Went to see Michael Moore’s new movie tonight. As far as movies go it wasn’t quite up to par with "Bowling for Columbine" or "Fahrenheit 911." There were some parts that just didn’t seem to flow together, for example he spent some time discussing big corporations who make it a practice of taking out life insurance on their employees without their knowledge, the corporations being the beneficiary in the event the employee should die. The corporations have a term for such an employee, "dead peasant."
The fact that corporations engage in this practice, by doing so they suddenly have a vested interest in the mortality of their employee, brings up all sorts of ethical questions and the topic could have made a movie all on its own. In the case of "Capitalism, a Love Story", it felt more like filler.
Michael Moore tends to elicit criticism of his movies, usually by those who have an agenda and will claim that some of his facts are inaccurate or things taken out of context. Those who dwell on such criticisms or even my own about the flow of this movie in particular are missing the point. For in my mind what he has done with this movie and all his previous films in general is to raise awareness of topics that a select few would much prefer stay out of sight out of mind.
A significant point made in this movie drives home the fact how effective propaganda is used to convince people to favor that which is completely contrary to their own best interests. The current debate over health care reform is a prime example, a topic covered in his previous movie "Sicko."
This past week I finished reading Jon Krakauer’s new book, "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman." Together with this movie is a common theme of how much control the rich and powerful have and the sobering truth that most of us are nothing more than pawns or peasants. Their agenda is not in most of our best interests.
It does concern me that so many have been lulled into a state of apathy, many friends and people I have a lot of respect for, either don’t have the time or just aren’t interested enough to pay attention. If life appears good at the moment, it’s much easier to take the Alfred E. Newman approach of "why worry?" The reality is we, the middle class, are in a downward spiral and until we reach the point where we open up our windows and scream to the top of our lungs, "I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more", we’ll continue on that spiral.
The one thing I did very much appreciate about "Capitalism" was rather than simply leave the audience with an education of the problem, Moore showed examples of those who have chosen to take a stand, to make their voices heard, and to fight back. We need a ground swell of that because otherwise we all look forward to being dead peasants.