6
Introduction.
My basic assumption in this work is grounded in the notion of
psychogeography and it is referred to some films by Michael Moore. This
world famous film director is normally approached as a politically
committed artist working on some specific issues that are developed an
articulated through a very ironic style. Nevertheless my position is that the
basic operation in which Moore’s films are grounded consists in portraying
urban spaces that are walked through and reported on through emotions
and feelings.
In the first chapter I introduce an overlook on psychogeography, the
theoretical tool I used to analyze Moore’s works. I also included references
to the documentaries concerning the city and the technical frame which is
needed to produce this movie genre.
In the second chapter, I developed a concise biography of Michael Moore,
underlining his multifaceted nature as an artist and an intellectual. In a 20 -
year career Moore not only directed movies, but he also produced TV
shows and video clips and wrote many books about the American society.
In the third chapter, I analyzed Moore’s first movie Roger & Me, in which the
most important element is the relationship between the director and his
hometown, Flint. Furthermore I introduced a short profile of the
documentary connected with the social and political iss ues which can be
considered Moore’s specific field.
The main subject of the fourth chapter is Moore’s most successful
documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. In this movie, the director represents New
York after the devastating terroristic attack which hit the city on September
11, 2001. In the second part of the chapter I draw a parallel with two
artistic works on this tragic event: a movie, World Trade Center, directed
by Oliver Stone and a novel Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close written
by Jonathan Safron Foer.
The fifth chapter is about Sicko, a movie in which Moore analyzes the
American healthcare system and compares it with the European ones. In
this movie , Moore focuses on the cross -cultural differences. Indeed, the
director’s intention is to posit a comparison with the US, which is his
7
homeland, and Great Britain and France, that in this case represent the
otherness.
This work is aimed at underlining the relevance of the city in Moore’s
movies not only an ideal cinematographic set but it is also a fundamental
element of narration for the director.
8
Chapter one.
Psychogeography and documentary films
1.1 Psychogeography definition, historical overlook and
the examples of London, Paris and New York.
Our starting assumption in this work is grounded in the concept of
psychogeography that is going to be our critical key and methodological
tool in the following analysis of some documentaries by Michael Moore.
According to Robert MacFarlane, psychogeography can be only defined
through a practical experience:
“Psychogeography: a beginner’s guide. Unfold a street map of London,
place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw round its edge.
Pick up the map, go out into the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close
as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go in whatever
medium you favour: film, photograph, manuscript, tape”
1
.
This statement highlights two fundamental characteristics of
psychogeography : the importance of the city as a privileged object of
study and the fact that the psychogeographer is free to use a wide
range of media to express his own representation of the city.
The psychogeographer is a figure that moves through the urban space, by
taking into consideration not only the actual aspects of the real city but
also the emotional and ideal features of the fictional city:
“This traffic between urban fabric, representation and imagination fuzzles
up the epistemological and ontological distinction and, in doing so,
‘produces’ the city between, the imagined city where we actually live”
2
.
1
MacFarlane Robert, ‘A Road of One’s Own’ Times Literary Supplement, October 07,
2005. From Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p 9.
2
Donald James, Imaging the Modern City, London: The Athlone Press, 1999 p.8.
9
London - mentioned in the quotation not by chance - is one of the first city
studied by psychogeographers and at the same time this urban space is
one of the most common setting for many writers such as Iain Sinclair,
Stewart Home and Peter Ackroyd
3
. Like Iain Sinclair stated:
“The triangle of concentration. A sense of this and all other triangulations
of the city : Blake, Buyan, Defoe, the dissenting monuments in Bunhill
Fields. Everything I believe in, everything can do to you, starts there”
4
.
One of the “fathers” of psychogeography was Daniel Defoe that offered a
twofold contribution to the history of this subject. He was the first writer
to provide a vision of London shaped according to his own peculiar
imaginary topography
5
.
In his most famous novel , Robinson Crusoe(1719), characteristics that
can be related to psychogeography are clearly recognizable. In fact,
Robinson has a profile that is similar not only to the characters of
Rimbaud’s poems and the flâneur, but also to the contemporary figure of
the urban wanderer in Patrick Keiller’s films
6
.
In his Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
7
the novelist produced instead a
first draft of a psychogeographical report in which he provided statistical
data, topographical details and real testimonies, but he presented them
in a non- linear and digressive way that will convey in the concept of
dérive
8
, that will be also present in future psychogeographical studies.
