Week 3 at a glance

So, last week we talked about more media fallacies and the beginning of Bowling for Columbine. The topic got me wonder how many times fallacies lead to civil court cases. Looking at Moore in general, there are quite a few google results. As it turns out, Mr. Moore is a pretty popular regular within the lawsuit community. Michael is pretty infamous for skewing facts and misquoting people, so what you probably don't understand is why he keeps winning these civil cases. The problem is, he's technically not altering anything anyone has said, nor is he lying about information. The reason the cases against Moore never hold up in court is because what he's doing isn't wrong. From a moral standpoint, yes. But from a political standpoint, he hasn't committed any crimes. Every clip he uses has really been spoken by the plaintiffs, but he has been in the business long enough to know how to manipulate what is said into what he wants to be said. Confused? It's simple, because he never changes what is said, only the context, there is no case against him. As far as his bogus statistics go, he always makes them so broad that it could be argued either way.

Michael has set a precedent for other civil suits, including the many civil cases against Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of Borat. Countless people that appeared in his film claimed that he tricked them into believing that he was from Kazakhstan. Although this statement may be true, what saved Cohen from losing these cases was the fact that the plaintiffs had each signed a waver that was cleverly disguised as a Kazakhstan TV show permission form. if the plaintiffs had actually read the paperwork, they would've know what they were in for. There are countless other examples, but I'll spare you the frustration and move on.

This week we focused primarily on one clip of Bowling For Columbine, the Wonderful World montage. At first glance, the U.S. looks like an awful country that hides more from us than we realize. However, when we analyzed each event individually, the class realized that the captions under each clip weren't as truthful as one might think. When first watching it, you don't have enough time to think about one of the captions before he moves on to his next point. This form of manipulation is also prevalent in the segment A Brief History of the United States of America. When we took the time to actually analyze each event in history, they weren't quite the way Moore described them. For example one of the captions states: "U.S. overthrows democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed." The fallacy in this statement is that the 200,000 civilians were killed within the 4 decades of fascist leadership that followed the overthrow of Arbenz. If you didn't do your research though, you probably would've assumed their deaths were a direct result of the CIA sponsored Coup.

As we discussed the clips in more depth, it seemed to be a very common pattern throughout the montage. In fact, the more time discussing just this segment in class, the less respect I had for Michael Moore. This got me thinking. Even though I lean more towards the right, do any leftists share my opinion? This week I'd like to do some research to see what the general opinion is on this radical liberal. He's won plenty of awards, and a large amount of people go see his films, but what is the general opinion on him? How many people take the time to see through his manipulation?

Sources:

A Brief History of the United States of America. Photograph. YTIMG. Web. .

"Humiliated frat boys sue 'Borat'" USA Today. Web. .

Michael Moore, Captalism: A Love Story. Photograph. BV on Movies. Web. .