Politicians, Elections and the Documentary
By Catherine MacLennan
As well as conveying the point of view of the director, documentaries about politicians and elections reflect the political climate of their times. In 2004 we have Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11, in the 1990s there was The Perfect Candidate and Feed, and in 1971 Millhouse, by Emile De Antonio. While all cast a critical eye at their politician-subjects, some are thorough in their inclusion of information and analysis will others avoid analysis or adopt a completely light approach. While watching the older films, one after the other, one is also struck by the fact that the same figures and themes reappear over the decades in the films and in politics.
Fahrenheit 9-11 is chronologically closer to The Perfect Candidate and Feed, but it actually has more in common with De Antonio's Millhouse. Both document serious criticism of presidents (both are up for re-election) and both use humour. In the first scene of Millhouse, someone is putting a not-very-realistic-looking Nixon head on a mannequin in a presidential display, a scene that sets the tone of the film - the portrayal of a fraudulent and hollow figure. The red-baiting, dirty politics of his early career, the questionable funding of his campaigns, the promotion of the death penalty and 'law and order,' media manipulation, dishonesty over the war and its escalation are all represented in clips and interviews. Humorous asides in the film include: the "Chiquita Banana" song coming on in the background as Nixon is making an inane statement about Latin America; a line of bimbos singing "Nixon's the One" as he smiles in the audience; a movie clip of "the Gipper" (Ronald Reagan) in reference to an ailing Eisenhower; and a classmate who says "I was in Richard Nixon's class, he took me to the prom. We knew each other very well but I can't think of an anecdote."
While Millhouse is similar to Fahrenheit 9-11 in its juxtaposition of corruption and humour, the bit about someone who "knew him very well" but cannot think of anecdote, aside from its humour, demonstrates an area where Millhouse and Fahrenheit differ - there is a psychological aspect to Millhouse - or perhaps it is simply Nixon's psychosis which is constantly on display. His paranoia is on display at a 1962 press conference after an election loss: "For once, gentlemen, I would appreciate it if you would write what I say" and, famously, "You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore" The weird "Checkers" speech, meant to answer questions about his campaign financing, lists his humble version of his accounts and ends with Pat's "respectable Republican cloth coat," and a dog "Checkers" - displaying a forced and fake smile when he says "And I always tell her she'd look good in anything." His inability to smile matches Hoover's in a creepy clip where they are "joking" about Nixon's unsuccessful application to the FBI.
1992's Feed by Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway is surprisingly lacking in content. This "documentary" consists of the extra bits of film not used in news reports, such as George Bush's chatter before a speech, Bob Kerrey irritable outside before a live taping, Jerry Brown irritable over a crooked necktie, Jerry Brown using a nose spray, and the Gennifer Flowers press conference - the complete avoidance of serious issues for such small yucks. This is the kind of coverage we get in the corporate media, which is incapable or unwilling to discuss serious issues that effect millions of people but will play the Howard Dean "scream" 700 times within the space of a few days. The only semi-relevant clips were the two of Bill Clinton, one of him being serious, then suddenly happy, and the other of him happy then suddenly serious, fitting his cheerful salesman persona and his death-penalty and social program cutting Republican-Democrat policies. The inclusion of small clips of politicos is actually more effective in both Millhouse and Fahrenheit 9-11: for full creepy effect, there is simply the film and silence. In Fahrenheit 9-11 there are the shots of Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld et al as they wait to speak before cameras, in Millhouse at the end, there is a silent film of Nixon and his cabinet - with both, the silent camera sees: words are not necessary as the camera and the viewer surveys the now highly suspect characters. (Currently, James Ridgeway seems to be making a better use of film: at the Village Voice website, his two and three minute videos are more interesting and more relevant than the entire 76 minutes of Feed; they deal with more important issues and moments (such as 9-11 relatives seeking answers, protests at the Republican convention) than the use of nose spray.
