Last night I watched ‘Sicko’, the latest documentary by Michael Moore.
I had watched most of Moore’s movies during the time I spent in France, including Roger and me, The Big One, Pets or Food and, of course, Bowling for Columbine and Farentheit 9/11. Last night, the feeling was rather special because for the first time I was watching one of his movies in an American theater in Baltimore, surrounded by his fellow American citizens. You could tell that the people inside the movie and the people around me truly had a lot in common, and this allowed me to experience first hand how well he connects with his target audience: the underprivileged and the socially concerned.
Also during my time in France, I once read an article in a newspaper where Moore was referred to as some kind of “Chomsky for kindergarteners”, a metaphor that makes a lot of sense to me.
Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and thought that it was a great documentary. Certainly, the guy’s position is very one-sided, but as usual he chooses the right side, the side that money-controlled mass media usually refuse to show you, and thus his contribution feels very much welcomed in the times we are living. His critique of the American health system is fierce, and yet humor and irony are present all along. Instead of despising other nations such as the French and the Cubans, he tries to learn from them and show us that we are all in the same boat after all, that solidarity knows no borders, and this is something that I truly appreciate.
The bottom line seems clear to me: in spite of the US being much richer as a country than other nations such as the UK, France, Canada and Cuba, many American citizens enjoy a much worse quality of living than their foreign counterparts. This is not an accident, but a meticulous strategy conceived by a selected number of corporations and supported by the political hierarchy that aims uniquely at maximizing the profits of a few in detriment of the general interest. In other words, when a country of ‘we’ becomes a country of ‘me’, great earnings and great losses lay along the way; if only a few end up enjoying those earnings, the losses are bound to make the rest live miserably and even struggle to survive. Such misery of the underprivileged is then used by the ruling class to freeze the social scenario and perpetuate the situation by easily controlling the demoralized and weakened masses. It’s the survival of the fittest, even if most of the time being the fittest amounts simply to being the meanest, or being the one with the lowest moral standards. The law of the jungle.
I had watched most of Moore’s movies during the time I spent in France, including Roger and me, The Big One, Pets or Food and, of course, Bowling for Columbine and Farentheit 9/11. Last night, the feeling was rather special because for the first time I was watching one of his movies in an American theater in Baltimore, surrounded by his fellow American citizens. You could tell that the people inside the movie and the people around me truly had a lot in common, and this allowed me to experience first hand how well he connects with his target audience: the underprivileged and the socially concerned.
Also during my time in France, I once read an article in a newspaper where Moore was referred to as some kind of “Chomsky for kindergarteners”, a metaphor that makes a lot of sense to me.
Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and thought that it was a great documentary. Certainly, the guy’s position is very one-sided, but as usual he chooses the right side, the side that money-controlled mass media usually refuse to show you, and thus his contribution feels very much welcomed in the times we are living. His critique of the American health system is fierce, and yet humor and irony are present all along. Instead of despising other nations such as the French and the Cubans, he tries to learn from them and show us that we are all in the same boat after all, that solidarity knows no borders, and this is something that I truly appreciate.
The bottom line seems clear to me: in spite of the US being much richer as a country than other nations such as the UK, France, Canada and Cuba, many American citizens enjoy a much worse quality of living than their foreign counterparts. This is not an accident, but a meticulous strategy conceived by a selected number of corporations and supported by the political hierarchy that aims uniquely at maximizing the profits of a few in detriment of the general interest. In other words, when a country of ‘we’ becomes a country of ‘me’, great earnings and great losses lay along the way; if only a few end up enjoying those earnings, the losses are bound to make the rest live miserably and even struggle to survive. Such misery of the underprivileged is then used by the ruling class to freeze the social scenario and perpetuate the situation by easily controlling the demoralized and weakened masses. It’s the survival of the fittest, even if most of the time being the fittest amounts simply to being the meanest, or being the one with the lowest moral standards. The law of the jungle.
