When Michael Moore's new documentary "Where to Invade Next" came to an end, Moore came to the former site of the Berlin Wall in Germany . He recalled a trip to West Germany in the winter of 1989. As he walked past the Berlin Wall, he saw someone chiseling the wall and joined in. It seems that the Iron Curtain, which has straddled the European continent for nearly 30 years, divided East and West, and was once thought to last forever, collapsed with a bang. This gave Moore an extremely optimistic idea, thinking that "any impossible thing will come true." That year, he created his first documentary "Roger and Me".
The number one angry youth
In 1954, as a member of the post-World War II baby boom in the United States, Moore was born into an Irish-Catholic family in Flint, Michigan, United States. At the beginning of "Roger and Me", Moore introduced himself with a narration: "I was a weird child since I was a child. Before I was two years old, I was crawling backwards." Conservatives, those in power and bankers who didn't like him saw him as America's number one cynic, paranoid fanatic, social demagogue and troublemaker. On the cover of his 2011 best-selling autobiography, Here Comes the Trouble, Moore rode a stroller as a child. He is content with the role of the urchin who pierces the king's new clothes. In elementary school, Moore made a speech in a speech contest, claiming that there was racial discrimination in the school. At the age of 14, he entered a Catholic school but was persuaded to be dismissed because he was always tricky and questioned. On his parting, the presiding pastor blessed him, "May your future be bright and successful, and I will also pray for those who have to endure you in the future." Moore went to Michigan State University and chose journalism, but dropped out after a year. At the age of 22, he founded the Flint Voice, a radical political publication that caused headaches for town officials. In the movie "Roger and Me," Moore mentions with disdain that after ten years of editing independent newspapers, "a California tycoon came to me and asked me to join his paparazzi magazine." This magazine is actually the famous left-wing magazine "Mother Jones" in San Francisco. The stubborn Moore used a photo of a General Motors worker as a magazine cover and was soon invited back to his hometown.
Fading "Golden Age"
Moore's hometown of Flint, the Midwestern town, is an important production base for General Motors. Most of the family members, including his grandfather and father, worked for GM. It was the 1950s, and Europe was in decline after two world wars. The United States keeps its savings and moves forward and back appropriately. After the war, the dollar replaced the pound as the world currency, and the United States reached the top of the capitalist world. As shown in the home video and expansion in the opening episode of "Roger and Me," the factory here is thriving. The proud slogan "GM's 50 millionth vehicle - Chevrolet" hangs on the street. Workers are a well-off middle class, living a good and happy life. In the film, in the "Golden Age" of the American economy in the middle of the 20th century, General Motors also ushered in its 50th anniversary. At the celebration, happy workers paraded on floats, and even Miss America came to join in.
When Moore returned to his hometown in 1987, General Motors had begun to close factories and move production materials to Mexico. Thirty thousand employees immediately lost their jobs. In the face of impending decline, a cloud of disorientation and despair hangs over the town of Flint. Moore sold the house and nearly used up his savings to carry a camcorder. As he named his production company "dog bites dog", he not only wanted to record the sad situation of laid-off workers and the city's depression. It is even more necessary to complain about social injustice and the gap between the rich and the poor, as well as aggressively demand answers from indifferent capitalists. Under his lens, after General Motors withdrew, the town of Flint was like an abandoned city, littered with rubbish, and "the number of rats exceeded fifty thousand residents." It is difficult for workers to re-employ, and only the low-wage fast food industry can choose. Unemployed female workers raise rabbits outside their homes, a cruel metaphor: as soon as buyers arrive, the docile animals in their cages are hoisted up and left to be slaughtered. The adjacent wealthy area is the exact opposite. At the outdoor buffet banquet with ice sculptures of swans, the gentlemen and women in their temples provide the poor with a fashionable new job-dressing up the party without moving, so-called. "Human Statue".
