do you think these are valid or morally acceptable tactics?
If popular taste requires (and I’d say that it does) for documentaries to be sensationalist and especially controversial to reach any significant slice of viewership, does this justify anything? Suppose a documentary is truly exposing some horrible wrong, how does the integrity of the film’s approach weigh against the number of people its message reaches?
Honestly I can’t vouch for the films accuracy or inaccuracy, one way or another; I simply haven’t researched the issue much. I can tell you that the film made use of “startling” statistics that seemed irrelevant and mentioned only to evoke an emotional response.
For example, the movie briefly mentioned Wal-Mart’s tendency to build stores and then to relocate them somewhere nearby, leaving a huge abandoned building that no other businesses could make use of. They then gave the acreage taken up by abandoned Wal-Marts across America, followed by how many thousands classrooms could fit into said acreage and how many hundreds of thousands of students could be educated in said classrooms. The relationship, I presume, is that abandoned Wal-Marts are taking up valuable real estate where we could put schools, as if the problem with education in America is a matter of finding room?
I used the word sensationalist because it appeared like many of the facts and images were chosen to appeal to emotions, catch the eye, or startle the viewer. The entire film had an almost propaganda-like feel to it that, true or not, left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Of course it is. The most effective propaganda is true. It’s possible to win an argument with lies, or even without any facts at all, but that’s risky. It’s much better to start out with facts you can manipulate to lead the audience to draw the conclusions you want them to draw.
Hmm, I’m probably not picking my words very well. I didn’t mean to say the movie is propaganda, just that it had the feel of propaganda to me. By that I mean it reminded me of propaganda in the way it was presented (i.e. shots of a beleaguered Ma & Pa business owner with pleasant harmonica music in the background intercut with shots of Lee Scott glazing over their issue, with an ominous orchestral score to match.)
I stand by my use of the word sensationalist though.
Can’t comment on Greenwald’s film as I haven’t seen it, but since Moore is mentioned as well I’ll have a go.
In print journalism, you basically have your straight news and your Op-Ed pieces. Op-Ed is, as it says on the wrapper, opinion. No one I know of has any problem with the basic concept of opinion pieces, as long as they are clearly presented as opinion, as long as the author provides some sort of facts supporting said opinion, and as long as the author doesn’t, you know, make stuff up.
Movies in general are not journalistic endeavors; the subclass of documentaries mostly are, but although they could be either straight news or opinion, it seems to me they are mostly in the line of Op-Ed pieces. If we’re talking specifically about Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, well, it’s very clearly an opinion piece, and as far as I can see it follows the same rules as a print piece, i.e he supports his opinions with verifiable facts, and except, apparently, for one single instance where he changes a headline, doesn’t make stuff up. Print journalists who write Op-Ed don’t usually include much of anything rebutting their own opinions, so I see no particular reason to demand that an opinion-oriented journalist like Moore be required to do otherwise simply because he happens to work in film rather than print.
Documentaries on political or other uncomfortable subjects are not the first thing most Americans turn to when they want to an evening’s light entertainment. Most documentarians presumably have gone to the enormous trouble to make their films for some other reason than simply to perform a dry exercise in balancing opinions; they have something they want to convince you of. As long as they stick to facts, I’ve got no problem with that; it’s up to me (as the audience) to determine whether the filmmaker’s opnion is in fact valid. In the end, if the audience chooses to treat the resulting film as straight news rather than opinion, or to buy wholly into into the filmmaker’s premise on nothing more than the emotionality of the presentation, then the audience should probably try to be a little less naive.
That’s my opinion. If you don’t like it, as Groucho Marx once said, I have others.
Well, there is a subtle line between the two. Can you differentiate at all?
This is a common misconception. Despite it’s historically negative connotation, propaganda does not necessarily mean “lies.” A person can give you nothing but facts, but out of any context, which would still technically be dishonest.
Just curious here, but is anyone else aware of the other Wal-Mart movie that is supposed to be released soon. Apparently, it sings the praises up and down of the chain.
Now this isn’t necessarily the same as the Michael Moore film and the following reaction-films, apparently they are two seperate films that are showcaseing different viewpoints. I haven’t seen either, but I am anxious to see if this is two honest sides of a serious issue, or two massive conglomerates of bullshit.
A filmmaker is on a a no-win situation here. You make a 90 minute news report and no-one wants to see it. You make a polemic and it gets declared propaganda by your detractors, sometimes to the extent that even many of those who agree with every word you say agree that its bias is a negative.
