Art and Politics on the Cutting Edge: The Genius of Editing in Roger and Me

Lev Kuleshov, the brilliant Soviet filmmaker of the 1920’s, was also a magician when it came to his manipulation of film editing. It was Kuleshov who developed the cinematic experiment of splicing together images of a thoroughly expressionless actor with shots of varying subjects (flowers, beautiful women, murder scenes, hot soup, etc). When audiences viewed this experiment, they ended up praising the actor for his “amazingly subtle” reactions to the various images (when the shot of soup was spliced between the film, the audience could swear they saw hunger in the actor’s empty face). Thus, Kuleshov proved that editing in film presents the illusion of meaning between varying images. This technique has been used countless times since then, not the least in the politically opinionated, scathingly brilliant documentaries of Michael Moore, who first proved his mastery of the editing technique in his 1989 film debut, Roger and Me. In this groundbreaking cinematic achievement, editors Wendey Stanzler and Jennifer Beman use the interplay between differing images in a way that enhances the documentary technically, artistically, and thematically.

First of all, before an analysis of the editing commences, the reason for comparing Moore to Kuleshov must be clarified. Moore’s alleged goal of Roger and Me was to document the gradual deterioration of his hometown, Flint, MI, after General Motors closed eleven plants for reasons that Moore contends were based upon pure corporate greed. The film’s events are made to look like they take place over a two-year period, yet upon it’s initial release, several critics (including Pauline Kael) accused Moore of compressing events of many years into his inaccurate cinematic timeline. In actuality, the film plays more like a series of tragicomic vignettes focusing on Flint’s downfall, yet Moore could have easily manipulated the sequence of events in order to strengthen his arguments for social reform. Although the exact manipulations to the timeline remain ambiguous, Moore uses editing in a way that leads audiences to make connections between images that, from the outset, may seem completely unrelated. What connection, for example, does General Motors Chairman Roger Smith’s Christmas speech have with a family from Flint, MI being evicted from their house? “No connection whatsoever” would be the easy initial answer, yet Moore edits events such as these together throughout his entire film, and in effect, creates moments of uproarious humor, jarring devastation, and therapeutic rage. Needless to say, Kuleshov would be envious.

Moore’s personal politics are evident in Roger and Me even from a technical standpoint. The most obviously linear portion of the film is its beginning. Moore opens the film with a montage of photographs and old home movies from his childhood growing up in Flint, MI, with a father who worked for GM. This leads to many examples of archival footage, including vintage newsreels, which paint a nostalgic picture of a prosperous Flint, MI before its epic downfall. The footage also charts the growing success of GM, the company that found its birthplace in Flint. The footage also documents a sit-down strike at GM, which importantly led to the establishment of the UAW (United Auto Workers). Only after this affectionate prologue, do viewers come to realize its importance. Sympathy for the average, working-class citizen is established, as well as GM’s role of the life force that holds the town of Flint together. The inclusion of the UAW also encourages a call to action of all hard-working citizens who have been wronged by corporate America. This use of actual news footage adds an unshakable feeling of authenticity to the rest of the film, thus ensuring the audience will see the film’s events as nothing less than factual.
However, Moore also uses vintage footage in an amusing fashion, such as when he comes home from a job in California. The film immediately switches to a cheesy scene from an anonymous film clip, presumably from an old Hollywood melodrama, of a son heroically coming back to his perfect hometown. Of course, this footage is meant to clash amusingly with Moore’s realization (upon coming back home) of the GM plant closings and astronomical job layoffs. There are even a few editing choices that could be argued to be non-diagetic. As Flint is just beginning to plummet into the abyss of poverty, Moore includes a shot from the town’s county fair of a donkey plummeting off a diving board, and landing with a crash in a swimming pool. It would be odd to include this shot in most documentaries (except those about diving donkeys), although Moore trusts the audience will find symbolic humor in such an image. The bleak “downfall” of Flint is seen symbolically in many other images as well, such as the collapse of numerous evicted houses and buildings. These moments also provide an amusing (if temporary) detour from the film’s tragedy.

Although this film is an expression of political rage, it is undeniably a work of cinematic art at its core. The editing is artistic not only in the way it observes its human subjects, but in the way it ascribes sympathetic characteristics to some of its subjects, while making others look downright evil. In a sense, the editing treats its human subjects like characters in any conventional narrative movie. There are really only four major “characters” in Roger and Me, with the exception of Moore himself, who narrates and stars in the film, all the while creating a deceptively naïve, endearingly comic persona of an “average joe” (when asked to show his credentials to a security guard, Moore pulls out his discount pass to Chuck E. Cheese). Naturally, the audience feels comfortable in identifying with Moore, and therefore allows themselves to see the rest of the film’s subjects through the eyes of his skillful editors. Each of the four “major characters” is showcased in a distinctive editing style that emphasizes the artistic nuances the filmmaker wishes to capture. These characters could even be thought of as archetypes, representing the distinctive character traits Moore wishes them to represent.

