There’s a new film on Michael Moore, by Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine, at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival. It’s led to debate over the presence of documentarists in their own films and whether it harms what critic Geoff Pevere calls “traditional documentary values like objectivity, truth and the integrity of the subject.”

Personally, I don’t think the use of I has much to do with anything. Some columnists, for instance, such as Jeffrey Simpson, never use I, implying, I’d argue, that their private opinions are objective reality.

Others, like me, use I a lot, to diminish the weight of my own views and encourage readers to formulate theirs (I like to think). Mr. Simpson tells me: “That goes without saying.”

In traditional docs, an anonymous narration tends to impose a one-sided view of reality. Even without narration, a view will get imposed through editing, choice of interviewees, etc. The term itself, documentary, was coined by John Grierson, who created Canada’s National Film Board and called his films propaganda, in a non-pejorative sense.

Michael Moore is in the Grierson tradition. He’s always been a polemicist and propagandist. He just uses a different approach, to the same end.

Nor should he be held responsible for the burst of personal filmmaking (my Jewish wackiness, my alcoholic dad) at this year’s Hot Docs. I’d say it’s far more due to selecting subjects that are libel-proof, as demanded by broadcasters who buy the films, and to a general increase of overt ego-display as a sign of the times, even in realms like serious journalism. I’m thinking of host-anchors such as George Stroumboulopoulos or Evan Solomon on CBC. Everyone on TV has ego.

Edward R. Murrow did, Peter Mansbridge does. But their ego-needs got sieved through the news; they weren’t separate from it. Walter Cronkite’s mighty persona would not have existed without the news he intoned. Ego now floats more freely; it might do news, or reality TV (as George did) or a book show (as Evan does). What we are expected to follow is the irresistible personality, wherever it goes.

The Moore ego, I’d say, is really an issue in his politics, not his filmmaking. During the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, he told dispirited voters to keep fighting or Do I have to come down there and kick your butts myself? It was a bit grand for a democratic populist. The heaviest charge in the Melnyk-Caine film, isn’t that he actually got an interview with GM boss Roger Smith, then pretended it never happened in his film Roger & Me. It’s that he ignored the vigorous battle put up by workers of Flint against the loss of their jobs, and represented himself as the sole source of resistance. If so, it’s a betrayal not of his art, but of his politics and his class.

Lack of empathy: Stephen Harper calls prisoners handed over by Canadian forces in Afghanistan, Taliban. This is like calling Maher Arar “al-Qaeda” while he was being tortured in Syria, after being delivered there by Canadian and U.S. agencies, without trial or proof. Some prisoners interviewed by The Globe and Mail‘s Graeme Smith have been released; others were picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some say they got turned in to settle scores.

Never mind that even Taliban are protected from torture by international law. Never mind that these practices — like Abu Ghraib — have made terror a greater danger since the “war” on it began. The description reveals something about Stephen Harper: a deep lack of empathy for anyone who’s ever been accused, justly or unjustly, or caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and suffered for it.

I think voters sense this absence in him and it makes them uneasy. They’d like to give him a chance but he keeps pulling them back. I can’t recall another national leader so afflicted with this empathic deficiency. Not Paul Martin, who lost support because he was inept, though he was always sympathetic. Not even Brian Mulroney.

rick_salutin_small_24_1_1_1_1_0

Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.