Another important artist that can be considered as an anticipator of
psychogeography is William Blake, a poet and engraver who lived
between 1757 and 1827. On the one hand he was defined ‘the
Godfather of psychogeography
9
’ by Iain Sinclair, on the other Ackroyd
considered him as the first ‘Cockney Visionary’, an ideal figure who was
aware of the symbolic existence of London through time and was
3
Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p. 16
4
Sinclair Iain, Lights Out for the Territory, p. 34. From Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography,
Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p 31.
5
Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p. 35.
6
Ibidem., p 15
7
A minor work of Daniel Defoe that told the story of a man during the Great Plague of
London in 1665. From Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006
p. 15.
8
Ibidem: p. 36.
9
Ibidem: p. 32.
10
allowed to perceive the unchanging reality of the city
10
. Blake drew a
parallel between a precise area of London and the New Jerusalem.
Furthermore, according to Peter Ackroyd : “[Blake] had a very strong
sense of place, and all his life he was profoundly and variously affected
by specific areas of London
11
”. This concept can be related to the theory
of the leylines by Alfred Watkins
12
, that some ‘high places’ where events
are more probable to happen. Rather than a previous theory to
psychogeography, this is a signal of fusion between the practice of
wandering and the new age and esoteric ideas. The theory of the
leylines concerns also the concept of genius loci that was celebrated
both by Blake and De Quincey , which opposes the spiritual value of the
English countryside to the complex reality of London
13
.
With reference to the present, London is today the background of
interesting works of psychogeographers such as J. G. Ballard, Peter
Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair, Will Self, Stewart Home and Peter Keiller
14
.
Ballard produced a series of texts whose backgrounds are distressed
urban landscapes such as hinterlands of motorways and retail parks in
the outskirts. He took into consideration the ‘Deat h of Affect’ that is the
loss of emotional engagement of the man and its surroundings
15
.
Ackroyd focused on the visionary tradition of the nineteenth century and
imagined the psychogeographer as a ‘historico- mystical’ profile, with a
less rigorous and scientific approach to the city.
Sinclair reintroduced the figure of the flâneur by updating this profile for
the standards of a modern London, with a vivid and conscious attention
to the changes of the city and taking a precise political stance. This
author operates a ‘rebranding of psychogeography’, that also
represented a mainstream recognition for the movement.
Will Self is one of the most innovative and ironic contemporary
psychogeographer. He looks at the city of London and at ordinary life
with his own p ersonal perspective that according to him he has
10
Ibidem: p. 40.
11
Acroyd Peter, Blake, p. 20. From Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket
Essentials, 2006 p. 40.
12
Coverley Merlin Op. Cit, p. 51.
13
Ibidem p. 54.
14
Ibidem p. 111-137.
15
Ibidem p. 112.
11
“created”: “thanks to the drugs/ technology/ crazed suburbia influences
of William Burroughs and JG Ballard, and the scatological satiric tradition
of Swift”
16
. In fact Self is still writing with reference to the English high
and low culture and he always admits that his point of view was often
altered by the use of illicit drugs in the past.
With reference to Defoe, Keiller sees the psychogeographer as a modern
Robinson that moves around the space, that continues his
psychogeographic quest, shifting away from the city to provide “ a
document of transformation, a discovery of all these out -of –the way
places where they make plasterboard”
17
and entering the hinterland
previously explored by Ballard and Sinclair
18
.
Even if London is the city of fathers and anticipators of psychogeography
and it is playing an important role also in contemporary times, Paris is
the city where this intellectual movement took off officially.
The practice of wandering around the city defines the profile of the flâneur
that:
“is a composite figure – vagrant, detective, explorer, dandy and stroller -
yet, within these many and often contradictory roles, his predominant
characteristic is the way in which he makes the street his home and t his if
the basis of his legacy to psychogeography”
19
.
At the very beginning, Baudelaire and Benjamin gave a first definition of
the flâneur as a passive observer detached from his surroundings but
thanks to the contact with surrealism, this figure became a subject that
was capable: “of transforming our experience of everyday life and
replacing our mundane existence with an appreciation of the
marvellous”
20
, moving in an intermediate state, between dream and
reality. This ideal profile underlines the nature of psychogeography that
is situated between geography and psychology and it can be considered
as the initial stage for the development of the concept of dérive that
16
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/11/willself.
17
Keiller Patrick, Robinson in Space, p. 232.
18
Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p. 134-135.
19
Ibidem p. 65.
20
Ibidem p. 73.
12
would be introduced later by Guy Debord and the movement of the
‘situationist international’ in the context of Paris.
