BY MARTA TAHJA-SYRETT
It is opening night for the film Fahrenheit 11/9. The theater at Century Olympia is nearly full as many people wait for Michael Moore’s most recently debuted film to begin. (a) Michael Moore is most famously known for producing films such as Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 films that share the qualities of a political forum, with Moore’s perception of societal violence and government fallacies narrated in a documentary format.
Fahrenheit 11/9 attempts to analyze and address America’s current political climate. It produces for its audience a snapshot of the nation’s polarization, which includes both turmoil and unification. The stage is set for the story to unfold: a scene of anticipatory people, awaiting the 2016 presidential election results, pans across the screen. News reports flash by, all of them predicting Clinton’s victory. A woman exclaims, tears streaming down her face, that she will get to see a woman become president in her lifetime.
This scene invoked a feeling of loss within me. Not because of any partiality to the candidate at hand, but because it made me acknowledge a feminist plea to be represented. The night of the election continues on, the music of the film shifting in tone. There is something hovering in the air, something heavy. Then it is announced that Trump has the majority vote in several states, and the color of the U.S. map steadily turns red. Clinton supporters are distressed as they await what will later be revealed as a Trump presidency.
Moore searches for reasons behind the results of the 2016 presidential election, while also honing in on recent events that connect to varying political sentiment across the United States. Video footage and clips of news reports all work to define the potency that encapsulates this particular time in our history.
The film engages largely with contemporary movements and political perspectives, but Moore has Yale history professor Timothy Snyder remind film watchers of the political past. Although Americans often prize themselves as having always been democratic in nature, Snyder notes that the country’s past was actually not democratic at all. He argues that preventing certain members of society from being able to participate in democracy discredits its existence. The country prevented property-less people, African-Americans and women from voting. This concept works as a foundational piece for Fahrenheit 11/9 as it brings up the topic of deeply rooted systemic inequality, the type that is carried out not only by citizens but by governing parties as well. Modern American oppression and corrupt government can be linked to the systems that have been in place since this country’s establishment.
Systemic inequality connects to other points that the film makes, such as those surrounding the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Moore says that Rick Snyder (no relation to the Yale professor), the governor of Michigan, is largely responsible for the condition of Flint’s water. Under Rick Snyder’s administration, the water source in Flint was changed to the Flint River. Children in Flint began testing positive for lead poisoning. In the film, April Cook-Hawkins, a woman who was previously involved in Flint’s medical scene, says she was asked to cover up the mass poisoning.
She declined the position to skew information regarding lead poisoning, but many parents were still told that their children were not poisoned when in fact they were. In my eyes, this was an extremely provoking piece of the film due to the fact that it addressed not only the damaging and irreversible nature of Flint’s water crisis, but also the secretiveness that exacerbated the atrocity. More than half of Flint’s population is African-American. A contaminated water source was selected over a clean one and lies were spread in an attempt to hide severe health conditions. Moore believes this is genocide.
Moore seems to pose this question to his audience: How was Rick Snyder able to gain such debilitating power over the health of those in Flint? Rick Snyder first declared a state of emergency, which granted him the ability to select certain individuals to regulate the state of emergency. Timothy Snyder (the professor) shares his concern that this same predicament could end up entrapping the whole of America. He claims that those governing our nation could use a national emergency to gain more power, potentially overthrowing our democratic system.
Moore ends the film with the sounding of the sirens from Hawaii’s false missile threat, paired with footage from the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, where seventeen people were killed. The audience was mostly quiet as the grave scene fled from sight, the deep glowing lights washing over the room at last. I myself was silent, trying to process the severe connotations that the ending of the film left lingering. A call to action seemed to be brought into the light; an urgency that, if not followed, would lead to great destruction and demise.
