Fragmenting American myths: ideology and counter-ideology in the documentary films of Frederick Wiseman, Louis Malle and Michael Moore

Abstract

Wiseman, Malle and Moore use the documentary genre to question tenets of the predominant American ideology, intercepting, capturing and halting its mechanisms by highlighting scenes of subversion in the context of various American institutions. Each film discussed here – High School (1968), God’s Country (1986) and Bowling for Columbine (2002) – focuses on concepts of American manufacturing and production to reveal the dangers and weaknesses of the ruling rhetoric, exposes the ‘truth’ behind the myths and provides counter-ideological alternatives to replace the myths that each film upends.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Melanie Pearce is a PhD candidate in French at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include French feature and documentary films on the wars in Algeria and Vietnam. She is currently completing a dissertation on the use of religion as a propagandist tool in French war features. She has presented and published on Godard, Schoendoerffer and Siri.

Notes

1. Apter discusses Georges Sorel’s theory regarding the importance of solidarity in politics, to ideology and to myth-maintenance in Ideology and Discontent (1964, 20):

This connection between solidarity and morality is the essence of authority, a fact well recognized by leaders of new nations. Solidarity and myth as expressed in ideology are commonly manipulated in order to supply a moral dimension to political forms. In this sense, the creation of myth, the moral solidarity of the community, and its authority are intimately linked.

2. Among the different ‘dominant ideological regions’ discussed by Althusser are ‘religious, political, juridical, or moral’ ones, an understanding of which, he says, are ‘of prime importance for the strategy and tactics of ideological struggle’ (306). In the case of American ideology as represented in the three films analyzed herein, economic factors inform the films’ arguments regarding both politics and morality.

3. See Ellul’s argument that for the effective propagandist, ‘existing opinion is not to be contradicted, but utilized’ (35), and that the target audience is thus complicit with the propagandist work (1965, 103–104).