Rick accidentally saws the tips off two fingers, but can only afford to have one sewn back on. A 9/11 volunteer is denied the care he needs for the lung condition he developed while pulling people from the rubble of the World Trade Center. A man stitches up a gash in his own knee because professional care would be too costly.
These are just a few vignettes from Sicko, director Michael Moore鈥檚 polemic on healthcare in the US. It says a lot that Moore found it easy to find people treated so badly by the system. The quality of healthcare in the US depends on one鈥檚 ability to pay, and those on low incomes live unhealthier and shorter lives as a result. Moore is tackling an industry where the need for reform is desperate. But can he influence political debate?
Moore鈥檚 past record would suggest not. His films have impact, but they are divisive. When he investigated US gun culture in Bowling for Columbine, Moore pleased liberals and enraged gun owners. On seeing Fahrenheit 9/11, his probing look at the motivation behind the invasion of Iraq, left-wingers felt vindicated in their views about the war and conservatives felt vindicated in thinking Moore wasn鈥檛 worth listening to.
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The problem isn鈥檛 Moore鈥檚 style 鈥� his mixture of tongue-in-cheek editing, clever historical footage, publicity stunts and moving first-person anecdotes is very effective. But he cuts corners and cherry-picks data, which makes his arguments easy to dismiss. As a result, neither Bowling for Columbine nor Fahrenheit 9/11 achieved what really matters in political debate: changing the minds of those who don鈥檛 already agree with you.
Sicko, however, is different. 91色情片 policy does not divide Americans in the same way that guns and Iraq do. Polls show that Americans feel the healthcare system is broken and that they are willing to pay higher taxes to fix it. And with US presidential candidates still fine-tuning their health policies, Moore鈥檚 timing is spot on. If the film generates public demand for change, Democratic hopefuls could conceivably be pushed towards the universal healthcare system that Moore advocates.
For the most part, Moore makes his case by absenting himself from the screen and allowing those who have been let down by the system to do the talking. Then he travels to the UK and France and finds that what conservatives in the US damn as 鈥渟ocialised medicine鈥� actually works well. He does the same in Cuba, ferrying ill Americans to the island where they receive excellent healthcare at almost no cost. The result is a moving, funny and shocking film. It is a powerful call for change, despite its half-truths.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a powerful call to change, despite its half-truths鈥�
So is Moore finally about to incite real change? While he has a better chance than ever, he should be prepared for the unexpected. It was no surprise that JFK, a dramatised account of John F. Kennedy鈥檚 assassination, made people more receptive to director Oliver Stone鈥檚 view of the murder. However, audiences also emerged feeling cynical about politics and less inclined to vote, something that Stone probably hadn鈥檛 foreseen (Political Psychology, vol 16, p 237).
Similarly, after German audiences watched The Day After Tomorrow, a disaster film about extreme weather brought on by climate change, they reported that they were more willing to demand political action on climate change but, perhaps because the film depicted such extreme events, the same people doubted whether global warming was real (PIK Report No. 92).
These movies are fictional, so perhaps the findings do not apply to Sicko. Then again, Moore鈥檚 films are not documentaries. They are more like political adverts with passion. Viewers will see that Sicko is part-polemic, part-drama and part-fact, just as they saw JFK as a mix of historical fact and speculation. They might buy Moore鈥檚 cure for America鈥檚 healthcare ailments. Or they might watch the scenes in Cuba, which look as though they were shot by a state-run propaganda unit, and decide that such reform sounds deeply suspicious.
