Astute...?
I caught a bit of "Sicko" the other night on tv. I really want to watch it start to finish without interruptions. The issues presented in the short bit I saw were thought-provoking at the very least, and shocking in other ways. We could go back and forth and on and on about all of it. No matter what you think about Michael Moore, the issues raised about health care are important. (I loved, loved, loved, "Roger and Me," but have been mixed on his work since.)
There was a comment in the movie from an American ex-pat in Paris that keeps popping into my mind. She said something like, "In America, people are afraid of their government. In France, the government is afraid of the people." Then the movie went on to show examples of how the governments behave based on that theory.
What do you think about that?
2 comments:
I've seen the movie. It was definitely thought-provoking.
Here's the thing about Michael Moore that I find a bit annoying, though--he's really, really good at diagnosing problems, but not so good at proposing useful or realistic solutions.
And it always drives me crazy when documentaries/groups/people who purport to be unmasking some sort of virulent and dangerous rhetoric are guilty of the same rhetorical sins.
Naomi Klein's book "Shock Doctrine" springs to mind. She's brilliant at pointing out the inherent flaws in neoliberal economics, and her theory about disaster capitalism is really interesting, but then she goes to crazy town and says Milton Friedman's economic theory is tantamount to torture because it's been applied to markets after a "shock" weakens the market... just like torture.
And that's a stupid argument.
Michael Moore, too, makes some dubious comparisons to bolster his point about the healthcare crisis--I'm thinking here of his explicit comparison of the best hospital in Havana to the worst hospital in L.A. Then he treats it as a valid comparison. It's just not.
All that said, I agree with you that it's a useful and enlightening movie--definitely something I'd recommend to friends, with the caveats I mentioned.
I think I'm glad I don't live in France. The people strike over the least little thing. They do have better health care than either the US or the UK, though.
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