Documentary film as trial
Different from general documentary films, which only provide knowledge introduction and theoretical and logical analysis, Moore, in addition to showing the incident and exploring the deep and grand reasons, always returns to the incident itself, trying to identify the victims and perpetrators, and asking compensation for the latter. In "Roger and Me", for the 30,000 people who were abandoned by Flint, he found a "culprit" for all the bleak status quo - General Motors President Roger Smith in the title. He accused Roger of caring only about commercial interests and disregarding the well-being of workers. Take him back to Flint and see the rot there. From Detroit to New York, from the GM headquarters to the private yacht club, he chased after him all the way, and finally found Roger at the GM Christmas party. Of course Roger didn't go back with Moore, just like the poster on Moore facing an empty executive chair with a microphone. If the material in Moore's film is court testimony, the narration throughout is his statement as the victim's attorney. His points, analysis and comparison guide the judgment of the audience as a jury. And in his ridicule, accusation, ridicule and indignation, let the audience accept his summary. This rambunctious, potbellied, perpetually American grass-roots baseball cap with messy hair, the trucker-like fat white man stands on the side of the working class, the common people, and the victims of the system. This makes him extremely powerful when targeting the powerful. In "Bowling in Columbine," Moore found the "culprit" responsible for the school shootings was the "Ben-Hur" National Gun Owners Association president. In Fahrenheit 9/11, President Bush himself is responsible for 9/11. In "Medical Insider", those in power and insurance companies are responsible for the medical insurance system that ignores life. In Capitalism: A Love Story, Wall Street financial institutions are responsible for the 2008 financial crisis. When the audience sees him jumping out of the behind-the-scenes commentary, becoming one with the power of the camera, facing the "perpetrator", and finally forcing him to face moral judgment. We almost have to believe that the moral force of the "documentary of justice" is happening right before our eyes, and that reality will change with it. Obviously, as Moore's social issues become more sensitive and in-depth, it is gradually difficult for him to find a specific perpetrator. Just like when the capitalist system is listed as the object of criticism, it also falls into the "array of nothing".
Most Successful Documentary Directors
Moore's maiden was well-received after its release, and it also created a box office success of over $7 million. President Roger himself also resigned due to public pressure. Warner Bros. paid Moore $3 million in distribution fees. This allowed him, a low-income person, to taste the wonderful taste of fame and fortune overnight. However, even in the face of the boss, he must strictly implement the position and justice of the working class to the end. He demanded that Warners pay two years' rent for the evicted families and give 10,000 movie tickets to unemployed workers in Flint. After winning the flag, he moved to Hollywood in 1995 to shoot the feature film "Bacon Canada", which made up a farce in which the incompetent U.S. president declared war on Canada in order to run for re-election. Trying to bring political allegory into a feature film. As a result, it can only be said that the tuition fee was paid once. Moore then entered the publishing industry, and his first book, Threats to an Unarmed America, attracted attention. It soon topped the bestseller lists in the United States. In 1997, when he toured the country to promote his new book, he recorded the process of negotiating with big companies and became the documentary "Big Guy". In 1999, he hosted a TV program, exposing and criticizing the loopholes in the system on TV, so that the audience can see the "terrible truth" of American society. In 2002, he wrote another "Stupid White Man," describing President Bush as "the head of a thief, a trespasser on federal land, and a man who occupies the Oval Office." A country that thinks America has "degenerated into ignorance and stupidity". As the blueprint for "Fahrenheit 911", this book has been the No. 1 bestseller for more than 50 consecutive weeks, and then won the British "Book of the Year" award. Moore is becoming more and more like a radical American angry youth, a best-selling author of alarmist politics, and a media talker who specializes in criticism. Another documentary, "Bowling of Columbine," was born, making it the highest-grossing documentary in American film history with $21.5 million. It has been recognized by authorities and won the special award at the 55th Cannes Film Festival and the 75th Academy Award for Best Documentary. The title of 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11 is an apparent reference to Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451. Moore explained the title by saying "911 Fahrenheit is the temperature at which liberty is burned" and the theme of the film is "Bush should step down". The 57th Cannes, which was chaired by Quentin Tarantino, was once again awarded the Palme d'Or to a documentary film after 1956 for this highly offensive and incendiary "Put against Bush", which made it even more creative. The Myth of the $130 Million Documentary Box Office. Moore became one of the most successful documentarians in the contemporary world.
