Fahrenheit 9/11 Sets US Alight

Fahrenheit 9/11 Sets US Alight

For the second time in a week, the liberals of New York stood in line for their cultural sustenance.
On Monday night they waited to snatch the first autographed copies of the memoirs of the former Democratic president Bill Clinton.

On Wednesday they went to watch Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a film aimed, at least in part, at ending the incumbency of of the current Republican president, George Bush.

The film officially opens today in 900 theatres - three times as many as for Mr Moore's previous film, the Academy Award-winning Bowling for Columbine. But New Yorkers got an early sight, along with premiere-goers in Washington DC.

What was billed as the launch of a film, however, looked more like the beginning of a political campaign.

Both left and right encouraged their supporters to write, email and fund-raise to either talk up or rubbish the movie, while the Democrats and the White House are wondering respectively how to capitalise on the film or minimise its impact.

The Washington showing was attended by several prominent Congress figures, while in New York activists of the Democratic National Committee collected money outside the cinema, from which people emerged after seeing the film saying they were moved to tears. The Bush administration had heated discussions on how to respond, with those who advocated a blitz of refutations losing to others who believed it best to ignore the film rather than give it credibility.

Like Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, which energised the right, the disputes reveal a huge overlap between politics and culture in this election year...More

(The Guardian)