Today I Pit the people who love and hate Michael Moore. Listen up, screwheads.

[aaslatten]

@MaxTheVool

The consensus among liberals, at least on the dope, if there is one, is someting along the lines of “We respect his passion, are glad that someone is speaking out so publically and visibly about topics that aren’t frequently discussed in the mainstream, are sometimes entertained by his movies, but wish he was more rigorous and careful with his facts. Not that he deliberately fabricates things, but he seems to be willing to twist things more than we’re comfortable with to make points. Plus, circumstantial evidence indicates that he’s a bit of an egomaniacal jerk. Nonetheless, we go see his movies.”

I understand what you’re saying, but I think that’s more of a dope thing (as you suggested). I recently went to a screening of “Bowling for Columbine” at a university, and it was a rude awakening for me. I thought since it was a university-sponsored discussion, people might be open to critical discussion about the film. Not so. There were several of us who wanted to discuss the implications of Moore’s techniques and possible distortions, but we were basically dismissed by other audience members as “conservatives” with an agenda for hating Michael Moore. This was the first time I’ve been accused of being a conservative. I really was just interested in discussing some of the criticisms that have been raised about his films. They dismissed all of these criticisms as jealousy and said the main thing is that Moore is revealing a “higher truth.” When I suggested that Moore might be taken more seriously if he didn’t dilly with the facts, I was booed as the moderator hooted, “News flash! He is taken seriously!”

I found out later that the “discussion” was packed with Democrat organizations and that it was really more of a political rally. This is why I don’t consider myself a Democrat or Republican.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Rilchiam

Yeah, I’d give both titles — “Most Pitted” and “Most Hated” — to ol’ Phred.

You know, as long as Yanni is around, it’s sheerest stupidity to claim that Hanson or New Kids on the Block are the most hated musicians on earth.

As for most pitted person on the SDMB, maybe y’all have heard of some guy, name of George something or other?

Daniel

[gum]

:eek: I like George Burns. Why is he pitted?

[Larry_Mudd]

@Liberal

And your Simpson’s point is stupid. Comparing an entertainment cartoon with a deliberately misleading self-proclaimed film documentary designed to sway an ignorant electorate is pathetic.

Deliberately misleading? Deliberately evocative, maybe. I agree that The Simpsons’ titles make for a poor analogy – that falls under the heading of parody.

What Moore is doing with the title is something that happens to all widely-recognized works of fiction that lean toward social criticism.

Machiavelli, Kafka, Gogol, Swift, Orwell, and Bradbury have all made their contributions to the common vocabulary of social commentary. They are so well-known that it’s almost certain that anyone describing a situation which is similar to one previously observed by any of their illustrious number will of necessity make reference to them.

Key phrases and terms from 1984 are now part of the glossary for invasive Totalitarianism. Try talking about dehumanizing bureaucracy without referencing Kafka. It ain’t natural.

Likewise, it’s very natural to use Fahrenheit 451 as shorthand for a large part of what contributed to this whole dying show we find ourselves in now. We have a huge number of functional illiterates who get the bulk of their information and opinions through the medium of television. The danger is that television is a very poor medium for delivering information with anywhere near the amount of depth that is required for intelligent analysis. Most programmed material is naturally made with some regard for the interests of the owners and sponsors, and panel shows (which are the main venue for any opinion that’s not in lockstep with those interests) typically amount to little more than shouting matches. It’s a lousy medium for delivering anything beyond entertainment, because time contraints and program formats preclude anyone actually presenting an argument.

Read Fahrenheit 451 with an eye on today and it’s hard not to notice the similarity between the book’s portrayal of the suspicion with which the Wall-Screen viewers regarded the “subversives” who took their ideas from elsewhere and our own situation, and how eerily familiar it is to read of an ignorant populace being conned into stricter and stricter control by an authoritative voice from a box continually emphasizing how they are being protected from Menace.

Moore’s use of the title is a bit confusing because most people associate Fahrenheit 451 with censorship, which of course has nothing to do with the film’s subject. (GOP stooges’ failed attempts to suppress the film notwithstanding.) I think it was a poor choice for a title, since the association is with one of the book’s secondary (although still very strong) themes.

My point, in a nutshell, is that if you write compellingly of social ills, a necessary consequence is going to be that other people are going to reference your work when they’re addressing the same things. It’s not exploitation.

