the chutry experiment

Outfoxed Review

In Jehane Noujaim's Control Room, at least two of the film's major participants, Lt. John Rushing and Al Jazeera senior producer Sameer Khader, use FOX News as an example of conservative media, unwilling to criticize the US war effort in Iraq. In Noujaim's film, FOXNews becomes a kind of shorthand for the opposite of what Al Jazeera is doing. I bring up Control Room because it introduces a concept that is picked up, in a much different way, by the recent Robert Greenwald documentary, Outfoxed: both films call into question, in much different ways, the objectivity of the news media images we encounter on a daily basis.

I just returned from one of the Outfoxed house parties in Midtown, where there were over one hundred people in attendance, and as usual, the experience has given me a lot to think about. MoveOn's ability to orchestrate a media event is still rather impressive. According to MoveOn, approximately 30,000 people around the US attended screenings of Outfoxed. Like other MoveOn events, the screening was in part a tool to persuade people to become more politically active. In this case, people were encouraged to volunteer for one of several media watchdog organizations, including FAIR, Media Matters, Citizens for Media Literacy, and Common Cause. And as I watched the film and the post-film "teleconference," I tried to read the event as an argument, or series of arguments, and I'm still trying to determine the effectiveness of both the film and the subsequent call to action.

Before I begin my analysis of the film, it's absolutely crucial to recognize the hard work that Greenwald and his crew, many of whom were volunteers, invested in this project. Putting together a documentary of this scope requires a tremendous amount of labor, and in a seamless final product, that labor can often go unacknowledged and unrecognized. I wish there was a "more visible" way in which that kind of labor could be recognized.

Aesthetically, the film still conforms to the relatively standard documentary tropes of talking heads, illustrative graphics, and evidentiary footage, in this case clips from FOX News shows (with the amount of documentary footage clearly challenging fair use doctrines, which could be one of the most important effects, positively or negatively, of the film). In a conversation after the film, Chris suggested (in conversation) that Outfoxed had a televisual style, and I think he's right, especially given Greenwald's "guerilla" approach, which is based on producing a film quickly about what is happening right now. I do think the traces of televisual time and televisual editing remain visible on the film's style.

The film itself didn't really show me anything I didn't know. I was aware of the many studies that showed that FOX News viewers perceive the war in Iraq differently than people who get their news from more reliable news sources (pretty much everyone else). I knew that FOX News uses talking points to hammer home perceptions of public figures (y'know, come to think of it, John Kerry does look French--I'll bet his real name is Jean). And of course I knew that Bill O'Reilly is a blowhard who shuts down people who articulate liberal or left points of view (although the O'Reilly "shut-up montage" was very funny).

Perhaps the most powerful segment in the film, in my experience, was the section that told the story of Jeremy M. Glick, a signer of the "Not in Our Name" petition, whose father died in the 9/11 attacks. When Glick appeared on O'Reilly's show, he knew that the Hard Blowing One would treat his views with hostility, and Glick prepared by timing out short soundbites in order to get his message across, which he was able to do with some success. On a subsequent program, O'Reilly suggested that Glick had been "out of control and spewing hatred" and that Glick had claimed that the Bush family "orchestrated" the WTC attacks, both of which were false. The specific example is pretty effective in showing how O'Reilly stifles dissent while also providing some room for optimism (Glick's ability to put O'Reilly in his place). But, even with this specific example, I still felt that most of the material in the film was relatively familiar to me, at least.

Then again, I'm not sure that the documentary's specific goal is merely to inform us that FOXNews is bad news, even if it might have that effect on some viewers. I think there's a larger argument at stake, and I think Outfoxed is aware of that. Greenwald's larger argument, that FOXNews has changed the discourse throughout the mainstream commercial media, was more significant, but may have been lost in the noise of the "gotcha" sequences. This is where media critiques often seem to run into problems. It's crucial to establish that FOXNews purposefully uses the mask of objectivity ("fair and balanced") to promote a conservative agenda, and the film marshals ample evidence to support such a claim. But at the same time, to attack FOX News as partisan, as offering only a partial truth isn't enough. The second level argument, calling for more public control over the airwaves is more crucial. The gestures towards the debates about media deregulation were helpful here, but I would have liked to see more analysis of the workings of the media (and I realzie that the term "media" in this context is impossibly broad) by people like Bob McChesney. I would have liked a clearer discussion of how to create something closer to a true public sphere, or even whether or not it's possible to create an "objective" media outlet. In this context, I would have liked a clearer sense of how FOX News is received. I don't believe that we are all mere ideological dupes who are simply and easily fooled by the messages we receive. I don't believe the film is suggesting that FOX News viewers are dupes, but media critiques of this sort often fail to acknowledge the possibility for "resistant" or even "negotiated" readings of FOX News.