It’s just a matter of understanding context. Look, a film like that in the OP is always going to be a polemic. It’s about presenting an argument. You decide whether it has presented its argument in an entertaining and informative manner. Nobody criticized John Kerry for not singing George Bush’s praises in the presidential debates last year. Its the same thing with many docos.
Documentaries are like op-eds. A good documentary will be like, for instance, a William Safire column. I may have disagree with much of what he had to say, but I could still see where he is coming from and respect his point of view. I never expected him to be making an argument from a liberal point of view for the sake of “fairness,” but so long as he was arguing on reasonable premises and was not lying, I could respect what he had to say.
(I guess the same applies to someone like Maureen Dowd, who I guess is the editorial equivalent of Michael Moore. The problem with Dowd is that to get away with name-calling, angry-reporter schtick, you have to be really entertaining. I think Moore is entertaining enough to make his diatribes funny. Most of the time, Dowd is not.)
I’m no fan of Wal Mart but and I’d like to see the film but I do realize how biased a documentary can be. I was throughly disgusted with Michael Moore and the dishonest techniques he used in Bowling and 9/11. There is a film called Uncovered which I thought was muh more honest in presenting information about Iraq and the doctored intelligence.
When a documentary is too biased or too one sided, it loses it’s message rather than making it. No doubt Wal Mart has done lots of good things for lots of people. The question should be balance. Does the good outweigh the bad. Drug Dealers can be generous with all the money they make. Does that make it worth it as they sell poisen to people?
Others have corrected you on this, but I’d appreciate it if you could specifically address the abandoned store / schools example. Do you think that is a relevant statistic, germane to a documentary that is rigourously analysing Wal-Mart’s effects, or is it a manipulative attempt to invoke “the children”? Or is it something else entirely? Assuming the statistic is correct, and I have no reason to think otherwise, the segment presents as fact only the truth, yet the heavy implication is that Wal-Mart is somehow obstructing schools with its abandoned stores. Do you think the film-maker’s motives were entirely illustrative in using this measure of abandoned space? Is the number of classrooms and potential students a traditional measure of area? Or was there some other motive behind the choice? And if you do agree that the film-maker was trying to demonstrate that Wal-Mart is somehow obstructing education of the little children, do you think this is the truth, and why do you think he didn’t simply say so explicitly?
I’m of the mind that all documentaries are biased. Someone has to decide what ends up on the cutting room floor and biases lead to that decision at least part of the time.
If a documentary ends up making someone look to substantiate the facts that were presented, it did its job. The fact that Michael Moore’s documentaries can have entire websites dedicated to refuting and confirming his facts tell me that they did the intended job - to get people to think.
I think ultimately Michael Moore is a detriment to his cause. The sensationalistic way he presents his message only fuels the fire to show that people on that side are completely unreasonable. Of course he’s balanced out by Rush Limbaugh on the right, but the problem is that these demagogues are at the forefront of their respective sides, and both of those sides are the powers that be in this country.
I was reading last night something by Robert Anton Wilson where he was talking about how the constant lying of the government in the 60s led to a culture of paranoia that has persisted until the writing (1977), and I think still persists today. We are so inundated by a lying government that the lies have become the status quo, and this permeates all of society. Our marketing culture has led to a society that cares more about the spectacle than the truth.
The Corporation is a good example of a documentary that is both entertaining and less sensational. It’s been seen by quite a few people as well. It shows multiple sides of the issue, and presents socially conscious corporations and corporations that are not socially conscious. It even goes into how many of the CEOs of corporations that are doing some of the most heinous acts are socially conscious themselves, but that this does not transmit into corporate policy.
I saw a bit of the Pro-Wal Mart documentary on “The Daily Show” and they had this black woman crying with joy over how much Wal Mart cares about it’s employees, so don’t expect much from that one.
I haven’t seen the Wal Mart doco in question. However, I think the point about the stores closing and moving a mile down the road shows the culture of waste that Wal Mart contributes to. It has contributed to a culture of disconnection from our fellow citizens, and most of it’s products are completely disposable, as is the store itself. I think that’s the real issue, that we have fewer and few edifices that constitute a real connection to our communities, turning Americans into nothing but cogs in a machine. The sensationalism probably does the subject matter no favors, as it appeals to the choir, but not many others.