[Shaolinrabbit]

Liberal and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, and sometimes I’m not entirely certain he isn’t crazy, but I have to agree on this one.

Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t a nice turn of phrase from Shakespeare or the Bible, which are both commonly quoted. It’s a social commentary written about a future in which books are burned and free thinking is frowned upon in order to avoid touchy subjects that people disagreed with. It’s supposed to be the advanced version of can’t we all get along with teh added twist of, even at the expense of our convictions and beliefs?. Forced agreement by idea control.

If I thought that Moore referenced a pretty turn of phrase in his titling, that would be one thing, but I suspect that that title was chosen deliberately to spark a mental association with the ideas presented in Bradbury’s book. Maybe it was a tip of the hat to a great social commentator that he admires, maybe just exploitation. For a man who makes his living on controversy, I doubt if Moore would be displeased with either viewpoint.

If I didn’t admire the book so much, I might be inclined to brush it off more easily, or maybe if I had greater admiration for Moore’s work, but I don’t. I wouldn’t say it was outright exploitation, but at the least it was disrespectful and distasteful, especially given Bradbury’s attempts to get Moore to change the title.

You only get to accomplish so much with your life, and that book was probably the greatest thing Bradbury will be remembered for. I’m not talking legal implications or what leg Bradbury had to stand on, but it says a lot about Moore. Pissing on an old man really isn’t funny, even if you can. Especially not an old man who produced a work which is still relevant 55 years after it was first published, in order to produce a film which won’t be relevant next January.

[Princhester]

@Chastain86

See Michael Moore’s movies, but understand that the purpose of his films is to entertain

Puhlease tell me you are joking.

[Chastain86]

@Princhester

Puhlease tell me you are joking.

I can say no such thing. Edutainment, perhaps, but entertainment nonetheless.

[Larry_Mudd]

@Shaolinrabbit

If I thought that Moore referenced a pretty turn of phrase in his titling, that would be one thing, but I suspect that that title was chosen deliberately to spark a mental association with the ideas presented in Bradbury’s book.

Of course it was. “Fahrenheit 451” has become part of the public vocabulary, by virtue of its continuing (and in some ways increasing) relevance.

The idea that it’s only okay to quote something without reference to associated ideas seems totally bizarre to me.

By analogy, take Brave New World. Yes, Huxley borrowed a pretty phrase from Shakespeare for his title. It’s the ideas in Huxley’s novel that really cemented the phrase as part of our common shorthand, though. Yes, it’s sometimes still used in Miranda’s naive sense, but most of the time it’s used in the more ironic (and specifically technological/ethically-questionable) sense that comes down to us from Huxley – a sense that it immediately gained with the book’s popularity.

Huxley lived to see thirty years’ of lesser authors crib his title in the form of “Brave New World of… [subject]” when they wished to immediately evoke technology growing faster than human ethics can accomodate. It’s nearly certain that he sometimes thought it was used inappropriately. Tough titty. If you write something great enough to become cliche within your lifetime, you’re gonna get that.

I love Bradbury (even his corny nostalgia) and have enormous respect for his work. I think he’s just being petulant here, though.

[Princhester]

@Chastain86

I can say no such thing. Edutainment, perhaps, but entertainment nonetheless.

You actually think the purpose is to entertain? Or even edutain? I can accept that as one of the purposes, but the purpose?

Tell me you are not that silly, and that you are well aware they have another glaring purpose.

[Shaolinrabbit]

@Larry Mudd

The idea that it’s only okay to quote something without reference to associated ideas seems totally bizarre to me.

I’m not talking about quoting, or referencing a common idea, because that’s not what Moore did. Moore took the title of a piece of social commentary and changed three numbers to title his own piece of social commentary. He did it for a piece which I don’t think is particularly related to Bradbury’s work, and against Bradbury’s direct protest. He did it with the knowledge that people would immediately see the title and associate it with Fahrenheit 451.

Under the circumstances it doesn’t come off as a positive nod, or even a good reference to Bradbury’s work. Most creative people see it as a bad thing when someone takes something from another artist and uses it for themselves without respect to that artist. It might not be illegal, but I’m not going to gloss over it either.

[Typo_Negative]

@Larry Mudd

Deliberately misleading? Deliberately evocative, maybe. I agree that The Simpsons’ titles make for a poor analogy – that falls under the heading of parody.

