Post by Barefoot In Kailua on Jul 23, 2004 4:26:06 GMT -5
Even Washington Post Admits: Documenatarians Dominated by Left
Anyone who thinks that Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" is an aberration because, as a so-called "documentary," it has a far-left slant and thus is not representative of documentary films, needs to understand that the great majority of such films are just as ultra-liberal as Moore's latest propaganda.
Even the liberal Washington Post reported Thursday that "Fahrenheit" is "strictly par for the course."
The paper noted that while Fox News Channel leads all cable news channels; Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham dominate talk radio; and bookstores are loaded with books by Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and Bernard Goldberg, "one form of nonfiction narrative remains determinedly liberal: the documentary film."
Citing examples of such left-wing documentaries as those opposed to the Vietnam War (1974's "Hearts and Minds," 1979's "The War at Home"), those about slain black leftist or gay leaders (1971's "The Murder of Fred Hampton," 1984's "The Times of Harvey Milk"), films about the menace of Republican administrations (1992's "Panama Deception," 2002's "The Trials of Henry Kissinger") and the struggles of coal-mining and meatpacking union workers (1976's "Harlan County U.S.A." and 1991's "American Dream"), the Post writes that "most documentaries that approach political issues do so from the left."
And that, the Post notes, "has been true since the political upheaval of the late 1960s."
The reason for the left's domination of the documentary field, liberals say, is that only the left has a social conscience. Conservatives, they believe, are a bunch of Ebenezer Scrooges busy exploiting the poor and downtrodden Bob Cratchits of the world.
"I think it's pretty meaningless for a documentary filmmaker to put six years of his life into a film that reinforces the dominant paradigm," Mark Achbar, co-director of "The Corporation," a study on the evolution of corporate power that opened last week in Washington, told the Post.
"By default, documentary filmmakers are put in a dissident position because we are being critical of what's happening in the world," he said.
Adds L.A. Weekly critic Ella Taylor, "The people who make documentaries very often come from the left, mostly because conservatives are not particularly socially conscious people looking to change the world."
Changing the world, it should be remembered, has been a goal of the left for over 150 years.
It was Lenin, after all, who said, "Philosophers have explained the world; we must change it." He and his fellow Communists tried, and a couple hundred million died in the process.
David Hoffman, who has been directing documentaries for 40 years, disagrees with Achbar and Taylor, and says he dislikes a lot of what he sees from his colleagues.
"In these documentaries, America is always the bad guy, the power structure is the cause of people's problems, racism is rampant - they're just too easy to make," Hoffman said. "I despise the assumption of 'the truth' presented by liberal documentary films, which Hollywood just seems to love and always rewards with top prizes."
Professor and filmmaker Jon Else, director of the documentary program at the University of California Berkeley, explained to the Post: "The awards are generally given out by juries in places like Los Angeles, New York, Sundance and Cannes. Those aren't red-state juries, and I don't think that it's a good thing that documentaries are such a blue-state phenomenon."
And, the Post adds, "films that win awards have a much better chance of being booked at the multiplex."
Barbara Kopple, the director best known for two Oscar-winning films, "Harlan County U.S.A." and "American Dream," denies that most documentaries have a leftward tilt.
"The vast majority of documentaries have no political leanings," she told the Post. "The ones that do are simply exploring social issues, and different types of storytelling emerge from different crises. So, no, most documentaries do not come from the left."
According to the Post, "documentaries with the highest profiles are the ones that make it to the big screen. And the best opportunity for a documentary to make it into film festivals and, from there, to neighborhood theaters is through a provocative exploration of social, often political, matters." In other words, films with a leftist agenda.
The Post cited such high-profile films as the Oscar-winning "Fog of War," featuring former defense secretary Robert McNamara, one of the chief architects of America's Vietnam strategy, who questions the high cost of war; the Oscar-nominated "The Weather Underground," a "sober but ultimately sympathetic look at the '60s radical leftist group; Sundance winner "Super Size Me," the anti-McDonald's film about fast-food eating; and "Fahrenheit 9/11," the first documentary to win the Cannes Film Festival's top prize.
Moreover, such documentaries have a ready market for limited runs in large blue-state cities with artsy liberal audiences.
Such cities as San Francisco, Boston, Washington and Chicago, along with New York and Los Angeles, are more liberal than conservative, and that perpetuates the market for more left-leaning documentaries.
Some examples are the recent pro-Clinton "The Hunting of the President," the anti-Fox News "Outfoxed," the upcoming "Bush's Brain" and a slew of films critical of the 2000 election debacle and the war in Iraq, including "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War," due out in August.
Having such user-friendly audiences, however, can mislead filmmakers to believe that they represent a larger market than they do and be tempted to avoid anything that contradicts their leftist slant, says Jon Else.
"If you look at 'Control Room,' it's wiser, more balanced, a film that will generate more productive dialogue in this country," Else said. "'Fahrenheit 9/11' has a giant ax to grind. It's to Moore's credit that he got those powerful images into theaters, because none of us did, but I feel very uneasy about viewing documentaries as insults. As filmmakers, we can make Gandhi look like an idiot if we wanted to."
