Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11

(***I'm warning all of you. Never write your blogs directly on the blog because something can always go wrong and somehow get deleted. Ignore the oh so reassuring “auto-save”. That's what happened to me and now I'm tired and don't want to repeat this blog again. I'll try my best to make it as good as the first time I wrote it. Moral of the story: write it on Word first!)

On September 11, 2001 I was sitting in my 5th grade computer class when my teacher was notified to turn on the TV. That day I saw most of the 9/11 coverage with not really understanding the big picture or even the concepts behind it. It’s sad to admit but it wasn't until I came to college that I truly understood what the war was about. With that being said, watching Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 for the first time was mind boggling. Everything I knew about the war was disregarded in this film. His documentary is indeed biased however he provides evidence and research to back up his argument. It made me think about other aspects I hadn’t thought about and gave information that made me want to research more. I think for the most part in the beginning of the film Moore uses more of the logos and ethos appeals and then towards the end he uses mostly the appeal of pathos.

Moore’s primary claims in his documentary are against George W. Bush and his competence as president and how he handled the 9/11 attacks due to his ties with the alleged ties to the Bin Laden family. He bases his argument with logos by providing plenty of documentation, polls, and impressive interviews. He belittles Bush many times by jump cutting to Bush at lose for words and people raising questions.

Throughout the film, Moore in his “voice of god” provides some satirical often funny comments to lighten the tone of the film however there are certainly some heartbreaking images that are to be taken serious. A scene that truly haunted me after I saw the documentary was of sun burnt soldiers in Iraq saying how they play a good song (like “Let the bodies hit the floor” and “Roof is on Fire”) to pump them up when in a tank ready for combat. Moore then juxtaposes the voice of a soldier singing the lyrics of “Roof is on Fire” against images of Iraqi civilians in distress, pain, or dead. It really appeals to the audience’s emotions when they continue to see hysterical Iraqi mothers, dead Iraqi children, a naked child with his arm blown off and women with their faces melted off. Moore’s claim in this case is that Iraqi’s are innocent and the ignorant American soldiers are just doing a job that Bush sent them to do, rather than fight a war (since they don’t know why they are fighting.)

Another scene that is meant to grab the audience’s heart is the part when the mother of the dead soldier is reading a letter her son wrote to her before he died. The scene proves to be an overwhelming one because it’s almost as if the dead is living. The deceased soldier’s words come alive when his mother read them aloud and with the mother’s tears it really pulls at the audience’s emotion. Overall Michael Moore posed many questions and his version of the answers however the conclusion was not sufficient enough to wrap up his claim.