Finally, I had a difficult time gauging how a regular FOX News watcher might interpret this film. Or someone who didn't already have a strong opposition to Hannity's histrionics and O'Reilly's obtuseness. Many people who have criticized Outfoxed have done so on the level of "objectivity," commenting that Greenwald did not provide FOX with an adequate time to respond to the charges in the film. All of the employees who discuss FOX's policies are former employees, and it would be easy to argue that their complaints are mere "sour grapes." People who believe that FOX News is "fair and balanced" are noticeably absent from the film (a comparison to Control Room which I watched again last night, might be relevant here), and in that sense, I think the film could appear to be painted with the same brush as FOX, albeit with different colors (blue instead of red, I suppose). I do think that these arguments can be effectively countered, especially if we were to empahisize the film's real argument about the need for more democratic media, but such charges are probably inevitable.

The next question is probably tougher to answer. Will Outfoxed encourage more people to become involved in grassroots media criticism? As I've discussed with my rhetoric students, it's much easier to convince people of the validity of your position than it is to convince them to take action. I do plan on volunteering for at least one of the media organizations. I've been thinking about this for some time, and it's something that comes more naturally to me than most other forms of activism, in part because it overlaps so readily with what I do for a living, which is to study film and media and to help students develop the critical tools to do the same. That being said, I couldn't get a good read on whether or not others at my house party had the same reaction.

No matter what, the film event has provoked me to think, to consider the role of documentary film, to reflect on my own position as a media and film studies scholar, and to seek out forums for discussing these issues. In that regard, I think Outfoxed has been a major success.

Still Digging in the Archives

Rashomon also directed me to the very cool blog, Life in the Present, which I'll be checking regularly from now on. Regular visitors to the Library of Congress site may know about their Dream of Flight exhibition commemorating the centennial of flight, but it was new to me. Even cooler was the exhibit, Doodles, Drafts, and Design: Industrial Drawings from the Smithsonian.

Other interesting links: vintage posters advertising travel to Cuba, San Francisco, and New York, and perhaps my favorite, Kings of New York, a website that documents New York City Graffiti (I like this picture in particular).

Digging in the Archives

Matt of Rashomon has been digging up some incredibly cool links lately. Two sites well worth checking out: "Silent Ladies & Gents: Photo Galleries of Silent Movie Stars" and this site, featuring World War I military posters from the U.S., Germany, and France among other countries. Nice happy accident for these two very different, but contemporary, sets of images to come across my radar screen at the same time.

I'm also shamelessly going to steal from Rashomon the link to "Look at Me," a collection of found photographs. It's a fascinating collection of photographs found at flea markets, on the street, pretty much anywhere:

These photos were either lost, forgotten, or thrown away. The images now are nameless, without connection to the people they show, or the photographer who took them. Maybe someone died and a relative threw away their photographs; maybe someone thought they were trash.

Some of the photos were found on the street. Some were stacked in a box, bought cheap at a flea market. Showing off or embarrassed, smug, sometimes happy, the people in these photos are strangers to us. They can't help but be interesting, as stories with only an introduction.

The LOOK AT ME project started with a few photos found in a Paris street in 1998. Hopefully, the collection will grow.

The other link in Matt's entry, to Found Magazine, looks pretty cool, too.

Friday Top 6 List

In the spirit of Byron's Top 5 Updates, I give you my Top 6:

1. I've been teaching Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing this week. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy DTRT, and it teaches well.
2. Finally made it to The Tumultuous Fifties Exhibit at the High Museum this week. Many of the images were fairly familiar, but it's still well worth checking out if you live nearby.
3. I've been watching a lot of classical Hollywood movies lately. In the last week, I've watched Out of the Past, Asphalt Jungle, and To Have and Have Not (screenplay by some guy named Faulkner). All highly recommended, especially Asphalt Jungle (love the gritty cinematography). Currently watching Rebel Without a Cause,
4. I've also recently watched Gus Van Sant's Elephant (IMDB), which I found incredibly powerful. I'd resisted seeing the film because of the Cannes hype, but Van Sant builds tension beautifully. I was hoping to write a full review of the film, but probably won't get around to it.
5. Finally, I found John Sayles' Casa de los Babys (IMDB) to be an impressive film, one of his best (and I really like Sayles). Very cool to see several very talented actresses over 30 playing such interesting characters.
6. I'll be catching Outfoxed on Sunday at a MoveOn House Party, and I'm definitely planning to write a full review.