Coming soon is a documentary that takes Moore to the woodshed for his distortions and outright falsehoods. "Michael Moore Hates America," a documentary by Mike Wilson, is awaiting release.
"I think 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is a well-constructed film, but it's misleading," Wilson told the Post. "And in the end it's going to persuade people to make decisions they wouldn't have normally made, particularly with their vote, which is the most sacred thing we have."
Wilson said his film shows how Moore has manipulated his sources and fudged facts in his movies, but he added that he realizes Moore is a filmmaker and not a journalist.
MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough is not as kind. He's had it in for Moore ever since "Fahrenheit" came out. He calls Moore's films "attack filmmaking" and doesn't believe Moore is either a filmmaker or a journalist.
"If you look at 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' it certainly isn't any more of a documentary than 'The Clinton Chronicles' was," Scarborough told the Post, referring to a 1994 film claiming that Bill Clinton ordered people murdered in Arkansas and made a fortune off drug money. "I was in Congress at the time, and we all ran away from it as quickly as possible - it was such an embarrassment to Republican members. Hollywood didn't give that trashy piece a second look, but they're embracing 'Fahrenheit 9/11.'"
Hoffman explained that the only thing that matters to the documentary establishment is a film's politics.
Hoffman said he's made 13 documentaries that explore military life, such as "Jimmy Doolittle: An American Hero" and "Second Home: Going to Sea on a U.S. Aircraft Carrier," some of which, he said, scored huge ratings on PBS.
None of them, however, has been accepted at Sundance or other high-profile film festivals. "You show me one film festival that has accepted any pro-military documentary," he said.
Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, told the Post few conservative organizations would willingly risk the funds and effort needed to make and market a documentary - especially since a market for conservative films hasn't been demonstrated.
"There were many anti-Clinton films that came out in the 1990s, but their sales fell under the radar - I don't think any turned a profit," Franc, the foundation's vice president of government relations, explained. "It's not that it's an infertile ground for conservative filmmakers - there are people out there doing it. But the problem is finding the right style and technique to make that real breakthrough and cause a buzz, like Michael Moore has."
Scarborough thinks documentaries will remain a stronghold for liberals, while talk radio continues to serve the conservative crowd.
"It makes sense for Moore to go to his constituency, because if you're a Democrat, talk radio isn't going to be the best place for you to affect the elections," Scarborough said. "You won't see attack filmmaking from the right, because conservatives just don't have a lot of friends in Hollywood."
Says film critic Taylor: "The great documentaries confront social issues, and it's always been the left that has a beef when it comes to social issues, while conservatives, by definition, would like to conserve. But I wouldn't rule them out."
Anyone who thinks that Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" is an aberration because, as a so-called "documentary," it has a far-left slant and thus is not representative of documentary films, needs to understand that the great majority of such films are just as ultra-liberal as Moore's latest propaganda.
Even the liberal Washington Post reported Thursday that "Fahrenheit" is "strictly par for the course."
The paper noted that while Fox News Channel leads all cable news channels; Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham dominate talk radio; and bookstores are loaded with books by Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and Bernard Goldberg, "one form of nonfiction narrative remains determinedly liberal: the documentary film."
Citing examples of such left-wing documentaries as those opposed to the Vietnam War (1974's "Hearts and Minds," 1979's "The War at Home"), those about slain black leftist or gay leaders (1971's "The Murder of Fred Hampton," 1984's "The Times of Harvey Milk"), films about the menace of Republican administrations (1992's "Panama Deception," 2002's "The Trials of Henry Kissinger") and the struggles of coal-mining and meatpacking union workers (1976's "Harlan County U.S.A." and 1991's "American Dream"), the Post writes that "most documentaries that approach political issues do so from the left."
And that, the Post notes, "has been true since the political upheaval of the late 1960s."
The reason for the left's domination of the documentary field, liberals say, is that only the left has a social conscience. Conservatives, they believe, are a bunch of Ebenezer Scrooges busy exploiting the poor and downtrodden Bob Cratchits of the world.
"I think it's pretty meaningless for a documentary filmmaker to put six years of his life into a film that reinforces the dominant paradigm," Mark Achbar, co-director of "The Corporation," a study on the evolution of corporate power that opened last week in Washington, told the Post.
"By default, documentary filmmakers are put in a dissident position because we are being critical of what's happening in the world," he said.
Adds L.A. Weekly critic Ella Taylor, "The people who make documentaries very often come from the left, mostly because conservatives are not particularly socially conscious people looking to change the world."
Changing the world, it should be remembered, has been a goal of the left for over 150 years.
It was Lenin, after all, who said, "Philosophers have explained the world; we must change it." He and his fellow Communists tried, and a couple hundred million died in the process.
David Hoffman, who has been directing documentaries for 40 years, disagrees with Achbar and Taylor, and says he dislikes a lot of what he sees from his colleagues.
"In these documentaries, America is always the bad guy, the power structure is the cause of people's problems, racism is rampant - they're just too easy to make," Hoffman said. "I despise the assumption of 'the truth' presented by liberal documentary films, which Hollywood just seems to love and always rewards with top prizes."
