a2_stud

heheh...i have no idea what all that means but you have given me yet another reason to open up my favourite book..the dictionary.

interpretation coming soon for the reading impaired (including myself)..
heheh

I agree with everything in your review, so I won't elucidate your insights but instead raise a couple of questions.

First, I think that one of the topics missing from public discourse on F9/11 -- and I mean the discourse of people in the grassroots who are trying to harness whatever mobilizing power the film has, not the media discourse that interprets and determines public debate, neutralizing mobilization -- is the role of editing in the film, and in polemical media in general.

MM is no Chomsky, Parenti, Spivak, or Ward Churchill, but he proved in Stupid White Men and Bowling for Columbine that he can be exhaustive in his pursuit of answers. There's really no reason why the film -- or Dude, Where is My Country -- shouldn't reveal exactly what Brainless One was doing between storytime and the expeditious routing of the Saudi royal family out of the country. There's no reason, among other things, why MM could not have shown us why Cabinet members knew not to travel on 9/11 and cancelled flights accordingly.

No reason -- except editing. Who edited, and why did MM agree? Here is why people were able to see F9/11 in theaters across the country: choices were made to ensure that the film could be popularized to the extent that airtime and FCC oversight would balance out. Would MM actually compromise in this way? I don't think he would see it as compromise but as populism. He wants the goods delivered to as many people as possible in hopes that it will simulate political saturation against the Bush Administration.

But therein lies the rub -- populism is a diffusive force, not a saturating one. In the end, it distributes itself broadly but thinly because its message isn't radical enough to incite mobilization against ideals of the republic. Instead, it lulls people into a sense of self-determination and democracy, and I don't think a nation in which leaders are not accountable to the people constitutes a democracy but a militaristic republic. If the hardest realities are edited from the discourse of people who are savvy enough to mobilize against them, then the edited vehicle ultimately reinforces inertia.

Which is not to say I wouldn't take F9/11 in whatever shape it's offered. Whatever information makes it through the floodgates needs to be available to the public, and I am grateful for it. It is surprising, however, that MM went for big-impact marketing and distribution for a proportionately low-impact film. Forgive me -- the film is not low-impact in many ways, but in terms of having the potential to be a significant mobilizng force, I don't know.

The lesson of Bowling for Columbine is instructive. It was nearly impossible to see this film when it first came out. I don't think MM edited the hell out of this one. It received limited distribution, and many of us in the backwaters of the country waited patiently to see the film in our queues of future DVD releases on NetFlix.

But the power of the muckraking and exhaustive exposition depicted in this film could not be contained -- once the grassroots sunk its teeth into it, the agitation for broad viewing began, and even liberal Hollywood got into the act. The point here is that MM got away with a lot more in Bowling than in F9/11 -- yet over time the suppressiveness of the glamor media and the FCC could not keep it down. In F9/11, we have a less volatile product and a populist distribuition. The film was not "down" to begin with. The loss of distributor that created a media spectacle a few months ago was compelling but ultimately a canard. F9/11 was cinema-bound whatever Mickey Mouse had in mind.

Which brings me to a second concern, which whether the exuberance that F9/11 has generated in the popular media can be harnessed for social change. I think that as we approach the 2004 electoral college vote, there is a lot of hope in the grassroots that F9/11 can fulfull the populist fantasy of informing popular opinion to the extent that it influences the popular vote. I am cautious about thinking that a debate focused on influencing a "democratic" apparatus can be effective at all. I do believe that the Democrats can win in November. But I'm not all that sure that it takes democratic principles or procedures to do that. I think it may simply be a product of a gradual implosion of the state.

Whoever takes office next year, there will be a strong reinforcement of the state, or what I have called the militaristic republic. I have no doubt that Kerry will be better than Bush, if only in terms of Kerry being able to open his mouth and say something that doesn't sound like it was taken from a linguistic template designed by Kaptain Kangaroo.

Now tying this back to MM, I think that the film has generated a lot of anticipation about our historical "moment," and that some will judge the success of the film by whether Bush is in office next year. I think this would be wrong. The film ascribes to populism, generating somewhat of a democratic fervor. But our polis, unfortunately, has little to do with democracy.

And I say this not in criticism of MM's strategy. The film is superb, and MM is getting the dirt out there in the way he sees he can. I say this because I think we are in ideological crisis, and it's time for people to decide whether they're going to accept a saturation and accompanying watering-down of discourse, or if they're going to face the fact that we can't abide by the same discursive models anymore.

In the meantime, don't you think it's time for Bush to make a trek down the yellow brick road? If he only had a brain. And a heart. And courage. Now that's a junket I can get behind.

[Edited on Jul 01, 2004 8:25PM]