VOANews.com: Anti-Bush Movie Fahrenheit 9/11 Stirs Up Controversy

VOANews.com:
"There is a huge amount of attention and I suppose you know how much attention you're getting when your opposes really get riled up and it's clear that both sides of the political fence are riled up about this for different reasons," says Desson Thomson, a film critic for the Washington Post. "There is an election coming up and America's elections have been decided by very slim margins. There's a kind of middle voter, independent voter who goes one way or the other. There's two halves of America who always vote whatever, for the Republicans or the Democrats. So this movie is going to be, I think, very crucial, it's not going to be the only thing, but it is leading to a huge debate about whether the war in Iraq was a good thing or a bad thing and this is sort of an emotional catalyst that could well be very influential."

"It's hard to measure impact that's an old problem of media studies the influence of a film on the public mind," Christopher Sharrett, a communications professor at Seton Hall University, notes. "I think that a film can thrive and become popular only if there's a kind of a foundation for it in the public mind, if the public is really receptive to it because of changes of the political and social nature inside of the population."

Rick Pantaleo
Washington

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