.

Does porn count as parody? Because just about every porn movie title is a ripoff of famous movie title.

[Larry_Mudd]

@Shaolinrabbit

He did it for a piece which I don’t think is particularly related to Bradbury’s work, and against Bradbury’s direct protest.

As it happens, I agree with you to the extent that a better title might have been chosen for the film since I think it’s safe to say that the primary association that people have with F451 is that of censorship. That being said, there is a direct relationship between the themes in Bradbury’s novel and those in F911.

Fahrenheit 451, you’ll remember, is an anti-war novel, and it’s predicated on the idea that war is made possible through the complacency of an ignorant populace. In the first half of F911, Lila Lipscomb might well be one of Mrs. Montag’s friends, complacent and lulled by the images on the Parlour Wall:

The three women turned slowly and looked with unconcealed irritation and then dislike at Montag.

“When do you suppose the war will start?” he said. “I notice your husbands aren’t here tonight?”

“Oh, they come and go, come and go,” said Mrs. Phelps. “In again out again Finnegan, the Army called Pete yesterday. He’ll be back next week. The Army said so. Quick war. Forty-eight hours they said, and everyone home. That’s what the Army said. Quick war. Pete was called yesterday and they said he’d be back next week. Quick…”

The three women fidgeted and looked nervously at the empty mud-coloured walls.

“I’m not worried,” said Mrs. Phelps. “I’ll let Pete do all the worrying.” She giggled. “I’ll let old Pete do all the worrying. Not me. I’m not worried.”

“Yes,” said Millie. “Let old Pete do the worrying.”

“It’s always someone else’s husband dies, they say.”

[…]

Mildred sat a moment and then, seeing that Montag was still in the doorway, clapped her hands. “Let’s talk politics, to please Guy!”

“Sounds fine,” said Mrs. Bowles. “I voted last election, same as everyone, and I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest-looking men who ever became president.”

“Oh, but the man they ran against him!”

“He wasn’t much, was he? Kind of small and homely and he didn’t shave too close or comb his hair very well.”

“What possessed the ‘Outs’ to run him? You just don’t go running a little short man like that against a tall man. Besides – he mumbled. Half the time I couldn’t hear a word he said. And the words I did hear I didn’t understand!”

This is the perfect image of the dangers of a dumbed-down, TV-baby electorate. No doubt Moore sees himself as one of the Book People. Remember how one of their number defined their position in the War Against War?

“We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation. […] But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn’t use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And some day we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddam steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we’re going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them.”

[Shaolinrabbit]

I get where you’re coming from Larry, but is that really a strong enough relationship to use someone else’s title with only a minor alteration. People keep saying this is a common practice and that it happens all the time, but I can’t think of a single example which is not a parody, sequel or alternate continuation of the work, or a highly related piece.

If F911 was about modern day censorship then I’d say perfect. But being that it isn’t, I don’t see the pieces as being strongly related.

The example you gave in your previous post is an example of a highly related piece that makes direct reference to the original.

[alison_ashley]

Originally Posted By Larry Mudd
I agree that The Simpsons’ titles make for a poor analogy – that falls under the heading of parody.

Not always. For instance the episode The Crepes of Wrath takes its title from Steinbeck’s Grapes Of Wrath. This book is about depression-era America and Okies going to California. The Simpsons episode is about Bart proving too troublesome for his school to deal with and being sent on exchange to France, where he suffers the cruelties of two French winemakers (who put antifreeze in the wine - Sacre Bleu!).

It is not a parody of the novel. The Simpsons’ writers must simply have liked their wordplay.

And if this doesn’t count, Huxley’s Brave New World does.

[Larry_Mudd]

@Shaolinrabbit.

…is that really a strong enough relationship to use someone else’s title with only a minor alteration? […] If F911 was about modern day censorship then I’d say perfect. But being that it isn’t, I don’t see the pieces as being strongly related.

I think that the degree to which you see the relation is dependent on how closely you look at Fahrenheit 451. Because book-burnings are prominently featured, people tend to think of Fahrenheit 451 as a novel about the dangers of censorship. As I said, this is the reason that I think the title is poorly-chosen – because people generally have a misunderstanding about what the book is about. Censorship is not the root problem that Bradbury was addressing. The book describes a dystopia by extending trends that Bradbury saw developing in the contemporary culture of the 1950s. It is primarily concerned with the prospect of an apathetic, intellectually-stunted and easily-controlled public that is dependent on mass media for information. As Captain Beatty says:

“It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.”

