Zeitgeist

[Professor S]

Is this a "documentary"? I don't watch them anymore since Michael Moore essentially destroyed the genre, making it into a biased soap box artform instead of a form of even handed, thought provoking journalism.

[Dylflon]

Originally Posted by Professor S

Is this a "documentary"? I don't watch them anymore since Michael Moore essentially destroyed the genre, making it into a biased soap box artform instead of a form of even handed, thought provoking journalism.

Michael Moore did not ruin documentaries as a genre.

He created a new sub-genre that you don't like.
Michael Moore is essentially liberal Fox News.

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Dylflon

Michael Moore did not ruin documentaries as a genre.

He created a new sub-genre that you don't like.
Michael Moore is essentially liberal Fox News.

No, he makes propoganda films, not a documentary sub-genre as you call it. Nothing he does remotely smacks of documentary filmmaking, but instead visual op-ed pieces that spawn rhetorical answers from opposing viewpoints. Say what you will about FoxNews ], but as biased as they are at least they normally invite an opposing viewpoint on their opinion programs and panel discussions. Op-Ed filmmakers and even MSNBC (Matigan and Olberman) rarely offer the opposition that chance to be heard.

Documentaries are meant as opservation, not argument, and now it seems like every filmmaker out there follows in suit, even those who spawned propoganda to answer Moore's own garbage.

The problem is, how do you tell the difference when someone is spinning the truth. "An Inconvenient Truth" is full of more deception than true fact and omits volumes of contrarian data, yet it has severely changed the way that millions view the world and has even influenced nations because Gore REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE ANYONE WHO DISAGREES. Does it matter that the earth has been cooling for the better part of a decade? Does it matter that about half of the scientists that Gore cited in his film disagree with his conclusions? Nope. Because ideas and egos matter in these abberations matter, not facts or even honest discussion.

This type of filmmaking is not only irresponsible, regardless of you political leanings, but its dangerous because it plays on people's apathy and ignorance.

[Dylflon]

You do know that there are documentaries that don't do what Michael Moore does, right?

I meant that Michael Moore is like Fox News in that he isn't there to look at something even handedly, but rather to propagate one set of ideas or values. This is what Fox News was created to do as well. This is essentially the main point of a documentary called Outfoxed.

Although you (Professor) might say that it's not valid because whoever made that documentary probably is doing the same thing Michael Moore does and then everything would come in a full ironic circle.

I'm not trying to argue with you about Michael Moore or his documentaries. While I do agree with some of his ideas, I don't necessarily agree with how he presents them through distortion of reality.

Mainly, what I was trying to say was that you can't claim that all documentaries are ruined because of one dude. Because frankly, that's silly. There are amazing documentaries made every year that present their subjects fairly and in a thought provoking manner.

Saying (or insinuating) that no documentaries are good because of Michael Moore is like saying all comedies are bad because the Wayans keep producing spoof movies every year or all action films are bad because of Steven Segal films, or that all dramas are bad because Atonement was really boring.


P.S. I never get why you bother defending Fox News. I mean, really.

[Professor S]

Ok, I will qualify my answer:

The Michael Moore documentary style dominates the artform culturally and financially, but there are other documentaries out there that no one watches or cares about.

To say my comments are silly because I ignore films that no one knows about and affect nothing culturally is quibbling over small points. The point is that Michael Moore changed the documentary artform for the worse and elevated bias over substance. If you want to argue that there are other documentaries out there, fine, I concede that meaningless fact.

And I don't defend Fox News, in fact I concede that they are biased, I only give a fair comparison to other news sources that seem to avoid your poison pen. MSNBC is far more biased that FoxNews ever was for the reasons I stated above. Fox News gives the opposition (which is non-stated admission of bias) a forum, and other news sources such as MSNBC do not. Thats not defending Fox News, I'm simply clarifying things because of people's omission of context.

For the record, I think CNN is the closest to being even handed right now, and I think much of that is owed to the rise of Anderson Cooper.