Art Can Be Effective?
Below is an article from the Guardian, a well-respected British newspaper, by the critic John Berger. While I am not sure I agree with all his praise for
Farenheit 9/11, I have to say that the overall conjecture - that the film is an example of an art piece making a direct political intervention - is exciting. Long have I bemused that the Fine Arts no longer remain relevant to modern society; only 100 years ago artwork could cause rioting in the streets by making a controversial aesthetic statement, let alone a political one. But the start of this new century seems to have relegated aesthetics back into the realm of leisure - pretty to look at but without real substance. Here, I believe, is the case for the contrary. Many thanks to Tressia Fox for sending me the original article...
THE BEGINNING OF HISTORY
Fahrenheit 9/11 has touched millions of viewers across the world. But could it actually change the course of civilisation?
by John Berger
Tuesday August 24, 2004
Fahrenheit 9/11 is astounding. Not so much as a film -
although it is cunning and moving - but as an event.
Most commentators try to dismiss the event and
disparage the film. We will see why later.
The artists on the Cannes film festival jury
apparently voted unanimously to award Michael Moore's
film the Palme d'Or. Since then it has touched many
millions across the world. In the US, its box-office
takings for the first six weeks amounted to more than
$100m, which is, astoundingly, about half of what
Harry Potter made during a comparable period. Only the
so-called opinion-makers in the media appear to have been put out by it.
The film, considered as a political act, may be a
historical landmark. Yet to have a sense of this, a
certain perspective for the future is required. Living
only close-up to the latest news, as most
opinion-makers do, reduces one's perspectives. The
film is trying to make a small contribution towards
the changing of world history. It is a work inspired
by hope.
What makes it an event is the fact that it is an
effective and independent intervention into immediate
world politics. Today it is rare for an artist to
succeed in making such an intervention, and in
interrupting the prepared, prevaricating statements of politicians. Its immediate aim is to make it less likely that President Bush will be re-elected next November.
To denigrate this as propaganda is either naive or
perverse, forgetting (deliberately?) what the last
century taught us. Propaganda requires a permanent
network of communication so that it can systematically
stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its
pace is usually fast. Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite.
This single maverick movie is often reflectively slow
and is not afraid of silence. It appeals to people to
think for themselves and make connections. And it
identifies with, and pleads for, those who are
normally unlistened to. Making a strong case is not
the same thing as saturating with propaganda. Fox TV
does the latter; Michael Moore the former.
Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from
time to time, asked themselves how they might
influence ongoing political events. It's a tricky
question because two very different types of power are involved. Many theories of aesthetics and ethics revolve round this question. For those living under political tyrannies, art has frequently been a form of hidden resistance, and tyrants habitually look for ways to control art. All this, however, is in general terms and over a large terrain. Fahrenheit 9/11 is something different. It has succeeded in intervening in a political programme on the programme's own ground.
For this to happen a convergence of factors were
needed. The Cannes award and the misjudged attempt to
prevent the film being distributed played a
significant part in creating the event.
To point this out in no way implies that the film as
such doesn't deserve the attention it is receiving.
It's simply to remind ourselves that within the realm
of the mass media, a breakthrough (a smashing down of
the daily wall of lies and half-truths) is bound to be
rare. And it is this rarity which has made the film
exemplary. It is setting an example to millions - as
if they'd been waiting for it.
The film proposes that the White House and Pentagon
were taken over in the first year of the millennium by
a gang of thugs so that US power should henceforth
serve the global interests of the corporations: a
stark scenario which is closer to the truth than most
nuanced editorials. Yet more important than the
scenario is the way the movie speaks out. It
demonstrates that - despite all the manipulative power
of communications experts, lying presidential speeches
and vapid press conferences - a single independent
voice, pointing out certain home truths which
countless Americans are already discovering for
themselves, can break through the conspiracy of
silence, the atmosphere of fear and the solitude of
feeling politically impotent.
It's a movie that speaks of obstinate faraway desires
in a period of disillusion. A movie that tells jokes
while the band plays the apocalypse. A movie in which
millions of Americans recognise themselves and the
precise ways in which they are being cheated. A movie
about surprises, mostly bad but some good, being
discussed together. Fahrenheit 9/11 reminds the
spectator that when courage is shared one can fight
against the odds.
In more than a thousand cinemas across the country,
Michael Moore becomes with this film a people's
tribune. And what do we see? Bush is visibly a
political cretin, as ignorant of the world as he is
indifferent to it; while the tribune, informed by
popular experience, acquires political credibility,
not as a politician himself, but as the voice of the
anger of a multitude and its will to resist.
There is something else which is astounding. The aim
of Fahrenheit 9/11 is to stop Bush fixing the next
election as he fixed the last. Its focus is on the
totally unjustified war in Iraq. Yet its conclusion is
larger than either of these issues. It declares that a political economy which creates colossally increasing wealth surrounded by disastrously increasing poverty, needs - in order to survive - a continual war with some invented foreign enemy to maintain its own internal order and security. It requires ceaseless war.
Thus, 15 years after the fall of communism, a decade
after the declared end of history, one of the main
theses of Marx's interpretation of history again
becomes a debating point and a possible explanation of
the catastrophes being lived.
It is always the poor who make the most sacrifices,
Fahrenheit 9/11 announces quietly during its last
minutes. For how much longer?
There is no future for any civilisation anywhere in
the world today which ignores this question. And this
is why the film was made and became what it became.
It's a film that deeply wants America to survive.
