Mandoki: Mexico’s Michael Moore?

Luis Mandoki and Mexico’s Presidential Election (WorldPress.org/OhMy News): This was a very interesting item to come across after reading recently how Mexican authorities had required the FOX Network to stop broadcasting into Mexico 24 hours before Mexicans went to the polls yesterday.

As a very informative Ray Suarez report from the PBS News Hour last week pointed out — about time those folks got out from behind the desk — the Mexicans seem to think you can legislate the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth out of the picture without prejudicing free speech rights.

Here, then, is a provocative reality-test for a timely meme: Is Luis Mandoki, director of “Who is Mr. Lopez?” — a documentary film profiling the left-wing candidate in yesterday’s election, Lopez Obrador — a Mexican Michael Moore?

In April, [Mandoki] announced the release of “Who is Mr. Lopez?,” a documentary originally planned to be a portrait of the presidential election. But P.R.I.-P.A.N. politicians wanted to edit the finished product and only the leftist P.R.D. (Party of the Democratic Revolution) gave Mandoki unrestricted freedom to follow Obrador.

He began filming in March last year during the shameful and failed impeachment when the “perredista” was mayor of Mexico City. The film’s chapters are constantly uploaded into the official campaign Web site of Obrador and its author gave the rights to allow free reproduction and distribution of both computer files and official DVDs.

Each chapter is filmed with exquisite music, a sober and coherent edition, solid arguments, documented facts, and a fine sense of humor. And the movie portrays a shaken country and a long struggle for power, so vicious, but exciting like any American election captured by the media.

As part of the promotional activities of “Mr. Lopez,” Mandoki engaged in an intense tour across several cities of the Mexican Republic.

In his press conference at the Center for the Arts, he answered several questions from reporters. Mandoki said he was charging no money for this work and is doing it just for patriotism; he even sacrificed the production of a movie called “Winged Boy” last spring.

Politics aside, ceding control — or at least appearing to do so — over your message to outsiders goes against every tenet of modern mediatic electioneering.

I love this report from OhMy News International, by the way. The writing is a bit clumsy, like your high school newspaper — probably a good but not polished ESL writer — but the event reporting on the press conference is pretty good.

There’s a shred or two of what is arguably editorializing here and there, but I’m not so bloodthirsty a standards martinet as to say you can never forgive a stray adjective here and there.

Sure, Beavis & Butthead could have blogged the press conference if they had been there. But would they have been ready to? This intrepid OhMy guy was. And would you have wanted to read that report?

About the documentary, he said it was “not a campaign instrument, is not a proselytism tool. I’m not saying who you should vote for. What is important is to know the truth; it is an invitation to thinking and from there the people can make a smart voting decision.”

When talking about threats against his life for supporting the leftist candidate, Mandoki denied them and said with modesty his contribution was too small. For his inspiration, the filmmaker credited Mexico’s primordial society well rooted to the “decades of a one-party dictatorship.” He assured that Mexicans have developed a “culture of skepticism … because for a long time we’ve been lied to, they make us promises and betray us … they stole everything … and they have shattered our hearts, so it’s hard to believe them again.”

He justified his devotion to Obrador, sometimes making exaggerated compliments about him by saying he has a “lie detector.”

“Because when I work with actors like Paul Newman I know when they are faking it; I know when they are telling me something that is not from within, truthfully.”

Regarding freedom of expression and society’s freedom to choose without coercion, he criticized the black campaign of the National Action Party against Obrador.

“The way to have a strong freedom of expression is that each and every one of us must say what we think. I can sense a lot of fear, for example, in the polls. A lot of people are scared of saying ‘I will vote for Lopez Obrador’; they hide their votes; there is still a lot of fear. But we’re going to change that when each and every one of us says what we think regardless of anything.”

What about it, then?

Michael Moore? Or The Passion?

Of course, it’s impossible to say without seeing the film.

And I guess you might argue that offering equal time to the other two principal candidates was tactical, given that PAN and the PRI were bound to refuse.

But I’ll have to look into that impeachment story and PAN-PRI media tactics, not having followed the election closely.

Suarez of PBS did note in his report that the elections commission had disallowed airing of attack ads that showed Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales and generally dusted off the old domino theory … of communist domination, that is, not the domino theory of moral nonresponsibility (ironically, a topic covered in the foregoing link to a term-paper plagiarism mill).

It would be interesting to look into how the Mexican FEC-equivalent sets the criteria and tries to insulate the commission from politics down south of the border.

Brazil has done some similar campaign reform — no paid TV time, for one thing, just free talking head spots, in prime time time-slots decided by lottery, in front of your party’s logo, which is, by law, used to help illiterate persons vote.

But some of that reform has been controversial, and in some cases even branded “totalitarian.”

I’ll never forget that Veja cover on a related subject, as I recall, with twin portraits of Lula and Stalin, on a Soviet-era red-star background.

It was like PPVing Jackass: The Movie. You just sit there cringing and laughing and saying, “No way! Noooo waaay! You can’t do that on TV! Not even on cable!”

Think Time magazine running a portrait of Bush wearing a swastika.

My point being that we are not the only nation in the world trying to figure out how to avoid that Florida ruling in that FOX News whistleblower case, which held that it is not illegal for the owners of the public airwaves to lie to the public.

I disliked Fahrenheit 9/11, personally.

I thought it made an emotional rather than a factual and pragmatic case against the war and the case for the war. Apparent conflicts of interest, I agree, are fishy — and the lovefest between Bushie and “Binky” Bandar is a regular whale, I grant you.

But you have to do the work and find out the deeds that flowed from all those Saudi deposits in U.S. banks if you want to meet credibility rather than mere plausibility standards.

I still like Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine — two important items on Neuza’s American film curriculum, though balanced with This is Spinal Tap.

But the celebrity Michael Moore just can’t do ambush interviews any more without falling into self-parody. (We saw him at a showing of something or other at the Symphony Space last year; he was hiding behind a door to keep the autograph hounds at bay.)

And I resented being ambushed by MoveOnners outside the movie theatre, too.

Why, Colin?

Because, IMHO, MoveOn broke its promise to do just that: get Congress to knock off that absurd blowjob and perjury impeachment — leave it to the ABA — and then … you know … move on.

It’s the same damn thing with the antiwar movement, as brought to you by ANSWER.

Must I really subscribe to the analysis according to which sexism, racism, the military-industrial complex, HBO, Mayor Bloomberg, meat-eating, lab animal abuse, the New Jersey Turnpike, the New Jersey Devils, Area 51, RFID, lactose-intolerance, and this particular edition of the USG’s “war on …” series are all just avatars of the same Dark Side of the Force?

Just so I can join fellow citizens for a nice afternoon stroll to chant, “This war is ill-advised and does not meet the burden of proof!”

Or something a little catchier, but that we can all agree on?

So I told the young pre-law Hare Krishnas for Howard, “You’re talking to the wrong guy. I’m a Nader man.”

Then I give ‘em the hairy eyeball. And the smug little NYU dudes and dudettes are naive enough to believe me — they look worried, even.

Didn’t even try to feed me the old Simpsons joke, when the two aliens steal the bodies of Clinton and Dole, and Homer says he’ll vote for a third-party candidate.

KANG (or was it KODOS?): “Go ahead! Throw your vote away!”

They were simply speechless.

“This Birkenstocks-wearing bearded unit is not following the script! His mixed message is not the medium! Run away!”

The youth of today: They could use some time in the Red Zone.

For more on Moore, Moorism and Moorology, see Direct Mail Campaign of the Week.