In my opinion, Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” uses Moore’s own abhorrence for President George W. Bush as a catalyst for his documentary. He uses clever editing and even twisting the words around to make the President look as bad as possible. In one of the more well known scenes from Fahrenheit 9/11, President George W. Bush is seen giving a press conference on the fairway of a golf course.
Speaking to a gathering of reporters, President Bush says, “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.Thank you. Now, watch this drive. ” This quote makes George W.
Bush seem nonchalant and insincere about the threat of al Qaeda. However, contrary to what Michael Moore would want his audience to believe, President Bush was not talking about al Qaeda at all. Bush was talking about Hamas, which had suicide-bombed in Israel hours before. The genre of the film is intended to be that of a documentary, however, it has also been labelled as a “Political Satire”.This may lead one to interpret the film as trying to entertain as opposed to inform and may actually jeopardise the seriousness of the film. Some have even labelled the film as propaganda due to Moore’s dislike of Bush, with such a bias; there may be doubts over the authenticity of the film. The audience which Moore targets with Fahrenheit 9/11 would consist mainly of people who oppose George W. Bush, be it the Democrats, people of other nations and people who just generally dislike Bush.
With Moore’s crowd-pleasing approach, one can question not only Moore’s integrity, but just how credible “Fahrenheit 9/11” actually is. One only has to look at the audience to see just how reliable the documentary is, if his target audience is an Anti-Bush audience, would he want to make Bush look good? The ideology that Michael Moore subscribes to is that everyone sees President George W. Bush the same way in which he sees him as a man who is completely incompetent at running the country and his administration is what is creating most of the problems in the world.It also attempts to promote the ideology of first amendment of the US Constitution, the right to free speech, and Moore capitalises on this in the fullest way possible, some may argue that he even abuses it by attempting to change people perception and political beliefs. The language Michael Moore uses for his narration fluctuates between complex, more intelligent language to a more sarcastic tone.
He edits Bush’s language to make him appear as if he is a very unintelligent man. In my opinion he does this to make his audience feel superior to their own President and to boost his own ego.The institution used in this film is The White House, the central building in the United States of America. The focus in the beginning of the movie is the White House who should inhabit it.
Anything that involves the White House also brings about the representation of democracy and freedom. Another institution linked to the film is Columbia Tristar. With a relatively large company backing the film, there were sufficient funds to promote the film to a wider audience which is what Michael Moore would need in order to sway as many people as he could to vote for US Senator John Kerry at the next elections.The film has representations of many people. Many politicians (especially Bush) were depicted as devious and untrustworthy, this could be interpreted as creating a stereotypical character in what is supposed to be a factual documentary. Many American soldiers were depicted as heroes as well as being puppets somewhat. One such scene that proves this is where Moore followed around two marines trying to recruit members of the public at a local Mall.The average American seems to come in two forms in this film, the gullible and the victimised.
He considers people who voted for Bush as gullible and black people as being victimised. Moore uses his dislike for Bush to turn what could have been an excellent documentary into a good election campaign for Senator John Kerry. The documentary would have been a lot more credible if Moore had actual focus energy on bringing a fair unbiased argument as opposed to making Bush look as bad as possible.
