Entry # 6.5: Michael Moore

I had never really heard of Michael Moore before. I didn't know that a lot of people don't like him or anything aside from being told something like 'regardless of your feelings about Michael Moore' before we started this film in class. I was fresh and unbiased. 

What I saw was fascinating. I hadn't seen information presented this way and the man narrating seemed to really know what was going on. I was into it. I could see the clear bias in the man who took a company big-wig ignoring him as some sort of conspiracy, but I didn't really care. Sometimes severe bias is what it takes to inspire change, right? 

I guess not in this case, since most people hate Michael Moore. 

I don't know a ton about the guy and I don't really care to look too much more into it. So let's just talk about his film making abilities. 

He seeks to mix giving viewers information and emotional responses. He starts this film showing clips of people getting evicted from their homes which automatically makes a lot of people feel bad because no one wants to experience that. He shows scenes of people getting laid off from factories talking about how these kinds of things are happening all over the place because big businesses don't want to pay that many workers. He wants people to feel. 

Sure, a lot of the stuff he says is true enough but he mostly just wants to show one side of things. He wants to get the American middle and lower class on his side because he apparently fights for us. Moore has a scene where he tries to get an audience with the owner of GM (I think, I may have remembered wrong) and the security guys won't let him into the building. He turns that situation into this big deal because someone who is clearly pretty important won't take time out of their day to talk to a guy they probably know is just going to make them look like a jerk. A lot of what he does is to try to make other people look like jerks. He interviews people and either agrees with them and uses them to his advantage that way or totally makes the viewer hate them. It takes skill to do what he does. He says things in just the right way, shows just the right things, and so he seems believable maybe even trustworthy. He certainly knows his field, I'll give him that. 

I could have liked him had I not learned better.