The Message From Cannes

Last year Michael Moore's documentary won top honors. It braved the critics, supposedly--as if suggesting that the action in Iraq and Afghanistan is "illegal" and the result of a conspiracy is brave. Courage, as we've been discussing in our pre-Academy sessions on Plato's Laches, doesn't seem to exist when its the popular status quo. The Right-Wing "nutjobs" suggested that Moore was helping hatred of America take center stage--and of course they were laughed at--criticized as narrow-minded lemmings.

This year at Cannes Film Festival...no Michael Moore. Instead we have a plethora of films criticizing the American life--no longer limited to simply the "illegal" war we're waging, but now aimed at taking down the influence that America has on the free-world as a whole. Take, for example, the sentiments of Danish film maker Lars Von Trier:

Von Trier, whose fear of flying has prevented him from visiting the United States, won thunderous cheers at the world premiere and a news conference, where he said he enjoyed bashing America on screen because it invades his life even in Denmark.

"We are all under the influence -- and it's a very bad influence -- from America," said the 49-year-old Dane. "In my country everything has to do with America. America is kind of sitting on the world.

"America has to do with 60 percent of my brain and all things I experience in my life, and I'm not happy about that," von Trier said. I'd say 60 percent of my life is American so I am in fact an 'American' too. But I can't go there and vote or change anything there. That is why I make films about America."

The whole article is here.

Many things come to mind, reading this. Especially as I study the history of the European nations during the twentieth-century, or the "American Century" as it has been called...I could point out that this Dane would have quite a different complaint if it were for the invasive nature of America--he'd have Germany and the Nazis instead.

I could point out that, having never visited America he is as narrow-minded as he would like to suggest Americans are when they label Europeans.

But most of all, I could point out that regardless of his complaints, he lives in a world where the last remaining Superpower continues to dominate the world in all the important ways--and he has not been prevented from making his hate-film of America. In any other time, under any other power as completely awesome as the United States is today--this man would not have survived his critique. However, due almost entirely to the very nature of the freedom that defines the nation he has chosen to blame for the woes of his nation and the world (and because we have defended that freedom and bestowed it upon almost the entire rest of the world) he can participate freely with other aficionados of the film world in critiquing the affects of the American lifestyle on his world. They have gathered together to celebrate the the burning of America in effigy and it is a media event with glamour and glitz. Someday, the irony may finally catch-up to them. I won't hold my breath.

So much for the valor of Michael Moore. Even Star Wars has gotten into the fray. When you're in the same group as Star Wars--you're not edgy, you're just one of the clones.