# Big One, The (1997)

### reviewed by
Louis Proyect

Last night I laughed out loud for the first time in months as I sat through Michael Moore's new movie, "The Big One." The biggest laugh I got was when Moore was commenting on presidential candidate Steve Forbes tendency not to blink. During this riff, we see the distinctly odd-looking Forbes staring at the TV camera during a debate. He blinked not once for what seemed an eternity. Moore called an eye, ear and nose specialist at a NY hospital and asked what the doctor he thought of someone with the ability to go for minutes without blinking. The doctor's reply was that "He doesn't sound human." This leads Moore to speculate on the possibility that the Forbes campaign is staffed by extraterrestrial aliens.

Bourgeois society is filled with comic material like this, but our corporate-sponsored comedians manage to sidestep it entirely. This self-imposed censorship leads to some really bland and pointless entertainment. I have tried to figure out the Seinfeld craze to no avail. I watch reruns late at night in stony silence. What is so funny about four obnoxious characters sitting around discussing their dating problems or where they can get a good meal? My building on Manhattan's upper east side is filled with such people and I try to avoid them at all costs.

Moore has been compared to David Letterman, whose "found humor" on the old NBC show was quite edgy. Since Letterman has moved to CBS and aspired to be the new "Johnny," he has lost me entirely. Whenever I turn him on, he is usually grimacing at the camera and telling racist jokes about NYC's immigrant cabbies. If Moore had a TV show, he'd probably be conducting sympathetic and humorous interviews with NY's cab-drivers who organized a highly successful one-day strike last week. Come to think of it, Moore did have such a show, called "TV Nation." His tendency to take the point of view of the underdog no doubt explains his banishment from the air-waves.

The exclusion of Michael Moore from network television is as much a form of political censorship as is the exclusion of important working-class struggles today. For instance, the powerful struggle of dock-workers in Australia to win back their jobs after the right-wing government fired them en masse has not been reported in the NY Times. The only time workers get their story reported is when they are in conflict with a Communist government, as was the case of Poland's Solidarity. It is Moore's distinction to attempt to be the voice of our own evolving Solidarity movement all on his own.

"The Big One" records Michael Moore's forty-seven city book promotion tour for "Downsize This!: Random Threats from an Unarmed American." In many of these cities he organizes guerrilla media attacks on downsizing corporations. It is the stuff of his hit movie "Roger and Me" but expanded to new targets.

In Centralia, Illinois he attends the rally of Payday candy workers whose factory is about to move to Mexico. He walks into corporate headquarters with a huge check for eighty cents and presents it to an unsmiling public relations representative from the company. He announces that the check will go to pay the first hour's wages of their first new Mexican worker. During the tour, the Payday corporation is sold to a new company and Moore visits them as well. They will not allow him into the lobby but he stands on the sidewalk outside holding up the huge check to the window. He yells at a surly-looking security guard inside that the eighty cent check is made out to the new owners.

There is one moment in the film that drives home the seriousness of the downsizing problem. Moore is chatting on air with legendary talk-show host Studs Terkel, whose interviews with working-class Americans in books such as "Working" have become classics. The question of terrorism has come up. "Downsize This!" begins with side-by-side photos of the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing and the wreckage of a closed factory in Flint, Michigan, Moore's home town. What is the difference between the two types of destruction? In the first instance, the bombing was unannounced and hundreds of people lost their lives. In the second, the company politely announces to the workers that their jobs are coming to an end and they clear out. After they are plunged into economic ruin, many die prematurely from alcoholism, drugs or suicide--the products of despair.

The climax of the movie revolves around Moore's confrontation with Philip Knight, the "new age" CEO of Nike shoes. Moore wants to know why Nike does not have a single factory in the United States. Knight's reply is that Americans don't want to make shoes. They consider this type of work beneath them. This inspires Moore to organize a rally in his home-town. Hundreds of unemployed workers hold up signs saying that they want to make shoes.

Presented with this evidence, Knight remains unsympathetic. Any unemployed worker will jump at the opportunity to have a job, but the truly motivated workers exist in other countries such as Indonesia where Nike has many of its plants. But doesn't Nike employ twelve year olds in these factories, Moore challenges him. Knight's shameless reply is that Nike does not hire anybody younger than fourteen. Furthermore, whatever hardships Indonesian workers are putting up with today is necessary for the prosperity they will enjoy tomorrow. The Manhattanites in the audience with me laughed at the bitter irony of this. Indonesia's "prosperity" has been sacrificed at the altar of IMF-sponsored austerity programs and the country is going up in flames.

Moore's encounter with Knight has a certain added poignancy for me. A couple of years ago I visited an old ex-Trotskyite buddy of mine in Portland who had become a top-ranking officer in Nike's computer systems department. He had managed to discard all his Marxist beliefs like an old pair of sneakers. We spent hour after hour debating socialism versus capitalism in terms not dissimilar from the Knight-Moore debate. I gave up after a certain point since I understood that there were material interests preventing him from seeing things the way he used to. He had joined the cult of the upwardly mobile. In Portland the chief guru was Philip Knight and just to the north in Seattle there was another one named Bill Gates.

The relationship between wealth and ideology is not necessarily predetermined. Moore's success in film-making and publishing has made him a multimillionaire. His new-found success has made him the target of Alexander Cockburn's diatribes in the pages of the Nation Magazine. No doubt, Moore is not as approachable as he used to be. Since he is something of a philanthropist for the left, he has been bombarded with requests over the years. Furthermore, he is something of an ego-tripper by the evidence of "The Big One" itself, where his every quirk and obsession becomes fodder for the movie. (If Moore is not careful, he could turn into a Woody Allen, who lost his sense of humor decades ago.)

Yet despite this, Moore remains dedicated to the task of enlightening American society. Someday there will be a revitalized leftist movement. The cultural workers who are part of this movement should consider themselves apprentices of Michael Moore, who knows how to communicate at the grass roots level. One of the misfortunes of the 1960's radicalization was its tendency to use the symbols and language of other peoples' revolutions. Moore understands that if there is to be another American revolution, it will have to be grounded in our own experience. To familiarize oneself with this "home-grown" approach to radical politics, a viewing of "The Big One" is essential. As a bonus, you will laugh your head off.

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