made for today's 'instant' consumptions

Fahrenheit 911 openeed to packed cinema houses all over the country this last friday..and to the surprise of some, even Salt Lake's theaters saw endless queues. Me and Sachin managed to get 2nd row seats at the 5:30 matinee at Broadway. Wow, it almost felt like ole days in India when standing in a Q to enter a cinema was the norm. only this time the people were relatively quiet almost as if we were in Q to enter a morgue or something like that.

Ok, so I am not at all a big fan of GW Bush, no doubt about that, atleast in the current circumstances. so with all my exposure and readings and past leanings, i was pretty much ready to accept what Michael Moore (MM) was going to offer in the 2 hr film. my curiosity was more with regards to the way he was going to go about making his case, the cinematic effects and his editing skills ( Bowling for Columbine struck a chord and i could never resist another film by MM).

The movie is essentially a cut and paste job with MM's narration all along the way. there are also one on one interviews with certain individuals ( democratic lawmakers, obviously none GOP) and then there's Mrs Lipscomb's experience. But the remarkable aspect is the slick editing. never did it feel like a scratchy job. Amazing footage, well chosen for this film and some can do more damage than the other. If you already have the no-no's for GW, you wont find anything sparklingly new here. I guess i had already assumed that GW was of doubtable character, particularly when it came to his BIg Oil connections and Cheney running the show.
It was entertainment value for me, nothing shocking, nothing out of the blue.
Its like this for me: once i had already decided that Bush was no good, all such anti-bush information was just making me say 'i told u so'.

But apart from the take-home message from tht film, I am curious about the effects the film can have on public opinion given that it is an election year and a tight one at that. The whole place is so drastically skewed at for or anti Bush. Kerry doesnt get that kind of ardent hatred that Bush manages to generate at the twitch of his nose. One thing I feel , in a kind of a sad way, is that today our capacity for memory is getting to be more and more short term. In that, we are so ready for today's headlines that we easily forget or atleast tend to forget most of the past days' top news. So MM's film may just be that , at its worst. It is sure to create more than just a buzz for the next few weeks ( its already the top grossing film of this weekend, inspite of its limited release). Ok say it will do so for a month maybe two. that still leaves a couple of months before people exercise their votes in November.

So, am i scared that F911 will hardly matter? hell no. it sure will, but the 'phenomenon' that it is today will be reduced to a whimper come October. And that is a sad commentary on our crazily fast paced lives of today. Maybe I didnt get too turned on by the film, but i hope there is an audience that was not as cynical about Bush (before viewing F911) as me. Maybe the film moved them from their pro-Bush stances. the very stance that MM also talks about in his film, pointing to things like ' they want us to live in fear, so that they can go to war...'

The bombardment of news (or their version of it) on today's US 24-hr channels has made me always seeking the next big thing. news items that would have been considered sacrilege a few years ago, hardly itches anybody today. I (or shall i say we) have become hard hearted and hard to please. the media channels keep trying their best to impress me that they have the latest breaking news, this that, so many killed, this scandal that scandal, but alas i am not satisfied. i wont stop short of anything but spectacularly out of this world. i am an insatiable consumer and its just become a part of my personality: i want more of everything, better of the most: better income, cleaner air, wider airline seats, longer holidays, unlimited TV, endless miles of roads etc etc and now also endless 'breaking (or path breaking) news.

a case in point is in the movie: the first part is totally devoted to presenting MM's research on the Bushes' particularly cordial relations with the oily saudis, even the Bin Ladens. But this was already out in the news media in bits earlier. so those startling scenes and evidence that MM presented were hardly head-turning for me. it was like" oh, i must have heard about it on MSNBC or something like that earlier....c,mon MM, i wont be satisfied unless u actually show me footage of father Bush literally shaking hands with the father of all terrorists - Osama. "
yea, its come to that. i am in constant search for the next best thing, in news just as in online deals for an iPod.

so that is what is painful, at the end of it all. I think MM should have released his movie in bits , like an episode each month until November and then the last one should have had something outstanding: maybe Osama's (or Saddam's) pic with Jr. Bush himself. Ok now that is wishful thinking and i know i am being too demanding as a simple 5 $ paying memeber of the audience. But, this is where we are leading to. we as a society have hardened up to simple assasinations and terror attacks. it takes atleast 100 plus lives lost to shake us up and mind you, that too for just the period it keeps flashing on the news channels. the moment the next J Lo wedding gets annouced, in one stroke of the camera, we tune outr brains to that, so many of us in that process conveniently forget those killed a few minutes ago. there is too much going on with us , too much going on Tv, the news papers ,here there, too much for us to have the luxury to ponder , take a step back , think , assess, rethink, opinionate, address, follow-up or even research it. The assumption is that somebody wouyld have done a good job of checking on the facts before it was presented to us. and somebody actually might have been doing so too. of ocurse there are the black sheep, but that is a small %.

again , the agony of this post is due to the suspicion i have that MM's F911 will not get Bush out of the office as easily as i would have liked it to be. But then i am told that it doesnt need only MM to do his job at revealing some shady past info about the Bushes. there will be numerous other reasons as to why the people of this country may not vote for GW anymore. Afterll, its an election of many issues. MM did his part on convincing many that the war was a Bush conspiracy irrespective of whther 911 happened or not. 911 just emboldened GWs white house to push the case, successfully.

oh how i wish, MM would have released this film later in the year and slam dunked the election for the democrats. alas, i guess he too was eager to strut his stuff to the world as soon as he finished the film. cannot blame him. it definitely is not on him to make or break the election, although the radical somewhere in me would like it that way. knock knock, Amit, the world is not made or broken in hollywood or any other film city. it is much more complicated that this. i may be convinced (more than before) that Bush created reasons to go to war with Iraq, but everybody is not me, and i do not want everybody to be me, that diversity of thought is what makes democracy what it is today. MM can only make a film, it is you and me who go to the polls to cast our choices to decide if his GWB or JFK is the next president of the US. FOX tries to convince us that all is hunky dory with the US's invasion of iraq, CNN is ambivalent, so is MSNBC, the NY times doesnt like the govt, the WSJ adores the GOP, Utah is 80% republican, MM is 100% anti-Bush. variety, my dear is the spice of life. live it love it, but when it come to the polls, think about it.