The eventual censorship in the novel is symptomatic:

“When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? […] The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then–motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass […] And because they had mass, they became simpler […] Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?”

Sound familiar? Later:

If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. […] We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dyke. Hold steady.

Montag’s co-conspirator Faber says:

You can’t argue with the fourwall televisor. Why? The televisor is ‘real.’ It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense!’

This isn’t a minor theme of the book – it’s central, and it relates directly to the way the war on Iraq was presented, and why it seemed so plausible to so many. Remember Fahrenheit 9/11’s montage of TV terror alerts? “Something bigger than 9/11 might happen around Christmas! Be on the lookout for pens loaded with poison! Model airplanes laden with explosives! Terrorists might attack our cattle with Mad Cow Disease! You need an impenetrable steel closet! They might hijack ferries!” Or the rush of soundbites asserting connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and claiming that Iraq was preparing to attack the United States with nuclear weapons, while cranking out chemical and biological WMDs? It’s mass media and an intellectually lazy populace that make it so easy to manipulate people. Not a new idea, either. Thirty years before Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, Walter Lippman (more enthusiastically) wrote:

We need something to tame the bewildered herd, and that something is this new revolution in the art of democracy: the “manufacture of consent.” The rest of the bewildered herd just have to be basically distracted. Turn their attention to something else.

Like Beatty says:

Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.

Anyway… 451 is as much (and possibly more) about authoritarian groupthink and where that naturally leads than censorship as a root problem, and the pendulum in the USA may be swinging back to the political climate that prompted Bradbury to write it in the first place. When the book was first published, he said “Whether or not my ideas on censorship via the fire department will be old hat by this time next week, I dare not predict. When the wind is right, a faint odor of kerosene is exhaled from Senator McCarthy.” Well, golly, these last few years I’ve heard the terms “Un-American” or “Anti-American” tossed around an awful lot (without irony) in reference to people who question extremely questionable policy decisions. What’s that smell?

@Shaolinrabbit

People keep saying [using someone else’s title with only a minor alteration] is a common practice … but I can’t think of a single example which is not a parody, sequel or alternate continuation of the work, or a highly related piece.

Off the top of my head, I can think of Citizen Berlusconi, Saving Private Lynch, Our Burmese Days, Sex, Lies, and Religion, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, and The Murderer Is Among Us. (Although those last two haven’t been altered at all.) I’m sure there are many more.

[Larry_Mudd]

One of the reasons that Bradbury is pissed about Moore’s use of his title is that Warner Brothers has another adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 coming out “soon,” and he says that having a similarly-titled movie will “confuse people.”

I think it’s entirely possible that Bradbury is using the opportunity to increase his profile. (And that’s okay.) He told Variety, “We’ve got an important film coming out … If he wants his movie to be an homage to me, why not title it, ‘Bradbury, where the hell are you now that we need you?’”

Well, shit. That project has been in development for almost ten years, and it’s always been a year or two away from entering production. It’s very likely that the high profile that Fahrenheit 9/11 has will give the studios the kick in the ass they need to actually get moving on it. Because Fahrenheit 451 is suddenly, you know, topical again. Michael Moore has vastly increased the probability that the WB F451 will be made within Ray Bradbury’s lifetime, when a year ago many fans had resigned themselves to the possibility that it might not ever get made.

Personally, I can’t wait. I love the Truffaut version, although it’s in many ways it’s own thing, and it’s comfortably cheesy. (The wires! The wires!) I think a new version will play more to the novel’s strengths – a familiar America with a few minor adjustments. Terrifying. Not to mention that we’ll finally get to see the hound. (I understand Jon Pertwee brought in K-9 from the set of Dr. Who for Truffaut’s use, but it just didn’t pan out. ;))
Yes, I know that’s anachronistic. Timelords are funny that way.

[Shaolinrabbit]

Thanks Larry!

[Larry_Mudd]

Cheers!

(I do go on, don’t I?)

[Larry_Mudd]

Coincidentally, some breaking news…

The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people’s reading habits.

Still waiting for Ashcroft to wear his snazzy Salamander armband in public, though.