"New Documentary Film" creator
At the end of "Roger and Me", with the snow falling and the ruined factories beside the road in the video, Moore's narration said, "We are at the turn of the century. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. And the dawn of the new century It’s right in front of you.” As the industrial age fades away and workers are declining, as American theorists say, “Moore is the dawn of the 21st century, a prominent phenomenon on the American political stage.” In the first decade of the new century, From Bowling in Columbine in 2002 to Capitalism: A Love Story in 2009. Moore's political documentaries have become a unique cultural landscape in American society. To explore the origin and influence of its aesthetic style can be traced back to the "real film movement" that emerged in France in the late 1950s with the invention and use of hand-held cameras and portable tape recorders. It encourages exposing the truth through stimulating and provocative behavior, and actively explores the hidden truth. In the 1960s and 1970s, American society experienced crisis and turmoil, and the tide of anti-capitalist mainstream morality and culture gave birth to postmodernism. By the end of the 1980s, represented by Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line") and Michael Moore, those who had passed their adolescence in a time of cultural rebellion, were driven by the idea of "real cinema". Inheritance and mastery of postmodernist artistic means created the American "New Documentary Film Movement". In the "New Documentary Film", fictional means and feature film narrative modes are used for granted, montage techniques and music, etc. convey the director's intention, and the means of influencing emotions are not a problem at all. Under the concept of postmodernism, the traditional barriers between feature films, documentaries, music videos, TV news, and cartoons have been broken down. All media elements such as pop music, advertisements, surveillance videos, and expansion films can be collaged and used at will. Present the point of view in an entertaining gesture and in a light-hearted manner.
create objection
Each of Moore's works focuses on a sensitive issue in American society and politics, and also extends to other social issues. Nu's new work "Where to Invade Next" focuses on social welfare. It also involves issues such as the wealth gap, racial conflict, social fear, foreign wars, etc., which Moore has always been concerned about. In Moore's view, these issues are interconnected and fall like bowling balls. He traces and analyzes in the way of feature film narrative, and then conveys his views and conclusions in a guided manner. The narrative fits perfectly with the narrative structure that McKee's "Story" is used to talking about when it comes to feature films. "A story is made up of five parts: motivating events, developmental entanglements, crisis, climax, and ending." For example, "Bowling in Columbine" focuses on the chronic problem of the proliferation of guns in the United States. Starting from the "inspirational incident" of the Columbine school shooting, and then expounding the causes of school violence, the frequent foreign wars in the United States, the collusion between the government and arms dealers, the atmosphere of fear that permeated the country after the 9/11 incident, the media's exaggeration and gun associations Inferring and thinking about intertwined issues such as the agitation of the past and the racial confrontation in history. Then came a new crisis: a 6-year-old in Flint set the "record" for the youngest school killer in America. It culminated in Moore leading the wounded students in Columbine to a gun and ammunition mall to discuss and Moore himself confronting the president of the National Gun Owners Association at his home. In the end, the mall agreed to cancel the related business. And the chairman fled in the face of the photo of the victim girl that Moore showed. Of course, this climax is whether in "Big Guy" he goes to a big company to give out the "Best Layoff of the Year Award" established by himself, or in "Fahrenheit 9/11" lobbying for the children of congressmen to join the army, or using warning signs. Living in a Wall Street investment bank is an event and climax created by Moore. Like a 2007 Canadian "exposure" of Moore's work, accusing him of "making dissent." All along, the doubts about McMoore have never stopped. After the release of "Fahrenheit 9/11," an article was published on the Republican National Committee's website aimed at proving that the dignitaries' remarks were taken out of context. Moore is also often criticized by serious intellectuals for his arrogance, manipulation of audience emotions, simplification of issues, biased views, and open mouth. As well as his books and movies are political popcorn and live-action South Park, never trying to respect the complexity of things. He even criticized him for living a luxurious life, but pretending to be an American grassroots image. In 2004, another Mike, surnamed Wilson, made a documentary and accused him of being misleading and falsifying, because "Michael Moore Hates America". However, this "opinionist" really made some people feel scared. He can always use the network to get all kinds of inside information. When preparing for the filming of "Medical Insider", the major pharmaceutical companies made three orders and five orders from the inside.
