Feeling SiCKO on the Fourth of July
shira
What better way to celebrate our country’s independence than to go see Michael Moore’s latest indictment of American society, SiCKO? That’s exactly what I did on Tuesday night, in a packed theatre near Union Square.
While the film is being heralded as Moore’s best work to date, from an aesthetic and storytelling perspective it felt a lot like a rehash of Moorian narrative devices—funny archival footage, eye-catching onscreen graphics, choreographed stunts in which the enemy is confronted/exposed/ridiculed, Moore’s wry voice-over narration. And while these devices feel a little stale and Moore himself like a nagging voice that just won’t go away, SiCKO is still very entertaining and, more to the point, enraging.
Yes, enraging. Having recently decided to give the U.S. another go and not to emigrate to Canada, every passing minute of SiCKO left me rethinking that decision and getting fed up with this country all over again. During the course of the film, you are not only presented with the many ways that our healthcare system sucks, you are also shown the many ways that other countries are meeting the needs of their inhabitants, especially Canada, Great Britain, France and Cuba, all of which have free universal healthcare and where, according to SiCKO, life is peachy. If anything, this is the part of the film that is the weakest—by idealizing these other countries to the point of glorification, Moore presents a simplified world view which is practically begging someone with more knowledge of the internal affairs of the countries at hand to critique. A recent article in the Dayton Daily News, How well does ‘SiCKO’ stand up to the facts?, does just that, examining the film, point by point and reporting on Moore’s accuracy (and occasional lack thereof).
For me, a little exaggeration or fudging here and there is not really a problem, since, as Jonathan Cohn writes in The New Republic, “SiCKO’ got a lot of the little things wrong. But it got most of the big things right.”
What inspires me most is Moore’s commitment to social change. His goal in making the film is to fix the system, and that’s what his outreach campaign sets out to do. From partnerships with MoveOn and advocacy groups like Guaranted Healthcare to Capitol Hill press conferences, Moore’s film release is akin to the launch of a political campaign. And just as the latest crop of candidates are engaging the masses through YouTube, Moore is using the site as a platform to gather more “healthcare horror stories” that he promises to screen and share with Congress. The video that I watched in response to Moore’s call was indeed a horror story. For those who say that Moore’s ego undermines his arguments, it is clear that the man is trying to give voice to as many people as possible rather than to limit the discussion. And that might just be the cure for America’s ills.
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| Posted on July 5, 2007
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