Helping (or hurting) Your Cause

I saw two movies in the last week or so that are great illustrations of the ways in which people seek to make change or further their cause. Those movies were Good Night and Good Luck and Grizzly Man.

The first of these, Good Night and Good Luck, was given to me as a gift a few months ago. I had postponed watching what I felt was an immensely important film to watch because I wanted to watch it with my wife. Our work schedules clash and we don't often get a chance to watch a movie together. When there is a movie of particular cultural importance, I will force her to watch it ... whether she likes it or not. :-)

With that much of a build-up, great reviews, and my own deep respect for George Clooney and his work, I was bound to end up disappointed. I am thankful to say, that I was not at all. It exceed my expectations. It was shot in black-and-white, probably to accentuate the black-and-white perspective of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

This film is an example of someone, Edward Murrow, using his position as a newscaster, in a restrained and responsible manner to focus America's attention on the anti-communist witch hunting of McCarthy and his ilk. Obviously meant to reflect a parallel with the black-and-white, us-or-them worldview of the Bush Administration, it does so obliquely, making it more effective.

Murrow did not detract from his cause because he never overstated something or resorted to name-calling. By giving McCarthy a forum to express his views and, ultimately, defeat his own cause, Murrow was the very model of responsibility and integrity. And Clooney, in the way he directed the film, did not make McCarthy into a caricature. He refrained from mocking McCarthy's well-known alcoholism or his dealings with Roy Cohn. Actual footage of McCarthy is used.

In his own way, McCarthy helped his cause early because of the methods he used. He used fear and bombast. People were afraid to disagree with him because they believed they would be labeled as traitors. For example, from Wikipedia:

The criticisms of McCarthyism and McCarthy in particular were three-fold:

• That he was ruining the reputations and lives of many people by accusing them without credible evidence.


• That he used accusations of Communist sympathies as a counter attack against anyone who criticized his methods.


• That he argued against freedom of speech; much of his rhetoric assumed that any discussion of the ideas of Communism was a dangerous and un-American activity.

Sound familiar? Ultimately, the power of the truth won out. But if there hadn't been people like Murrow, Joseph Welch, Arthur Miller, etc. questioning authority, who knows how long it would have gone. People will eventually catch on to the fact that they are being duped.


The second film, Grizzly Man, chronicles Timothy Treadwell, who for 13 summers lived among the grizzly bears of Kodiak Island in Alaska. He did this seeking to understand the bears and pass on that wisdom to others. But he also seemed to do it because he wanted to get away from the "human" world.

By using Treadwell's self-shot footage, director Werner Herzog provide an interesting insight into someone who was walking a very thin line between sanity and insanity. It's hard to question Treadwell's genuine affection for the bears and for their plight. But it's easy to question whether he was actually helping them. He didn't seem to approach his time there in a scholarly or scientific manner, recording little data. He was overly concerned with his appearance, to the point of vanity. And his outbursts against just about anybody alienated some that actually believe in his cause.

The movie is entertaining but is not meant so much as a scientific study of bears and their habitat, but rather as a character study of a man. A sad, angry, sometimes funny, but predictably doomed man who died because of his cause. But that is probably the way he would have wanted it.

Two movies. Two interesting men. Two wildly different methods. I'm not trying to advocate one method over the other. I may be very Ghandi and MLK one day, but feel Guevera and Malcolm X the next. I think what I may be trying to say more is, "Don't get in the way of your message." If a stunt, a movie, a book, etc. is more about you than it is about what you are trying to get across, then you have failed. Maybe Treadwell thought his antics would open a wider audience to the plight of the bears ... maybe it did. But when too many discussions are about his background or how unhinged he was, it's the bears that suffer. Murrow was successful because he was right but also because he sounded reasonable and was not prone to hyperbole.

So, go fight for what you believe in. But don't forget that it's not about you.