Censoring Michael Moore

Controversial US film-maker Michael Moore’s scathing documentary criticizing US president George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq has won the prize for best film at the Cannes Film Festival but cannot find a distributor in the US. In fact, Fahrenheit 9/11 was already financed by a well-known film studio, but the parent company of that studio, Disney, has disallowed the documentary from being distributed in America. Despite the setback, the film-maker retained his sense of humour and found the time to thank the American president when he accepted the award at Cannes last month: "He’s got the funniest lines in the film. I’m eternally grateful," Moore said of Bush.

Disney, which earlier agreed to distribute the film, prevented its subsidiary, Miramax, from distributing the documentary, although the studio had financed its production. Disney’s chief Michael Eisner was reported in American newspapers as saying that releasing Moore’s documentary in an election year would have been perceived by many as a partisan decision and that Disney did not want to be seen that way.

However, Moore’s agent told the New York Times in mid-May that Disney’s real reason for not letting the film be released was purely political: apparently, the company’s boss was worried that release of the film would jeopardize the tax concessions its theme parks have in the US state of Florida, where the governor happens to be the brother of the main target of the documentary, US President George W. Bush.

Disney has all along denied this but the film-maker insists this is the real reason why Miramax has been unable to distribute the documentary. In any case, the details of this whole affair all pretty much point towards the fact that forces are at work to ensure that Michael Moore’s new documentary is not watched by Americans a few months before the presidential election. This is tantamount to censorship, albeit in a sophisticated and subtle form, since the US government or the White House cannot really be blamed for the film not being released.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is an acerbic and caustic comment on the American president and his Iraq policy. It also tries to show that Bush’s family has old ties to many Saudi families, and to one in particular, the Bin Ladens, which stands out. It has received rave reviews from several well-known American news publications, among them The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time, all of whom incidentally backed George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. Made from clips cobbled together by Michael Moore from a variety of sources such as sympathetic TV journalists and others with direct access to the footage.

The film reportedly has one scene where Bush is about to address his country to inform Americans that he is going to authorize the invasion of Iraq. In it, as a make-up woman is applying some finishing touches to Bush, the US president is shown playing peek-a-boo with the camera, as if completely unaware of the gravity of the situation. This led a New York Times columnist, who says that he has seen the film, to note that one could not imagine a president doing this less than a minute before delivering a speech where he plans to tell his country that he is about to declare war on another country.

Fahrenheit 9/11 has this and other footage which American viewers have been shielded from, till recently when they saw pictures of hooded Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. However, the film has clips of US soldiers sexually mistreating Iraqi detainees, taken many months ago at a detention facility outside Baghdad. This lends credence to the widely-held (but persistently-denied by the Pentagon) belief that such treatment has been US policy from the start of the war and is practised in prisons all over Iraq.

The documentary also has footage of America’s war dead in Iraq - something that the American networks never show. US soldiers have been shown at a military hospital, with limbs severed in combat, being treated for nerve damage. The soldiers are shown criticizing the US president and his policies, as is the mother of a dead soldier who, while attending his funeral, goes into a fit of rage, unable to contain herself.

Disney’s refusal to distribute the documentary is in fact a partisan decision because it gives the impression that it wants to do Bush a favour and shield him from the potentially disastrous fallout the film would generate. Clearly, this is something that Americans should see so that they can judge for themselves the cost of invading Iraq. Freedom of expression is a rare commodity, perhaps more so in a country that likes to lecture the rest of the world on its many virtues.

As for Pakistan, a distribution company has acquired rights for the UK which means that sooner or later it will make its way to Karachi’s Rainbow Centre and from there to the other parts of the country.