Friday, May 7, 2004 | 5:54 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
WEEKEND EDITION
May 8 - 9, 2004
FAHRENHEIT 451. The future is upon us.
Ray Bradbury paints a picture of the future in his classic story about a society that exalts the trivial at the expense of the more substantive issues of the day. In fact, in Bradbury's world, the good life is defined as one in which television sets constantly showing the shallowness of life are coveted and books, which confound and confuse the people with ideas about how to make life better and more meaningful, are shunned.
In fact, they are more than shunned. They are burned. That's where the firemen come in. Instead of putting out fires which destroy people's homes and lives, they start fires in order to burn the books, which, after all, cause so much consternation and pain by causing people to think. It is a great story which used to be required reading and now, I am afraid, is relegated to the societal dustbin where most great works are sent to collect dust for lack of American curiosity.
I thought about Fahrenheit 451, which, not coincidentally, is the temperature at which paper burns, when I read the other day about the squabble between the Walt Disney Co. and its wholly owned movie business, Miramax. Miramax, which has earned at least its share of Academy Awards and other accolades for great moviemaking, may have another winner on its hands. It comes from the mind and heart of one of this country's more controversial documentarians, Michael Moore, who has managed in a short time to polarize a significant part of the American public into groups of those who like him and those who don't.
What's most interesting about Michael's work, which includes the award-winning, highly emotional and factually correct documentary, "Bowling for Columbine," is that his movies are learning experiences for Americans who, for the most part, would remain ignorant on the subject but for his big-screen efforts. Even though his movies teach us that which we don't know, and should, about ourselves and our society -- and for that reason we applaud him -- only some of us appreciate him. The others, because they disagree with his politics -- or maybe just the way he preaches in our faces -- choose to hate him.
His latest effort is called "Fahrenheit 9/11." It searches through and exposes the relationship between the Bush family and the bin Laden family. The bin Ladens of Saudi Arabia, in case there is some confusion. You can tell already that the subject matter is one that could be a bit touchy.
So, Moore makes his movie, which, shall we say, does not appear to be very flattering toward the president, his famous father or any of the other Bushes, and seeks to have Miramax distribute it. Miramax paid for the documentary so it stands to reason that it would want to get it into the movie theaters where the moviegoing public will make its own decisions whether or not it chooses to pay the money to see what Moore hath created.
Not so fast, says Mickey in the person of Michael Eisner, the head of Disney. According to those who claim to have heard it from the mouse's mouth, the great Walt Disney Co. -- owner of ABC Television, ESPN, Disneylands all over the globe, and a brand that makes children around the world roar with delight -- is scared to death of President Bush's brother Jeb, who just happens to be the governor of the state of Florida. That's the place where Disneyworld lives and the place that confers humongous tax breaks on the company that Walt built, courtesy of the governor and his gang.
Eisner supposedly is afraid that if Disney shows a documentary that is unflattering to President Bush, especially during this political year, his brother Jeb will take it out on the Disney Co. by causing its tax breaks to disappear. That could cost many millions of dollars, a financial hit Eisner is not willing to take in the name of artistic freedom.
Let me say at this point that I don't know whether the reasons given for Disney's weak knees are accurate. Let me also say that Disney can choose not to distribute any movie it wants to keep hidden from public view, regardless of the reason. This is still America and people can do what they want with their property.
The culprit here is not Disney. It is not Michael Moore. And it is not Jeb Bush. No, what is wrong with this picture is that it is being made in an America that used to be, rather than in an America that should be.
Even though I was alive at the time, I do not remember what life was like in the 1950s when Sen. Joe McCarthy was running roughshod over the rights and lives of decent, responsible, patriotic Americans. It was a time when people were afraid to express their opinions outside the relative safety of their own homes and when neighbors turned on neighbors, for fear of being outed -- fairly or not -- by the goon squads of public decency led by Tailgunner Joe himself. It was a time when the Bill of Rights meant doing wrong and the bells of freedom rang only for those who toed the McCarthy line. It was a very scary time.
It is starting to feel the way I think it did a half century ago when people were afraid to speak for fear that their own government would punish them for their thoughts. Mind you, I am not saying that the threats this time are real -- that would be outrageous and every American, regardless of political stripe, would fight against them -- only that people may think they are real.
If we have come so far in this country that people who think, people who write, people who make movies, people who challenge the status quo, people who challenge the rest of us to challenge ourselves, are so cowed by the idea that government can take its vengeance upon us, then we have allowed others to take our country down a most un-American road. For that way lies tyranny and despair and that is not the way of the United States.
I am confident that "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be distributed in theaters across this country because there are still enough citizens who yearn to learn that they will cause it to happen. And it will be publicly acclaimed.
I am also confident that the Walt Disney Co. will continue to get its tax breaks -- courtesy of the rest of us, which is always the case -- regardless of whether it releases the film or not. And I am confident that Michael Moore will continue to speak out the way he does best -- through well-documented and well-edited film-making.
What gives me pause for concern, though, is the direction we seem to be heading in this country and the difficulty we seem to be having either recognizing the danger or reversing our course. McCarthyism overtook an unsuspecting country willing to believe just about anything that it was told that would protect us from the evils of Communism. It turned out we had more to fear from the red-baiter from Wisconsin than the Reds from the Kremlin.
The same may be true today. We all want to do what we can to stop these terrorist madmen from destroying that which we hold dear. What we can't do in the process, though, is destroy that which we hold dear all by ourselves. Fearing government reprisals for thinking out loud, in movie theaters and in bookstores, is a dangerous first step down that slippery slope.
If paper can be destroyed at Fahrenheit 451, at what temperature does our freedom start to burn?
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