Michael Moore and the Rhetoric of Documentary ed. by Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee (review)

In Thomas Benson and Brian Snee’s second anthology on political documentary fılms, their focus narrows from analyzing a variety of fılms to analyzing the rhetorics of seven Michael Moore fılms. The introduction lays out the aims of this anthology, which is not to discuss whether his fılms are documentaries but instead to engage with the more interesting set of questions regarding how Moore’s fılms communicate persuasively. Benson and Snee provide a brief biography of Moore and note that he is a “destabilizing force, able to induce major political fıgures to enact something other than their usual self-portrayals” (4). The editors then provide an important overview of documentary fılm history and locate Moore’s fılms within that history. They cite Bill Nichols’s work to identify the stylistic format of Moore’s documentaries as participatory, which is a mode that “Moore did not invent” but “he exploited it in fresh ways” (9). This point is key for understanding that Moore’s fılms fıt within the historical documentary fılm form.

Jennifer Borda’s “Laughing through Our Tears: Rhetorical Tensions in Roger & Me” argues that the fılm is a “critique of the socio-economic realities of global capitalism” (27), which is a theme built upon in many of the chapters. Borda insightfully illustrates that the complicated reactions to this fılm come from the combination of a “prophetic rhetoric and contra-dictions of the secular jeremiad form, which solicits community redemption through reaffırmation of the values of the American Dream” (36). She notes that the problem is that the American Dream “never really existed in the fırst place” (41). Although Borda argues that the fılm fails rhetorically because it does not provide a call to action that would unite audiences to right the present economic wrongs, her chapter illustrates key elements of Moore’s rhetorical appeals.

Christine Harold’s “The Big One That Got Away” takes up Moore’s concern with the rise of global capitalism and his observation that “companies are downsizing not out of necessity but out of greed” (63). Harold’s analysis astutely lays out how this fılm uses a similar rhetorical approach as Roger & Me by contrasting the effects of globalism against “everyday citizens who have been left behind” (69). Harold critiques the fılm for not offering solutions to this problem of globalization. Yet it is worth recognizing the influence on Moore of John Grierson, who coined the term “documentary” in the 1920s and who believed that documentrists had a responsibility to advocate for social justice by bringing to light oppressive living conditions but did not argue that they necessarily provide palliatives.

In “The Many Moods of Michael Moore: Aesthetics and Affect in Bowling for Columbine,” Brian Ott and Susan Sci smartly analyze why this fılm, the highest grossing documentary at the time (later to be overtaken by Fahrenheit 9/11), was confusing and “also strangely compelling” (75). The authors organize their analysis around Moore’s fıve affective moods (curiosity, terror and sublimity, fear and loathing, cool rationalism, mourning and melancholia) and note that each time “Moore appears to be narrowing in on an explanation, the fılm’s ironic framing undermines it” (81). The authors rightly point out that Moore does not fınd an answer to his question concerning why there is so much gun violence in the United States and that Moore has not fıgured out how to “connect loss to social conscious and civic responsibility” (93). However, Moore’s ironic framing does depict the U.S. political impasse concerning gun violence.

In “The Conversion of Lila Lipscomb in Fahrenheit 9/11” authors Thomas Rosteck and Thomas Frentz specifıcally engage with one of the prominent features of documentary fılm—its use of synecdoche—and whether documentary argument can “escape the tyranny...