Moore , a documentary in the age of video and the Internet
, tracks President Roger in "Roger and Me," and he certainly isn't so ignorant that he thinks he can meet GM's president without an appointment. In "Columbine", with the help of many media, the mall promises to no longer sell bullets, which actually has no impact on the entire upstream arms industry. These are just the necessary performances and games in his documentary. As Don Quixote wants to erect a huge windmill that can be smashed. Moore has no intention of dialogue, as long as the other party shows resentment and avoidance, he wins. Moore knew that audiences needed this feeling of "defying the sublime" for a kind of psychological compensation. In the video age, audiences in the Internet age are increasingly impatient to accept serious elitist thinking. They want joy and straightforward judgment. Moore mocked the public's blind obedience to media propaganda, such as the gum-chewing Britney Spears in "Fahrenheit 9/11" who claimed to support President Bush's counterterrorism efforts. He also knows that people hate "news neutrality" gestures and blunt rhetoric. He also understands that the middle and lower classes are the main consumers of mass culture and popular entertainment. He wants to pack a layer of shiny entertainment clothes for his thinking, and become a fireworks detonated in the night sky of popular culture. Moore has never thought about objective truth, which is not enough for him to make a statement. Records are just a form, and reality is just a bargaining chip. What he wanted was to express his own voice in a "truthful" way. In this era of frequent terrorist attacks, presidential elections, foreign wars and other major political events, he uses the leading opinions of documentaries to express a world seen by the left in the Democratic Party.
Changes in perspective and inclination
It can be seen that with the growth of Moore's own age, the change of vision and the changes of American society and politics, the tendency and appeal of Moore's documentary have also changed. In "Roger and Me," in addition to his demands for equality and his indictment of capitalists, Moore also shows the government's efforts to save Flint's economy, such as transitioning to tourism. But as Moore quipped, no one is interested in the smell of motor oil from a bygone industrial age. At this time, the film was limited to the local vision and the empathy of working-class origin, as well as a sentimental sentiment towards the helplessness of the industrial age. In "Medical Insider" Moore turned his attention abroad with his own problems. Countries with publicly funded medical care such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and France are used as examples, and even Cuba, which is hostile to the United States, is deliberately compared. The film mainly attacks the conservative Republican government and the medical insurance company colluding, and also mentions that Hillary Clinton tried to reform health care, but was immediately resisted, and she was also bought. "Fahrenheit 9/11," as a film aimed at Bush, did not establish a Democrat that Moore himself admired. The film also did not succeed in removing Bush from office, and it also illustrates the political reality and maturity of the American people. In Capitalism, the United States is compared to the Roman Empire before its fall. The ending song is a jazzed version of The Internationale. In the film, Moore also interviewed the socialist Sanders. Before that, a long piece of Roosevelt's "State of the Union" expansion was Moore's purpose - he longed to save capitalism like Roosevelt's New Deal. As Moore said, "In my opinion, both pure socialism and capitalism have drawbacks. The only thing I believe in is democracy." Moore basically agrees with the Democratic Party's views outside of his firm opposition to conservatism, while his ultra-left society Expressions of ideology are mostly just a playful warning. What he calls for is the awakening and solidarity of the working class to fight for their democratic rights, not revolution and confrontation. His background is sympathy for the working class, and he is holding the banner of democracy. As Moore concluded, "Capitalism is a sin, and it must be abandoned and replaced by something beneficial to the people. It is called democracy." The film presents Obama's "America is changing" speech in a very positive manner for the first time. It can be seen from this that Moore is also changing his position on the non-sectarian documentary. In the face of conservative candidates that he absolutely cannot accept, he is about to start "sermons and singing" for the Democratic Party.