R.J. Cutler and David Van Taylor's The Perfect Candidate features an electoral "choice" that has been familiar to voters and viewers for decades - that between a right-wing extremist and a sleazy life-long politician who stands for nothing but re-election. Obviously, this particular election was chosen as material for a film because of the kitsch-horror celebrity of one of the candidates, Oliver North. His main opponent was Chuck Robb, a "New Democrat" (code for DemoRepublican sellout) who was also the subject of sensational sex and drug party stories in the press. A voter is quoted as saying of the choice between North and Robb "What disease do you want? The question is, how are we going to be cured?" North is seen giving speeches in halls and churches at his target paranoid and fanatical following. "America is in serious trouble. Predators roam our streets, threatening our families, our homes, our very survival" he tells the crowd, and refers to the 'traditional family' as the "real 'endangered species'" to cheers. North's gross campaign propagandists, sit around slouched, talking, eating and drinking and imagining themselves great strategists. North loses - not by much, 3% - and after the results are known North's sour propagandist sulks down the street alone, muttering that "we should have just kept pounding away." The lesson to him was not that 50% did not want an extremist, but that the candidacy failed because they did not push enough with the dirty campaign style of focusing on lurid sex drug stories that had already dominated the election.
The most successful of the films is Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11. His film is packed with important information about the 9-11, the war, the government and the military, in a way that it is clear, devastating and humorous. It is because his film is so successful in getting this information out that he has been attacked. Does anyone remember the makers of Feed or A Perfect Candidate being attacked? Time magazine's 1971 review of Millhouse consists of three paragraphs and follows a review of a film starring Shirley MacLaine. Because so much of the truth never makes it to newscasts or newspapers, Moore's film is sudden and shocking in its delivery of so much information. His trademark style of injecting himself into the film is kept at a minimum; there is just so much information that he wants to share, on: 9-11 (Bin Laden family members leaving when no other planes were allowed to be in the air), the Bush-Bin Laden connections, Afghanistan and oil, Iraq and Oil, Cheney and Haliburton, and more. The fake "warning system" hysteria and "Homeland Security" is questioned, citing grotesque examples of bureaucratic incompetence, or creeping fascism in the interrogations of a breast feeding mother, an exercising senior, and a tiny, harmless peace group. The right wing propagandists shout that the film is "anti-military" though Moore's portrayal of the soldiers is actually complex and sympathetic. The brief clip of soldiers mistreating prisoners is accompanied by a narration that states that in a crazy situation people act crazy; the craziness (and youth) of the soldiers is also displayed in their enthusiasm for Megadeath as a "soundtrack" for fighting in Iraq. Soldiers are also seen questioning the war, killing, and the Bush administration. Injured soldiers, so often excluded from the corporate media, like the dead, are included here, and speak. Moore's investigative reporting and his humour are complemented by his humanity. At the end of the film, the focus is on a family that lost a young son in the war. He also makes an important point about how it is the children of working class families that make up the majority of the army who join because of a lack of economic opportunities. They are the ones that end up injured or dead. The well-off can afford to be war-cheerleaders. Their lives are not at stake. The premise of the Iraq War was a lie about "weapons of mass destruction;" the real reason for the war was crude personal profit. The result is the tragic death of hundreds (now near a thousand) of American soldiers, the maiming of thousands more, as well as the death and maiming of thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistan civilians.
Throughout all these films the same people and same themes appear over and over. There are a string of personalities that snake their way through all the administrations: in Millhouse, we see Ronald Reagan in the Gipper clip, and in the flesh, watching Nixon give a speech. At the end of Millhouse, Nixon poses with his cabinet, including George Schultz. George Schultz appears again in A Perfect Candidate when there is a discussion of Iran Contra (He was then in Reagan's cabinet. In between his years in government, he was president and director of Bechtel Group, a company that has links to Bin Ladens, Saudi Arabia, as well as the Nixon and both Bush administrations. Bechtel has received contracts in 2003 to rebuild Iraq. Where is Schultz now? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has picked him as an advisor for his administration). In Feed, Arnold Schwarzenegger is at a Bush rally (for the first Bush) saying, "I'll be back" to "pump up the votes for George Bush." Last week at the Republican Convention he was trying to pump up the votes for the second George Bush, saying "Send him back to Washington for four more years!" He also spoke at the convention about "economic girlie men," a term close to his heart - it appears in the 1992 Feed, saying the Democrats look like a "bunch of girlie men." It is interesting to see in, A Perfect Candidate, a senator criticizing Oliver North's "illegal military assistance to the contras, gun-running, narcotic smuggling, bombing plots" - Senator John Kerry! (Also watching the credits of Feed, I noticed a special thanks to Michael Moore, who is also listed in the funding. I wonder if then he imagined making a better film...)
