Page 379 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Pol t cal Documentary: Fahrenheit 9/11 and the 2004 Elect on

“observing” it from a distance, is clearly incommensurate with the practice of
committed filmmakers speaking from within particular social movements. Seen
from this perspective, political documentary starts to look a lot less like docu-
mentary proper, and a lot more like “propaganda.”

PoLiTiCaL DoCumEnTary as “ProPaganDa”
Accusations of propaganda, of course, beg a similar question: what do we mean
by propaganda? Film scholars James Combs and Sara Combs argue that, sepa-
rated from its usually negative connotation, propaganda is any form of communi-
cation geared towards the production of messages intended to influence popular

a Matter oF distriBution

While the production of political documentaries is nothing new, the manner in which they
are being seen is. One of the most compelling aspects of the Fahrenheit 9/11 phenomenon
was its spectacular success as a theatrical release, even out-grossing the other major Hol-
lywood release that weekend, White Chicks, thus taking the top spot overall. However, while
Moore blazed a new trail into the country’s multiplexes, his was not the only unique strategy
for distributing political documentary.
Filmmaker Robert Greenwald took a different tack in 2002 when he produced Unprec-
edented: The 2000 Presidential Election, a film that looked closely at the controversy sur-
rounding the fight over presidential votes in Florida. Greenwald chose to forgo traditional
routes and distribute the film himself. He set up public screenings through liberal groups,
such as the Nation Institute and the People for the American Way, while at the same time
making a DVD version of the film available for purchase through political Web sites such
as MoveOn.org. His guerilla-distribution tactics worked: the film sold over 30,000 copies in
three days.
Greenwald has replicated this strategy with subsequent films, including Uncovered: The
War on Iraq, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of
Low Price (2005), and Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006). The most important aspect
of this strategy is timeliness—Greenwald’s films are meant to be seen “in the moment.” As
such, they are made quickly on a low budget (often with funds from cooperating political
organizations) and then distributed aggressively, utilizing incentives such as free screenings
and low prices (the DVDs are often sold for $9.95). In this way, Greenwald is perhaps the
quintessential “committed” documentarian of our time, working with specific political or-
ganizations to get a pointed message out in the hopes of raising consciousness and affect-
ing change. In many ways, Greenwald is also the first political documentarian to utilize the
new media landscape in an integrated fashion, combining any and all means of distribution
strategies, from theaters to home video to the Internet. Indeed, Greenwald argues that his
biggest contribution to the documentary field is precisely the development of what he calls
an “alternative distribution model.” As such, he remains an important figure in the emerging
documentary landscape.