American News: Fahrenheit 9/11 reviews all off-base

American NewsWhen I finally saw Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," I found that none of the reviews I read reflected what the film was actually about. The reviews, even the complimentary ones, were fence-post stupid. Commentaries on the film fell into two groups: the ones by people who did not see the movie before beginning their rants; and the ones who did see it and said that Moore manipulated the documentary evidence. The first group lives in la-la land. They are the ones who fervently believe in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, along with the tooth fairy, because that is what they have been told, and that Armageddon will be the day the WMDs all go off at once, providing just retribution to us nonbelievers.

The second group I cannot explain, but is clearly the product of an educational system that programs brains by teaching to tests - as opposed to educating children - and hits the delete button when it encounters literary and interpretive brain cells. One commentator lamented that Moore seemed to have lost his sense of humor in this film. The audience I saw the film with did not think so. They found the film funny and laughed constantly. I admit that I saw the film at an art theater in Denver where the audience was not representative of the American public. One commentator said the film was like a Rush Limbaugh script with vivid graphics. The film was composed with wit. No one can ever accuse the school yard bullying and street-corner derision of Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts of wit.

The film is, in fact, a satiric cinematic essay that uses documentary materials to create penetrating ironies. Most of the reviewers said the purpose of the film is to bash George W. Bush. But the real point of the film is announced with the title and stated throughout. It is hard to miss. Its point is that the nation was so stupefied by 9/11 that it was put into a fevered state of anxiety, hence the title "Fahrenheit 9/11." In that state of anxiety, the nation allowed itself to be bullied and bamboozled into supporting the war on Iraq without questioning the facts or the reasoning that rushed us into a war. The film is about the mental state of a nation that falls into the kind of fearful submission that terrorist acts are designed to create."


David Newquist, Aberdeen, is an editorial board member for the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, active in the Brown County Democrats, and involved in regional history.