Michael Moore

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue May 19 07:41:28 PDT 1998


C. Petersen replies to me:
>> Doesn't Moore tend to encourage the standard view of the working class as
>> passive victims incapable of understanding capitalism as a system?
>>
>> I think that Moore's representation of the working class is often based on
>> the idea that 'authentic' working people are 'innocent' and 'ignorant' of
>> politics (unlike Moore himself and those 'leftists' Moore loves to
>> criticize). I think that this mode of representation is a problem.
>
>No.... It's more like he says that working people are the only ones who
>really understand what's going on (and that's why they don't vote for
>either democrats or republicans)

That the working class don't vote is one thing, which is indicative of the fact that nobody in the electoral process represents workers' interests. However, abstention is not exactly the same as 'really understanding what's going on,' is it?

Coming back to Moore's _films_ (as opposed to what he says in his essays and interviews), I still don't think that the working class are represented by Moore as more than passive victims. There are some exceptions: for instance, Borders workers who got unionized in _The Big One_. However, generally speaking, in Moore's films the working class merely suffer, strive to survive as individuals (e.g. Rhoda Britton the Bunny Lady, deputy sheriff Fred Ross, a young man selling blood at a plasma clinic, etc. in _Roger & Me_), angry at 'betrayal' by 'corporations' to which they have been 'loyal' but unable to figure out why.


>and that liberals should get out of the
>unitarian church basements, ineffectually talking amongst themselves, or

Who are those 'liberals' Moore speaks of? And _what's the point_ of blaming liberals for being merely liberals? Liberals are merely liberals because they _accept_ the continuing existence of _capitalism_. There is no point in saying that liberals merely talk among themselves, not to workers. Workers don't need any more liberals.


>only focusing on surface level gender or racial identity politics while
>ignoring class altogether,

I happen not to think that questions of gender and race are merely matters of the surface level. One of the sources of the weaknesses of the working class has been and still is precisely the fact that it's been divided and stratified by race and gender. Anti-racism and anti-sexism are class issues.


>and they should go line dancing and listen to country music and watch a lot
>more primetime TV in order to understand how to build a political movement
>that will be attractive to and representative of the working class.

Sure. Why not? I don't think that all workers are fans of line dancing and country music, but they do appeal to some segments of workers, and I have no objection to attempts to understand their appeal better. A problem is, though, that 'working class culture' isn't as homogenous as Moore would like us to think. Country music is merely one aspect of it. There are other genres--punk, rap, heavy metal, reggae, etc.--even when we limit our discussion to music alone.


>Read his The Nation article of a few months ago.

I read it and thought it rather superficial and simplistic.

Yoshie



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