Identity Correction

I've just learned about an intriguing new documentary, The Yes Men about a group of prankster-activists who impersonated members of the World Trade Organization on television and at conferences. Riffing off the concept of identity theft, they describe their concept of "identity correction" here:

"Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else."

Filmmakers include Chris Smith (American Movie, American Job), Sarah Price, and Dan Ollman. Not much else to say here, but it sounds like a fun film.

Crazy Like a Fox...

...at a MoveOn (Hen) House Party. Despite the fact that I've been suffering from mild to acute Liberal Outrage Fatigue, I've been fascinated all morning by the controversy surrounding the latest Robert Greenwald documentary, Outfoxed. Like Mel at Blog for Democracy, I've been wondering about MoveOn's delay in allowing people to RSVP for screenings of the film (note to Mel: when registration opens, I'll certainly shoot for your house party).

The controversy surrounding the film has been building all weekend, especially after a long New York Times article by NYU journalism professor Robert Boynton this weekend discussed the challenges of what Greenwald calls his "guerilla documentary" style. The article raises some important questions about fair use and copyright infringement, illustrated by several examples of the filmmakers struggling to get rights to certain clips from a CBS interview with Richard Clarke and footage from a PBS new show (the latter refused out of fear of appearing "too political"). More recently, Lawrence Lessing, one of the copyright lawyers working with Greenwald on the film has commented on the story in his blog, and a Washington Post story adds to the controversy, not-so-subtly accusing the Times of political slant in their article on Greenwald. According to Irena Briganti, a Fox News spokeswoman, Fox was only given 24 hours to comment on the story. Lots of "he said-she said" follows. I'm just going to link to the article and let my readers decide.

But the Times article also celebrates Greenwald's ability to mix grassroots political action with new media technologies, including the Internet:

Jim Gilliam, a 26-year-old former dot-com executive and a producer of ''Outfoxed,'' is enthusiastic about the way Greenwald's projects meld grass-roots politics with the culture of the Internet. He predicts a future -- augured by events like MoveOn's competition for the best 30-second anti-Bush advertisement -- in which young political filmmakers will be as likely to wield a camera phone as a digital camera. ''It won't be long before people will be shooting and editing short documentaries that they'll stream from their blogs,'' he says. If the Internet, as media critics like Jon Katz have suggested, has resuscitated the fiery journalistic spirit of Thomas Paine, guerrilla documentaries offer to put that polemical attitude in the director's chair.

I have to admit that I'm a sucker for this kind of populist rhetoric. Every time I read this kind of comment, I find myself wanting to do more of that kind of work or at least to promote it on my blog.

How Can We Teach Them to Read Stephen King When They've Never Read Danielle Steele?

Harold Bloom has an op-ed piece in the LA Times (subscription required) lamenting the fact that fewer people are reading novels, poems, and short stories than in the past. He cites a National Endowment of the Arts study that reports that "fewer than half of all Americans over the age of 18 now read novels, plays, short stories or poetry, and that only 56.9% have read any book at all in the last year." Bloom acknowledges that these numbers aren't exactly newsworthy. At the same time, a Boston newspaper has reported that one local high school district has included the poetry of controversial rap artist Tupac Shakur on its summer reading list for their students (link below).

To be fair, I've never been a fan of Harold Bloom's work in constructing a "western canon." I am, by nature, suspicious of the practices of exclusion that canon formation entails. I am aware that teaching literature and film classes automatically requires such a practice (there's a reason I teach Citizen Kane and not the Bennifer film, Gigli, for example), but it's often not clear what motivates the decision to confer canonical status onto one novel or film and not another. Attempts to exclude certain novels or poems, such as the work of Tupac Shakur, on the basis of taste seem designed to perpetuate the elitism that conservative critics accuse the people who taught Shakur of perpetuating.

Bloom attributes the decline in reading in part to the rising popularity of television, computers, and video games, and to a certain extent, I think he's probably right that these technologies compete with reading novels and poetry for our finite attention span, but the implications of that competition are far from obvious. Bloom suggests that because of these new technologies, "it's no wonder that the heads of so many Americans are stuffed with pointless information." The implication is that knowing Shakespeare or Chaucer is worthwhile, but knowing Super Mario Brothers, Seinfeld, or The Simpsons isn't, and this is where I find myself most resistant to Bloom's position. I realize that my disagreement grows out of my own position as a film and media studies scholar, and to be fair, Bloom has acknowledged the significance of a few films, particulalry the end of the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, to what he calls the "western canon." But, as Kevin Drum points out, Bloom's comments, intentionally or not, seem to suggest that the study of (great) literature is lost precisely because of the new emphasis on science and technology, or more preciely on the new media that are radically transforming literacy.

