Recently I viewed several Michael Moore films and was shown a side of the United States of America that most families are not accustomed to. In his film Bowling for columbine although not on the topic of the economy he identifies many key problems that he believes led to the tragedy at columbine high school. In this movie he introduces his persistent idea that the government here in the United States instills fear into society in anticipation of consumption. Moore blames advertising to the overall feeling that Americans to have a gun and use it. Canada, Moore says has as many guns as the US, yet has less gun related violence. When he visited Canada the media was not fixated on violence.
In Sicko he uses this “formula” to explain the reason so many Americans are so willing to accept a system of healthcare that shuns its paying customers and denies so many from being covered. He goes on to say that the public is willing to have their right to live because they have a fear of socialistic ways and communism. Why? Because they had been taught this for many years and were trained to play follow the leader .He states that the government in the 80s decided to have for profit hospitals following the capitalistic ideas of this country. He follows to bash the whole idea of capitalism in his film Capitalism: A love story. In his films Moore gives examples of how the whole system has failed and gives many suggestions of how the problem could be fixed but goes on to explain that the very base of the government is too greedy to ever want to change.
A very interesting opening sequence in Capitalism: A Love Story he compares a crumbling roman empire to the existing government. He did this excellently noting that the Romans depended largely on slave labor not far off is the US using foreign labor that’s cheap. He also goes on to say that not many jobs are available to the unskilled. Another interesting subject was the one of what unskilled workers were worth to CEOs and those higher up on the working scale. It turns out the unskilled were worth more to the companies they were employed under, dead. hundreds of dollars were paid to companies after the passing of their employees in the form of life insurance policies, were as families were paid nothing. Companies known to do this were Wal-Mart Citibank, bank of America…just to name a few Another underlying theme in Michael mores films was the job his father was stripped from after Gm decided to close down their factory in Moore’s home town. He proudly shows clips from his happy childhood and goes on to criticize GMs decision. Overall the tone of his movies is sarcasm he feels the government has lied to the public and that they I guess don’t deserve respect from him. His main target most of times is George bush the head of the “organization” he seams to despise.
I believe his movies are entertainment and are meant to open the eyes of those who view it. It is also moving to see that through all of these hardships, Moore cares enough to go out of his way and make a film to inform an ignorant public about the reality the public unwillingly ignore.
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