Professor and filmmaker Jon Else, director of the documentary program at the University of California Berkeley, explained to the Post: "The awards are generally given out by juries in places like Los Angeles, New York, Sundance and Cannes. Those aren't red-state juries, and I don't think that it's a good thing that documentaries are such a blue-state phenomenon."
And, the Post adds, "films that win awards have a much better chance of being booked at the multiplex."
Barbara Kopple, the director best known for two Oscar-winning films, "Harlan County U.S.A." and "American Dream," denies that most documentaries have a leftward tilt.
"The vast majority of documentaries have no political leanings," she told the Post. "The ones that do are simply exploring social issues, and different types of storytelling emerge from different crises. So, no, most documentaries do not come from the left."
According to the Post, "documentaries with the highest profiles are the ones that make it to the big screen. And the best opportunity for a documentary to make it into film festivals and, from there, to neighborhood theaters is through a provocative exploration of social, often political, matters." In other words, films with a leftist agenda.
The Post cited such high-profile films as the Oscar-winning "Fog of War," featuring former defense secretary Robert McNamara, one of the chief architects of America's Vietnam strategy, who questions the high cost of war; the Oscar-nominated "The Weather Underground," a "sober but ultimately sympathetic look at the '60s radical leftist group; Sundance winner "Super Size Me," the anti-McDonald's film about fast-food eating; and "Fahrenheit 9/11," the first documentary to win the Cannes Film Festival's top prize.
Moreover, such documentaries have a ready market for limited runs in large blue-state cities with artsy liberal audiences.
Such cities as San Francisco, Boston, Washington and Chicago, along with New York and Los Angeles, are more liberal than conservative, and that perpetuates the market for more left-leaning documentaries.
Some examples are the recent pro-Clinton "The Hunting of the President," the anti-Fox News "Outfoxed," the upcoming "Bush's Brain" and a slew of films critical of the 2000 election debacle and the war in Iraq, including "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War," due out in August.
Having such user-friendly audiences, however, can mislead filmmakers to believe that they represent a larger market than they do and be tempted to avoid anything that contradicts their leftist slant, says Jon Else.
"If you look at 'Control Room,' it's wiser, more balanced, a film that will generate more productive dialogue in this country," Else said. "'Fahrenheit 9/11' has a giant ax to grind. It's to Moore's credit that he got those powerful images into theaters, because none of us did, but I feel very uneasy about viewing documentaries as insults. As filmmakers, we can make Gandhi look like an idiot if we wanted to."
Coming soon is a documentary that takes Moore to the woodshed for his distortions and outright falsehoods. "Michael Moore Hates America," a documentary by Mike Wilson, is awaiting release.
"I think 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is a well-constructed film, but it's misleading," Wilson told the Post. "And in the end it's going to persuade people to make decisions they wouldn't have normally made, particularly with their vote, which is the most sacred thing we have."
Wilson said his film shows how Moore has manipulated his sources and fudged facts in his movies, but he added that he realizes Moore is a filmmaker and not a journalist.
MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough is not as kind. He's had it in for Moore ever since "Fahrenheit" came out. He calls Moore's films "attack filmmaking" and doesn't believe Moore is either a filmmaker or a journalist.
"If you look at 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' it certainly isn't any more of a documentary than 'The Clinton Chronicles' was," Scarborough told the Post, referring to a 1994 film claiming that Bill Clinton ordered people murdered in Arkansas and made a fortune off drug money. "I was in Congress at the time, and we all ran away from it as quickly as possible - it was such an embarrassment to Republican members. Hollywood didn't give that trashy piece a second look, but they're embracing 'Fahrenheit 9/11.'"
Hoffman explained that the only thing that matters to the documentary establishment is a film's politics.
Hoffman said he's made 13 documentaries that explore military life, such as "Jimmy Doolittle: An American Hero" and "Second Home: Going to Sea on a U.S. Aircraft Carrier," some of which, he said, scored huge ratings on PBS.
None of them, however, has been accepted at Sundance or other high-profile film festivals. "You show me one film festival that has accepted any pro-military documentary," he said.
Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, told the Post few conservative organizations would willingly risk the funds and effort needed to make and market a documentary - especially since a market for conservative films hasn't been demonstrated.
"There were many anti-Clinton films that came out in the 1990s, but their sales fell under the radar - I don't think any turned a profit," Franc, the foundation's vice president of government relations, explained. "It's not that it's an infertile ground for conservative filmmakers - there are people out there doing it. But the problem is finding the right style and technique to make that real breakthrough and cause a buzz, like Michael Moore has."
Scarborough thinks documentaries will remain a stronghold for liberals, while talk radio continues to serve the conservative crowd.
"It makes sense for Moore to go to his constituency, because if you're a Democrat, talk radio isn't going to be the best place for you to affect the elections," Scarborough said. "You won't see attack filmmaking from the right, because conservatives just don't have a lot of friends in Hollywood."
Says film critic Taylor: "The great documentaries confront social issues, and it's always been the left that has a beef when it comes to social issues, while conservatives, by definition, would like to conserve. But I wouldn't rule them out."