Right America Feeling Wronged: An HBO Documentary

[DaemonSeid]

Anyone else watching?

Thoughts pro and con?

[AKA_Monet]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Anyone else watching?

Thoughts pro and con?

I saw it. It was interesting to see how quickly people make dichotomies of "us vs. them". It was also actually sad how quickly we, Americans, can hate one another to the point of crying...

While I am sure the other camp, IF they had lost "fair and square" with NO improprieties, the opposing side would be crying, also...

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Anyone else watching?

Thoughts pro and con?

I thought it was a tad misleading - essentially Pelosi found those on the far right, and represented them as the voice of the Republican party.

There were interesting points, but the problem is that some people are going to look at this as a comprehensive study of conservatives, and it was far from that.

It had very much a Michael Moore feel to it...and that's not a good thing.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by KSigkid

I thought it was a tad misleading - essentially Pelosi found those on the far right, and represented them as the voice of the Republican party.

There were interesting points, but the problem is that some people are going to look at this as a comprehensive study of conservatives, and it was far from that.

It had very much a Michael Moore feel to it...and that's not a good thing.

it had too much of a Michael Moore feeling to it...the one thing I did like was how the 2 black guys were talking and one guy said how it was effed up that, that was how she chose to represent Missisippi, like some of what was going on there wasn't being done elsewhere in the country like Cali, NYC etc.

What was sad to see however is how mislead and really uneducated a lot of these people sounded.

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

it had too much of a Michael Moore feeling to it...the one thing I did like was how the 2 black guys were talking and one guy said how it was effed up that, that was how she chose to represent Missisippi, like some of what was going on there wasn't being done elsewhere in the country like Cali, NYC etc.

What was sad to see however is how mislead and really uneducated a lot of these people sounded.

Definitely - and I think that, in a well-done, well thought-out film, those issues would have been a lot more powerful.

But, Pelosi obviously had an axe to grind, and grind she did. She had a chance to produce something meaningful about the election and some of the larger issues, and she decided she had other agendas she chose to push.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by KSigkid

Definitely - and I think that, in a well-done, well thought-out film, those issues would have been a lot more powerful.

But, Pelosi obviously had an axe to grind, and grind she did. She had a chance to produce something meaningful about the election and some of the larger issues, and she decided she had other agendas she chose to push.

I don't think there is any way that a film maker can do a film on this subject and come out of this totally unbiased.

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

I don't think there is any way that a film maker can do a film on this subject and come out of this totally unbiased.

No...but I think that if she interviewed a larger cross-section of people, she could have gone a long way towards making it a more meaningful documentary. It would have taken more time, and would have made for a longer film, but I think those are sensible trade-offs when someone is marketing their product as a intelligent piece on the election. It doesn't have to be the length of a Ken Burns project, but there's some space between those extremes.

There's always going to be some bias, as you said...there's bias in the interview subjects, bias in the order that those subjects are presented, bias in the questions asked, and bias in the way the film is cut. I think, though, that a good documentary filmmaker (like a good journalist) finds ways to limit that bias to the extent possible.