In his new film, 'Capitalism: A Love Story,' Moore's focus is more basic: the fundamental economic system, which is also political. Or is it just "our way of life"? For all the anger and sense of wrong of the pushed-through "taxpayer" bailouts of Wall Street investment bankers, the foreclosures, and the skyrocketing American unemployment, this film doesn't feel as urgent as 'Fahrenheit' or as well-researched (and freshly informative) as Sicko. Nonetheless it is more basic and for the first time Moore focuses on morals. He goes to the Catholic priest who married him and his wife, the one who married his sister-in-law, and their bishop, and all declare that capitalism advocates values that are un-Christian. (If capitalism encourages greed, greed is avarice, and avarice is one of the seven deadly sins.)
This is touchy stuff, but it seems that the director felt the moment was ripe to bring it up. He was proved more than right when the financial meltdown came in late 2008: this was a sign that the greed was destroying us. And for a change, certain words seemed no longer taboo. Moore noted that Bush made a speech touting the capitalist system and while campaigning Obama said something about sharing the wealth that led the opposition to accuse him of being a socialist. A socialist! The word could as well be Satanist or pedophile as far as US conservatives are concerned. It's so inflammatory in this country Moore himself doesn't dare use the word of himself. When asked if he was a socialist by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! at the end of an hour-long interview there was an awkward silence. Moore said, "I'm a heterosexual. . .I'm overweight. . . ." and then the program ran out of time. They say in Canada he isn't so reticent.
As he tells it Moore was already working on this film when the meltdown came. The average guy sees the government bailouts as greed. Some progressive economists, such as Nobel laureate and NYTimes op-ed columnist Paul Krugman, have consistently argued that the bailouts were necessary; that they just haven't been bold and thorough enough. The concept that "the taxpayer" is paying for them is a little simplistic. In that sense we're all paying for everything. It's better to be saving the financial system than to be invading Iraq and Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan -- and it costs much less too.
Moore jumps around, playing his old games asking admission to General Motors headquarters, or AIG, stringing "Crime Scene" yellow tapes around the Stock Market and big banks; following a window and door factory where all the workers were let go, but then decided to sit-in at the factory until they got their severance packages from Bank of America. There's a lot about foreclosures, how they happen, who has fought them, and who exploits them. There are several companies where the workers are actual shareholders who have a vote on what happens, a line operator gets $65,000 a year, more than some airline pilots, whom Moore reveals to be so underpaid some have had to resort to food stamps. Obama did once spout vaguely socialist ideas, but Moore shows how that was dealt with: big banks made him beholden by becoming major contributors to his campaign. Moore says Goldman, Sachs was the biggest, with a million dollars; actually the University of California is listed above that with a million five.
Three are many tear-jerking moments here. Moore has a field day with a couple who're ejected from their farmhouse complex and even paid $1,000 -- the ultimate humiliation -- to get rid of the contents of their house. A black family in another sequence is helped by an activist group to return to their foreclosed house and reoccupy it, after living in a truck. Moore goes overboard on this stuff. As Felperin says, Moore would probably show puppies personally drowned by (Bush Treasury Secretary and former Goldman, Sachs CEO) Hank Paulson if he could.
But the Michael Moore wants to wake you up and make you mad and the most powerful -- and important -- argument is that of the Catholic priests: that capitalism as it's practiced nowadays is un-Christian -- and in the terms of any spiritual system, morally wrong. Also important, if underdeveloped, in this complicated, effective piece of economic and political agitprop, is the historical line traced back to the Fifties, when life was relatively comfortable, college and medical care were affordable, through the Eighties, when President Reagan turned the country over to the corporations and the consummate evil yuppie character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street declared "Greed is good." Since then, as Moore rapidly points out, the wealth has been gobbled up more and more by the few at the top: the middle class has been ravaged and the poor have become more numerous.
If capitalism, as an old Fifties instructional film here intones, is "our American way of life," then how come it's failing to serve so many Americans? At this point it would have been much better if Moore had been less "resolutely U.S.-centric" (Felperin) -- because capitalist economies exist in other countries alongside systems of social services, alongside socialist benefits for the many. It's not so much simply capitalism that is killing us (has not communism been proved a failure, or at least unrealizable in the real world?) but the cruel, Darwinian, selfish, do-or-die form of it that's practiced in America. Greed is not good. As Moore does point out repeatedly, ordinary and poor Americans have been hoodwinked by propagandists for American capitalism into thinking that the system is okay, however heartless and imbalanced, because they might hit the jackpot themselves someday. As Moore says, ordinary Americans are beginning to realize that just ain't true.
