FAHRENHEIT 9/11’S WIDE AND INCLUSIVE LENS

by Gen Fujioka
7/31/04            

 ‘Connecting the Dots: Michael Moore, White Nationalism, and the Multinational Left,’ posted on Azine, does not do the film or the filmmaker justice.  ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ is a rare film and you owe it to yourself to see it.  ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ does what our media industry has failed to do: offering a glimpse of the real range of victims of 9/11 and the so-called ‘war on terrorism.’  But Michael Moore does not merely immerse us in sorrow.  He directs our pain at a target, stripping away for a moment the veneer of respect (and complicity) our media bestows on our national leadership. 

To acknowledge ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ as an important film is not to say that the film and its director are above criticism.  Some have disagreed with the film’s oversimplification of our government’s motivation for invading Afghanistan.  Others would prefer a film that directly rejects all forms of patriotism or war.  All fair enough--nothing wrong with disagreeing on artistic or political choices.  But criticism crosses the line into the realm of unfairness where it misrepresents the subject being criticized.  The Azine's ‘Connecting the Dots: Michael Moore, White Nationalism, and the Multinational Left’ crosses that line—distorting Moore’s actual messages to impose the authors’ own version of Moore’s world view.

The accusation in “Connecting the Dots” that Moore promotes “white nationalism” and “anti Black racism” is simply groundless.  Without hype or manipulation of race as a message, Moore repeatedly places African Americans in central roles throughout the film.   At almost every significant point in the film, Moore returns to African Americans to tell their stories and offer their analysis.   Moore’s introduction includes an extended excerpt of the Congressional Black Caucus (plus the late great Congresswoman Patsy Mink) courageously protesting the certification of Bush’s election (over the feeble objections of then still Vice President Gore).   Moore’s camera offers a moving, lingering statement by an African American woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center.  Moore presents as one of the film’s few talking head commentators Congressman John Conyers.  Moore interviews African American teens about the military.  And finally the star of the movie is a white woman married to an African American whose interracial son is killed in Iraq.

Neither Minstrel Show nor Exotic Subculture