Moore's European Holidays
Moore's researcher Anna Missiek once said, "Moore's films, books and speeches sought to ignite a fundamental democratic drive among American citizens. He played the role of a demagogue, raising the awareness of the audience, A voice of disdain and debate to power elites and capital titans." Perhaps Moore's documentary has little direct political impact, but he is a fiery voice that needs to exist outside the mainstream media. He can get Americans lost in mass entertainment to care about the politics that matter to them. Moore's many extreme political documentary films are a strong proof that he maintains the freedom of speech in a democratic system. His documentary acts as a relief valve for public grievances by triggering ridicule and stunts. After venting his emotions, he can better understand the sympathy in his laughter and scolding, and the hope in his sarcasm.
But this lovely fat man was old, bloated and staggering. In his new work, he takes a vacation to what seems to be a perpetually sunny and saturated Europe. And this time he didn't have the strength to create an incident and hunt down the "culprit". When it is time for these post-war generations to receive their pensions, in an aging America, it is bound to make the debt-ridden finances even worse. After admiring the medical insurance in Britain, France and other countries in "Medical Insider", this time he simply went to Europe to learn. In the film, the European high-welfare countries are smeared with rose-colored warmth - long paid vacations in Italy, exquisite meals in French schools, high-quality education in Finland, and free universities in Slovenia. Norway's highly unguarded prisons carry out 'reconstruction of love' in better conditions than American universities. Even the prison guards are singing "We are the world, we are children". In Norway, in Moore's usual contrast montage, when a Norwegian father who lost his child expressed his abandonment of hatred and forgave the murderer, he cut to the scene of American police brutalizing black prisoners. Not seen in Norway. It also seems that the financial turmoil in 2008 never crossed the Atlantic Ocean. European countries have always been prosperous, happy, harmonious, and stable small countries with few people. There has never been a sovereign debt crisis or terrorist attack brought about by welfare disease. Finally, after paving the way for the high status of women in Tunisia, he came to Iceland to conduct a lengthy interview with the country's outstanding women and Iceland's world's first female president. The former president said gently and lovingly to the camera, "If anyone can save the world, it must be women. They do not use war, but words achieve everything. If women are allowed to rule the world, they will pursue peace, save humanity, and save Children." And put out a big puzzle of world female leaders. At this moment, it cannot be more obvious which "first female president" Moore is going to promote. However, Moore himself still couldn't help asking, "Do you think that if women were in power in 2008, everything would have been different?" Obviously, no matter who was in power, the economic crisis that hit the United States was unavoidable.
not stupid american
It has been nearly 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The extreme left and right of Sanders and Trump, as the outliers that emerged in the 2016 election, are the product of the continued decline of the middle class and social polarization after the economic crisis. A large part of its supporters are degraded lower-middle-class whites. Instead of believing in the American dream of "equal opportunity to live a happy life through hard work," they turned to a populism of exclusion. As a person well versed in the way of the media, Trump laughed and scolded, and his mouth was open. However, they can always use and incite public grievances, incite negative emotions, and create an atmosphere of extreme opposition. The trucker hat, which represents closeness to the bottom, was put on his head this time. But he is not a director and a writer, but a politician, a candidate for the presidency. If elected, in a world where terrorism threatens and exacerbates ethnic antagonisms. In an era of regional integration crises, the United States will once again embark on a conservative, populist, xenophobic and isolated road. Every recession and unemployment and poverty has led to the rise of populism. In "Roger and Me", Flint can see signs of boycotting Japanese cars everywhere. Like the "Wizard of Oz" clip in the film, Dorothy can return to Kansas by touching her red shoes. We hope that a democratic and free United States can "don't invade, just go to the lost and found office in the United States." We can get back the glory and happiness of the past. good. While this is as simple and idealistic as the desire to transplant the European welfare system to the United States, it is not stupid. Moore also used the words of the Tunisian hostess to hope that the United States would be less conceited and learn more about the world. All this makes us still like him, the American fat man with introspection and openness. It is by no means the red neck who incites internal and external confrontation and "builds a wall on the US-Mexico border".
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