This is touchy stuff, but it seems that the director felt the moment was ripe to bring it up. He was proved more than right when the financial meltdown came in late 2008: this was a sign that the greed was destroying us. And for a change, certain words seemed no longer taboo. Moore noted that Bush made a speech touting the capitalist system and while campaigning Obama said something about sharing the wealth that led the opposition to accuse him of being a socialist. A socialist! The word could as well be Satanist or pedophile as far as US conservatives are concerned. It's so inflammatory in this country Moore himself doesn't dare use the word of himself. When asked if he was a socialist by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! at the end of an hour-long interview there was an awkward silence. Moore said, "I'm a heterosexual. . .I'm overweight. . . ." and then the program ran out of time. They say in Canada he isn't so reticent.
As he tells it Moore was already working on this film when the meltdown came. The average guy sees the government bailouts as greed. Some progressive economists, such as Nobel laureate and NYTimes op-ed columnist Paul Krugman, have consistently argued that the bailouts were necessary; that they just haven't been bold and thorough enough. The concept that "the taxpayer" is paying for them is a little simplistic. In that sense we're all paying for everything. It's better to be saving the financial system than to be invading Iraq and Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan -- and it costs much less too.
Moore jumps around, playing his old games asking admission to General Motors headquarters, or AIG, stringing "Crime Scene" yellow tapes around the Stock Market and big banks; following a window and door factory where all the workers were let go, but then decided to sit-in at the factory until they got their severance packages from Bank of America. There's a lot about foreclosures, how they happen, who has fought them, and who exploits them. There are several companies where the workers are actual shareholders who have a vote on what happens, a line operator gets $65,000 a year, more than some airline pilots, whom Moore reveals to be so underpaid some have had to resort to food stamps. Obama did once spout vaguely socialist ideas, but Moore shows how that was dealt with: big banks made him beholden by becoming major contributors to his campaign. Moore says Goldman, Sachs was the biggest, with a million dollars; actually the University of California is listed above that with a million five.
Three are many tear-jerking moments here. Moore has a field day with a couple who're ejected from their farmhouse complex and even paid $1,000 -- the ultimate humiliation -- to get rid of the contents of their house. A black family in another sequence is helped by an activist group to return to their foreclosed house and reoccupy it, after living in a truck. Moore goes overboard on this stuff. As Felperin says, Moore would probably show puppies personally drowned by (Bush Treasury Secretary and former Goldman, Sachs CEO) Hank Paulson if he could.
But the Michael Moore wants to wake you up and make you mad and the most powerful -- and important -- argument is that of the Catholic priests: that capitalism as it's practiced nowadays is un-Christian -- and in the terms of any spiritual system, morally wrong. Also important, if underdeveloped, in this complicated, effective piece of economic and political agitprop, is the historical line traced back to the Fifties, when life was relatively comfortable, college and medical care were affordable, through the Eighties, when President Reagan turned the country over to the corporations and the consummate evil yuppie character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street declared "Greed is good." Since then, as Moore rapidly points out, the wealth has been gobbled up more and more by the few at the top: the middle class has been ravaged and the poor have become more numerous.
If capitalism, as an old Fifties instructional film here intones, is "our American way of life," then how come it's failing to serve so many Americans? At this point it would have been much better if Moore had been less "resolutely U.S.-centric" (Felperin) -- because capitalist economies exist in other countries alongside systems of social services, alongside socialist benefits for the many. It's not so much simply capitalism that is killing us (has not communism been proved a failure, or at least unrealizable in the real world?) but the cruel, Darwinian, selfish, do-or-die form of it that's practiced in America. Greed is not good. As Moore does point out repeatedly, ordinary and poor Americans have been hoodwinked by propagandists for American capitalism into thinking that the system is okay, however heartless and imbalanced, because they might hit the jackpot themselves someday. As Moore says, ordinary Americans are beginning to realize that just ain't true.