I'm going to be absolutely clear in saying that I love literature, Shakespeare and Chaucer included. We should have more focus on literature and the humanities at the high school and university level, but I also believe we should be conscious of these new forms of literacy (cinematic literacy, televisual literacy, gaming literacy) and provide students with a langauge for understanding the texts and media they encounter on a daily basis. Having a better understanding of how these media operate would seem to be one of the crucial problems of 21st century citizenship.

There are specific reasons that students respond to Tupac Shakur, and it's essential that students understand that appeal, that they undertsand their investment in the work of such performers and artists. This doesn't mean that I believe we should ignore texts written before 1990 or 1980 or some other arbitrary date, but I think the decision to reject certain texts (often the very texts that students find most appealing) runs the risk of making the humanities appear even less relevant. Besides, if students find that they like reading Tupac Shakur, they might then pick up a novel by Alice Walker or Toni Morrison, James Baldwin or Ralph Ellison. Instead of seeing Tupac Shakur as an impediment to literacy, why not see his poetry as a "gateway drug," a way of getting students invested in the practice of reading, in the relevance of literacy.

Update: More information from the NEA, Joanne Jacobs, and Critical Mass.

Before Sunset

I really enjoyed Before Sunset (IMDB). I'll admit that I'm very much a sucker for Richard Linklater's talky, meandering, philosophy-lite films, and I've always had a special fondness for the romance in Before Sunrise. I watched the original in my tiny, drafty attic apartment while I was in graduate school deep in the heart of Indiana, and Sunrise gave me a wonderful escape. Of course, as a graduate student/wanna-be novelist, I identified pretty deeply with Jesse, the Ethan Hawke character, but the film itself felt "timeless," like Jesse and Celine (Julie Delpy) had somehow stepped outside the world for just one night, and of course, I'd appreciated the original film's ambiguous ending (I'll try not to be too specific).

Because I had such fond memories of the original, I worried that the sequel would dissapoint me, but Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke have managed to update Celine and Jesse's story in a powerfully effective way, and like the cinetrix, I'd love to have an Antoine Doinel-style series. The sequel begins with Jesse giving a talk at a bookshop in Paris on his novel, a thinly fictionalized account of his night with Celine. Celine, who has spotted an advertisement for the book signing shows up and the two immediately begin talking, reconnecting after nine years apart, and like the original film, Celine and Jesse have a limited amount of time, in this case about an hour and a half, before Jesse has to catch a plane. The film uses the Paris setting nicely (I even remembered a spot along the Seine where I ate a sandwich one afternoon), and the use of real-time adds to the intensity of their reunion. In fact, I think it would have been a mistake not to tell this particular chapter of their lives in real time.

I won't say much more about the film, or its plot, other than to note that it presented characters who had clearly endured the last nine years developing, growing, and struggling. Stuart Klawans' review in AlterNet conveys the spirit of the film nicely. It's a movie about lost opportunities and alternate selves, about the desire to regain the open possibilities they had when they were 23. It's also a movie about the worlds or lives they're escaping. Although their lives and jobs are generally satisfying (he's a novelist, she's an environmentalist), there's a clear sense that something is missing for both of them. As Stuart Klawans points out:

The trick here – an excellent one – is that the lovers know they're in a time bubble. When it pops and life's mess pours in, Celine and Jesse won't seem so admirable.

But will the bubble pop? A movie builds suspense; and as the minutes tick by in Before Sunset, the people on screen and in the audience alike wonder more and more intently if Jesse will catch that airplane.

I will say no more, except that time has rarely passed in a film with such apparent ease and spontaneity, yet with such rightness in every moment. Working with the very rudiments of movies, Linklater, Delpy and Hawke have sustained a flawless performance – one that's warm, thoughtful, funny, sexy, charming and in all ways alive.

Democratic MeetUp 7/13

Just wanted to pass along some information about the upcoming Democratic MeetUp. This looks like a good opportunity to meet the Democratic candidates running for Zell Miller's Senate seat.

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Next Tuesday is July's National Democrat Meetup Day, and tens of thousands of grassroots Democrats (who may or may not be members of local Democratic Parties) will be gathering in restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, etc. - just as we will be doing:

Tues., 7/13 at 7:00 p.m.
Ashton's
314 E. Howard Avenue, Decatur 30030

Our meetup will last only one hour (7-8), but you are welcome to have a bite to eat, a soft drink, latte, or ice cream, hang out and talk politics as long as you want.