What is pitched to the voters, to the core of voters that they can count on, is a message of fear and paranoia; a psychological message aimed at those feeling small and self-loathing that will be most susceptible the message. They can't win on real issues - those cannot be discussed at all, because what Nixon, or Reagan, or Bush, or North or Schwarenegger wants, and who they represent is at odds with the populace. In Millhouse, Philip Burton notes "Throughout his entire political career, Nixon has almost without exception supported a position that advances the interests of the very well to do, the most powerful of the economic interests in this country...they recognize it and have contributed substantially to any campaign that he's personally been involved in." This certainly can't be admitted, so they always have to pretend that they are a small nobody, too, and that therefore they have shared interest with the powerless. "Pat doesn't have a mink coat," (See, chumps, we are just like you!) He also seeks to distract them with fear against a vague enemy, out to get them, be it red-baiting in the 40s and 50s or "order in America" and discussing the need for the death penalty as he campaigns in 1970. In a Perfect Candidate, Oliver North seeks to stir the crowd with talk of how "America is in serious trouble. Predators roam our streets, our families, our homes. Our very survival." Also the family is attacked - it is the "real 'endangered species.'" He is one of them, he tells them, "My friends, the Washington Insiders call us the 'little people'...well, I've got news for them in Washington, we're the real people, they work for us and we want our government back." Oliver North, weren't you an insider and aide to the National Security Advisor in Ronald Reagan's cabinet? No matter, say you are not an insider, anyway! You are one of the little people, though you hate being called that! You don't have a mink coat! Of course, Reagan did the same act, pretending he was an ordinary person, no Washington insider, while implementing all the cuts and policies that would help the rich and hurt ordinary people. Bush is a cowboy-boots down-home Texan, never mind that he is a son of a president, and a part of the Eastern establishment and the oil industry. Moore points out that the 'Homeland Security' warning system exists to keep the people afraid. At the Republican Convention in 2004 Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't talking about his connections to Enron, and the power companies, and Bush and Cheney - he's talking about how his family didn't have a car. It doesn't matter if they were born well of or not - it does matter what their policies are and if they help a tiny percentage of the rich and powerful or the majority of the populace. As is pointed out in Millhouse and Fahrenheit 9-11 these candidates are strictly for the rich and powerful, a tiny percentage that is out of control in its greed and lust for power. Time and time again, a figure is trotted out and proclaims how ordinary they are, who meanwhile exists to serve the rich. The point of the campaign is to trick the voters that they are on their side so they get elected.
Millhouse and Fahrenheit 9-11 both came out in an election year, with a president up for re-election. The Vietnam War was taking place during Millhouse, the Iraq War during Fahrenheit 9-11. Both presidents have said conflicting statements about the wars they have presided over. A parallel to the current situation appears in Millhouse - in a speech Adlai Stevenson asks: "Do you trust this gentleman to be fair? Do you want him as commander in chief to exercise power over war and peace? Do you believe that Richard Nixon has the confidence of other countries?" One does get the feeling, however, that Millhouse was made for an anti-Nixon audience. Feed seems to have been made for people who just want to laugh at politicians, any politician, for any reason. Michael Moore's film is not only the most successful in airing information that is often covered up (politicians' connections to companies and individuals, their profiting from war) or unmentionable (the social and economic inequality of the United States) but his movie speaks to everyone. He specifically wants ordinary working class people to see his message and get it, and he involves them in the film, as he does in all his films. Also significant is the scene of Bush in a tuxedo joking about his "base" (the rich in powerful, who laugh in the background, delighted). No evangelicals, and no, military people, you are not the base - you are just used, and tricked when it comes to voting, voting en masse). That is why he and his film have been attacked - the Bush administration does not want people to know the truth, the media is mad that this fat guy with a camera and a sense of humour has done their job while they have not, and he dares to discuss inequality to the people effected by it. The guilty parties fear and smear Moore because he has done a good job.
The Lamp September 2004