Benjamin clearly expressed the difference between a tourist and a flâneur
when he stated :
“Not to find one’s way in the city may well be uninteresting and banal. It
requires ignorance – nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one
lose oneself in a forest – that calls for quite a different schooling. Then
signboards and street names, passers -by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must
speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet, like the startling
call of a bittern in the distance, like the sudden stillness of clearing with a
lily standing erect at its centre. Paris taught me the art of straying”
21
.
The figure of the flâneur evolved consequently in the profile of the mental
traveller, associated with the character of Robinson Crusoe. Rimbaud
created the verb robinsonner that means ‘to let the mind wander or to
travel mentally’
22
and it is related to the themes of the imaginary voyage
and the isolation. According to Rimbaud, the urban wanderer has the
ability to survive in hostile territory. Robinson can be seen as a
intermediated figure of reference between the flâneurs of Paris and the
modern wanderers of London
23
.
Paris had also been the background of the Situationist International
group led by the French left -wing theorist Guy Debord, who became
famous in the 1950s. After the Dada movement and the surrealism that:
“continued to proclaim the need of a new society, free from the
homogenising effects of capitalist development ”
24
, the Situationist
movement was a turning point for psychogeography, because the
French theorists introduced dérive and détournement, two new concepts
that would be very useful for further studies on the subject.
Dérive is defined by the movement in the review the Situationiste
internationale as:
21
Benjamin Walter, A Berlin Chronicle. Also quoted in Solnit Rebecca Wanderlust.
22
Sturrock John, Céline: Journey to the End of the Night p. 37 in Coverley Merlin,
Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p. 68.
23
Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p. 68.
24
Ibidem p. 82.
13
“a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban
society: a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances. Also
used to designate a specific period of continuous deriving”
25
.
This very blurry definition individuates the attitude of living the city and the
way of life of the flâneur but with a clear political stance.
“The dérive takes the wanderer out of the realm of the disinterested
spectator or artistic practitioner and places him in a subversive position as
a revolutionary following a political agenda”
26
.
Another interesting concept is that of détournement that aims “to liberate a
word, statement, image or event from its intended usage and subvert its
meaning”
27
. According to Stewart Home, détournement is “the theft of
aesthetic artefacts from their own contexts and their diversion into
contexts of one’s own device”
28
. In addition, this practice distinguished
the figure of the situationist from the previous one of the flâneur.
A further step in the theorising of urban walking is “The Practice of
Everyday Life” by Michael de Certeau that shifted the scenery of the
psychogeographic movement from Paris to New York
29
.
The aim of De Certeau’s work was to analyse the daily actions performed
by the ordinary men in order to “illustrate the hidden structure of modern
urban life that governs the relationships between a city and its
inhabitants”
30
.
The choice of New York is very meaningful, since this city is considered
the “apotheosis of the modern city ”
31
in opposition to the Old European
world.
“Unlike London and Paris, New York reflects a spirit of constant renewal
and this sense of perpetual present is characterised by two opposing
perspectives of the city that of the voyeur and walker”
32
.
25
Ibidem p. 93.
26
Ibidem p. 97.
27
Ibidem p. 95.
28
Home Stewart, Assault on Culture, p. 168 in Coverley Merlin, Psychogeography , Ed.
Pocket Essentials, 2006 p. 95.
29
See Coverley Merlin, ‘Psychogeography’, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p. 103.
30
Ibidem p. 104.
31
Ibidem p. 104.
14
On the one hand, the walker is the person who goes through the city at
street-level, it lives the city in a “down below mode”, on the other the
perspective of the voyeur is more complete, it looks at the urban
landscape from the top of the skyscrapers, with a panoptical god- like
view. The voy eur “is lifted […] out of the city’s grasp. [..] He leaves
behind the mass that carries off and mixes up in itself any identity of
authors or spectators”
33
.
The perspective of the psychogeographer is the theoretical point of view
for the analysis of Michael Moore’s works. The focus is on the attitude of
the director through the city not only the way in which he represented it
but also the way he lives it.
In Roger & Me the main theme is the relationship of the author with his
birthplace and how he depicted it after a serious economical crisis that
radically changed the city.
Fahrenheit 9/11 casts a light on the director perspective on New York after
the event that transformed the city skyline: the terrorist attack on the 11
th
September 2001.
In Sicko, Moore compares the American healthcare system with the
foreign ones. For this reason the most interesting aspect of the
documentary is the representation of the US in contrast with other
worlds, such as Cuba and some European cities such as Paris and
London.
32
Ibidem p. 104.
33
De Certau Michel, ‘ The Practice of Everyday Life” , epigraph p. 92 in Coverley Merlin,
Psychogeography, Ed. Pocket Essentials, 2006 p. 105.