The first character can be accurately named the Ignorant Rich Celebrity. This character encompasses all of the wealthy celebrities who come to “motivate” Flint’s downtrodden citizens, without ever having much knowledge of their situation or providing any substantial help. People like President Ronald Reagan and T.V. evangelist Robert Schuller give Flint pep talks that have all the intellectual depth of a fortune cookie, while entertainers such as Bob Eubanks and Anita Bryant use their “charisma” to inspire Flint citizens (while picking up their customary paycheck). These people are usually shown in tightly edited sound bites that are meant to highlight not only their insufficient advice, but their most scatter-brained qualities. The majority of the footage with Eubanks shows nothing more than the offensive jokes he tells to off-screen cameramen (one of his “jokes” could be interpreted as both anti-Semitic and homophobic). Perhaps the most notorious of all these characters is Miss Michigan herself, Kay Loni Rae Rafco, who is seen smiling on a float in a Flint parade, while waving at the ashen-faced citizens sitting next to boarded up houses. She insists she’s “winning the crown for Flint”, yet when the film cuts to footage of her winning the “Miss America” crown, her win is made to look like nothing more than a meaningless victory for the wealthy, ignorant elitists of society.

This is precisely where the second “character” comes into play, the Sympathetic Downtrodden Citizen. Right after Rafco receives her crown, the film cuts to Deputy Fred, the Flint citizen forced to make a living by evicting people from their houses. He bangs on the door of a soon-to-be-evicted house, thus ending the artificial dreams of happiness displayed in Rafco’s scene. After the snappy, laughable footage of the celebrities, the camera lingers, usually in long takes, on the pathetic lifestyles these poor individuals are forced into after the plant closings. The audience is treated to a hysterically pathetic apology by a color analyzer who’s thrown into an identity crisis once she finds out she’s the wrong season. The camera stays on the falling face of an ex-GM worker whose praising of his new job as a prison guard is cut short by an obscenely unruly prisoner. Most memorable of all is a woman thrown into such grotesque poverty that she’s forced to sell rabbits as both pets and meat. As the camera looks on, with all the unflinching detail of a voyeur, the woman slaughters one of her rabbits while casually informing the cameraman of her method in making a rabbit coat. These long takes build a better argument for the poverty-stricken citizens than the brainless quotes of the rich celebrities, who are freely spliced between these scenes of devastation.

The third “character” of the bunch is the Clueless Rich Flint Citizen, who is often the largest target of the film’s angry humor. Whether they’re throwing a “Great Gatsby” dinner where they hire people to be human statues, or partying at the new Flint jail built to house the increasing number of local criminals, these characters are always making a gleeful mockery of the human tragedy surrounding them. In an increasingly outrageous sequence, Moore shows Flint’s deluded government spending over $100 million for tourist attractions that they hope will bring more money to Flint. At one point, Moore cuts from a silly infomercial encouraging Flint to be hospitable to tourists, to the hilarious interview a local Flint worker (when asked ‘What’s the first thing people ask you when they come to Flint?’, she responds, “Well the first question is usually, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’”). The epic tragicomedy of these efforts culminates in Moore’s deadly silent shots of the abandoned tourist attractions.

Finally, the fourth “character” of the film is also the most obvious: the Corporate Criminal. GM Chairman Roger Smith presides over the film from the very beginning like an ominous, evil force. Disgruntled former workers at GM are seen complaining directly into the camera about Smith’s greed. Although Moore includes a few news interviews with Smith, the running plotline of the film is his endless attempts to score a personal interview with the formidable GM boss. The film shows Moore being turned down so many times that the audience builds its own frustration for Moore’s predicament. And although Moore finally has one fairly inconsequential encounter with Smith at the film’s very end, the major corporate villain he focuses his cinematic energy in is GM executive Tom Kay. In protruding close-up, Kay repeatedly argues that a corporation has no responsibility to help the citizens of the town it was born in. When Moore includes a clip of Kay with a subtitle revealing the recent firing of Kay, the audience usually cheers in jubilation. By creating these criminals, Moore makes audiences feel the sweet sense of revenge.

No matter how truthful Moore’s timeline of events are, his themes are clear and true, and the editing paints each of them beautifully. Take for instance, the sequence that showcases the local parade in Flint, where lots of wealthy politicians walk down the streets smiling and waving. Moore cuts directly from this footage to a shot of two kids scraping excrement off the road at the tail end of the parade. This correlation between the two images presents Moore’s overall political and artistic statement: in corporate America, the rich soak up all the wealth and destroy anything that gets in their way, while leaving working-class citizens to clean up after their mess. This is also illustrated in Moore’s chilling shot of citizens walking down an artificial recreation of downtown Flint in the failed tourist attraction Auto World. All of these harrowing sequences eventually lead to the most masterful of them all: one in which Moore cuts between Roger Smith speaking of “the individual dignity and worth of each human being”, and a Flint family being evicted from their home on Christmas Eve. Except for the fact that these events are happening at approximately the same time, they would seem unrelated if they were seen apart. Yet Moore blends them together so brilliantly that, in the end, the line between art and politics blurs, and the audience can do nothing but sit in awe of the epic corporate greed and devastating human tragedy staring them right in the face. Like Kuleshov, Moore sticks differing cinematic images together, and leaves it up to the audience to make the connections between them.