This month is dedicated to the US Senate race to fill the seat Zell is vacating. We now have rsvp's from all 8 of the Democratic Candidates for this Meet & Greet - please be sure to be there and invite other Democrat-leaning friends to join us. This is your chance to decide first-hand which candidate you want to help with get-out-the-vote efforts for the July 20th primary. With this many people running for the Democratic nomination, there is likely be a run-off election on August 10th of the two highest vote getters. Next Tuesday evening will also prepare you to make a decision 7/21 on whomever those two end up being.

The US Senate Democratic candidates will be given the mike for 2-3 minutes each to make sure we collectively meet each of them. Also, while mixing and mingling during the meetup, you'll have the chance to talk, ask questions one-on-one. Georgia's US Senate seat is extremely important, and we want to get our strongest possible candidate to go up against the Republican in November. Please get excited about the things that will be happening between now and August 10th!

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I don't think it's necessary to RSVP, but it might help the people who organize the event if you do. Here's a link to the Democratic MeetUp site.

Friday Aftrenoon Film Reads

Just collecting a few links to recent film articles and blog entries for future reference. First, GreenCine Daily directed me to Mark Richardson's "Polemical Posturing versus Feigned Naivety in Documentary" in The Film Journal. Richardson favorably compares Nick Broomfield's use of reflexivity in Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer to Michael Moore's use of it in F9/11 and Bowling for Columbine. I haven't seen Aileen yet (it's on the list), but it's an interesting take on how these two directors use reflexivity in different ways, although I'm not sure I entirely agree with Richardson's conclusions (I found Broomfield's Kurt and Courtney incredibly manipulative).

J.D. Ashcraft, an indieWIRE blogger, reports on an F9/11 panel he attended at the Enzian Theater. he notes that the panel debated some of the Big Questions, such as whether or not Moore's film should be considered a documentary and whether or not that label matters much, with one panelist noting that the classification might matter when it comes to the Academy Awards. Ashcraft does note an interesting phenomenon, in which one conservative guest took a lot of heat from the audience for what seems like a benign observation about the film's use of humor:

More than once, the seemingly conservative Peter Brown expressed contrarian views and was already getting grumbles when he offhandedly called the film humorous. The audience pounced, "What's funny about death and war?!" some members angrily shouted. People stopped asking questions and started just shouting out and stirring in their seats. All the panelists looked confused and it seemed to me things were on the verge of getting very ugly when Mr. Brown responded and, with help from fellow panelists and the moderator, calmed the crowd a bit.

I've found these responses to F9/11 increasingly frustrating, in large part because they seem to prevent real dialogue about the war in Iraq and Bush's foreign policy. I don't think it's possible to produce an objective documentary or non-fiction film about the war (or on any topic for that matter), but the true-false debates that have framed the discussion of the film are missing the real questions raised by the film about the decision to go to war in Iraq. Note to self: the F9/11 buzz will no doubt fade before summer's out, but a panel at Tech on a similar topic (documentary film, media and elections) this fall might not be a bad idea.

The cinetrix mentions a new book that I'd like to read, Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies. The book "details the pernicious level of cooperation between the Pentagon and Hollywood. That's right. Your tax dollars at work." Interesting that Forrest Gump, a distinctly patrioitic film, did not receive any cooperation from the US military. She also mentions the new documentary, Gunner Palace, which focuses on a group of US soldiers stationed in a palace that once belonged to Uday Hussein (she also makes an excelelnt case in the comments that Three Kings is the first hip-hop combat movie). Also check out the interview with Michael Tucker in The Guardian.

Finally, I saw Spartan last night. It's an interesting take on the political thriller, implicitly critical of the Bush administration (although the presidential sex scandal may seem more Clinton-esque). Mamet still has trouble writing parts for women. Spartan very much presents a man's world, and none of the female characters, including the kidnapped president's daughter (she is kidnapped by a group in Dubai involved in the sex slave trade), are given mich depth at all. The Arab characters are all pretty much without depth and completely corrupt as well, which is another major problem in the film. It's still a pretty compelling movie, although while I was watching the final act I felt like the film was unravelling a bit. His other films that revolve around various schemes and conspiracies, such as The Spanish Prisoner, Heist, and House of Games are a little tighter narratively speaking. Of course the conspiracy in Spartan is so much "bigger" (in that it involves the President, the CIA, the Secret Service) that it simply can't hold together. Has anyone else seen Spartan?