Where Michael Moore Went Wrong

[queerbychoice]

Robert Jensen's critique of Fahrenheit 9/11 for being conservative and racist is enough all by itself to justify reading counterpunchrss regularly. Go read it.

In other news, my little baby brother turned 24 years old today and I must now go see him and give him presents.

Oh, and July 3rd was the third anniversary of my LiveJournal's birth. See, that was back when I was still 24 myself and genderfree and not yet out to my parents and had only kissed two people in my life instead of four. But I'm still just as strange! At least, I hope I'm still just as strange. One's strangeness would be a terrible thing to accidentally misplace. *checks* Yes, I think it's all here intact. Excellent.

Comments

[joxn.livejournal.com]

Since Jensen completely misunderstands the rhetoric of the movie, it's not surprising his critique completely misses the mark.

Michael Moore doesn't make movies that conform to a college sophomore essay structure (possibly because he never finished college, so he never learned how to write a college sophomore essay). That's a huge problem for Moore in Bowling for Columbine, which really needed an English prof to say "hey, Mike, your evidence doesn't support your conclusion -- go after the more interesting conclusion it does support!" It's a huge problem for reviewers like Jensen in movies like Fahrenheit 9/11, which is a rhetorical exercise, and not really an argumentative one.

Here's the rub: if you can't find a thesis statement, maybe it's because the movie doesn't have a thesis. It's not surprising that the choice of evidence Jensen finds in the movie to support Jensen's imagined thesis is racist. If, in fact, the movie were an attempt to make Jensen's imagined argument, then his critique would be on the mark. But since Jensen has misread the movie, his essay is essentially a demonstration that his misreading is racist and conservative. To which which we can all happily say, so what?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I don't see how the fact that Moore has no thesis renders it unracist to use stereotypical images to "represent" various countries, so I think some of the criticism stands.