Resistance is Futile:
Try as they might, the corporate ogre

can't stop Michael Moore

by mattro
Raptorial

In Canadian Bacon, a fictional comedy by Michael Moore (Roger & Me, TV Nation), the president of the United States has a problem. His approval ratings are dropping even though he's the first person to hold the office without dragging the country into a war or armed conflict of any kind. His advisor's inform him lack of war is precisely his problem. You see, the cold war has been over for years and all the US's bogus boogey men are either dead, "making license plates" in Florida, or reformed. Many in the oval office and corporate America find this notion upsetting.

Unemployment is soaring as the weapons industry shuts down. The head of "Hacker" corporation blames the peace time president for the layoffs he's just had to administer. Things look so bad for the President, played by Alan Alda, that his national approval rating (here treated similarly to TV's Nielson rating) shoots up 15% only after an accidental assassination attempt. It quickly drops again when the public realizes he survived.

Everyone who has the president's ear is telling him he needs a war. Reluctantly, he agrees to pre-fabricating a cold war. Unfortunately for the prez, the Russians are unwilling to comply, storming angrily out of the Washington, DC summit where the idea is presented to them. The president and all his advisors are at a loss to find someone to play cold war games with.

Luckily, a brawl breaks out at a US/Canada hockey match on Canadian soil, several Americans (including the late John Candy) are pointed to as the instigators and arrested. The young, upwardly mobile head of the National Security Council, under the tutelage of the greedy "Hacker" CEO (Rip Torn), sees this minor skirmish as something to be exploited for the benefit of all market-driven Americans.

From here on the film details the numerous ways in which the American public (via 'Operation Canadian Bacon') is turned against the nation of Canada. Step by step the president and the public are made to believe Canada has been engaging the US in subterfuge for the past several decades. Conspiracy theories run rampant ("the Canadians have amassed 90% of their population within 100 miles of the US/Canada border!!") and soon maple syrup and ice skates become symbols of tyranny. The spoof is unrelenting and similarities abound between this fictional account of political media twisting and the media genuflecting that took place during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

It may not surprise anyone that Michael Moore had power struggles of his own during the creation of this political satire. The initial financing of the film was provided by Propaganda Films (owned by media giant Polygram) who wanted to promote the picture as a typical John Candy comedy vehicle. Moore states in a recent issue of Pulse! "they wanted more of Uncle Buck. On the set, they'd be, 'Do you guys think you could write some more lines for John? Have him do more goofy stuff?' I'm going, 'Guys, it's not that film.'"
Candy, the film's staunchest supporter and biggest name star, held the film company at bay until post-production, adhering to the Moore script he signed to play. Shortly after Candy died, Propaganda took the film away from MGM, the original distributor. The uncompromised Moore version of Bacon is being distributed by Gramercy Pictures, another subsidiary of Polygram. Moore has since shown the film at national and international festivals to great critical and popular acclaim. The film, completed almost two years ago, made a brief theatrical showing on screens in New York, LA, Washington D.C., Buffalo and Toronto and then was sent directly to video. Keep in mind that during the same two year period this film was being made, Michael Moore's popular, emmy award-winning television series, TV Nation was picked up and canceled by two of the four major networks (NBC in 1994 and FOX in 1995).

Michael Moore offers America some of the most daring, unrelenting political art the nation has seen. Apparently this makes the television and movie powers-that-be very nervous about supporting his projects. Who can blame them? When TV Nation encouraged viewers to meet Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken on the corner of such-and-such street at such-and-such date/time, the people who arrived weren't gathered to listen to a ho-hum political speech or to get autographs from a TV star. They showed up to tell Crackers (and Moore) which companies and/or banks in their city were fucking with people. Then the crowd would march to one of those places and confront the institution... with TV cameras rolling! Granted, Moore rarely got past the security guards in the elevator lobby, but the message was never lost: Here is a group of pissed off Americans, with a well organized and articulate spokesperson, directly confronting those who are exploiting them. When was the last time you saw something like this on TV? Probably sometime in the early '60s (if you were alive), only then it was on the news instead of an info-tainment show and the crowds were dispersed with high powered water hoses and rabid dogs.

As corny as this may sound to some, Michael Moore could be the closest the MTV generation gets to having a Martin Luther King type of liberator to call its own. I suppose, to a degree, the television networks and movie companies are aware of this and are loathe to give Moore a soapbox venue of such vast proportions. Why else would executives from two of the greediest industries in the United States unanimously turn down, hinder, or give up on projects guaranteed to make their investors a lot of money?