DVD Review: This Divided State

In the weeks before the Presidential election of 2004, the student body of Utah Valley State College readied for a visit from Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore. From the high drama depicted in the no-budget doc This Divided State, however, you would think that the conservative, largely Mormon town of Orem, Utah was fortifying their wholesome burg against Mothra or Rodan or some other rampaging atomic menace. The panic leading up to controversy engine Moore's October 2004 appearance was jaw-dropping, from the uninformed hate speech to the bribery attempts to the death threats against the event's coordinators. First-time director Steven Greenstreet and his crew of nine videographers were fortunate to have on-the-ground access in "Family City USA" from the start of this out-of-control scat party, which, if you let certain Utahns tell it, was the Apocalypse, now.

We are fortunate to share their vantage point, even if it sometimes seems as if they may have depended too much on the film spontaneously writing itself. Taking this chance, however, may have provided them with some unintended anticlimactic irony for us all to savor. They build skillfully to The Big Event, and when the sold-out arena rally finally arrives, you can almost hear the comical wah-wah-wah of a muted trumpet punctuating the tattered talking points that pass for Moore's speech. Dude, for a $40,000 appearance fee, it would be considered good form and more than a simple courtesy to prepare a few words for the occasion. Crap, for that kind of bread, you should be channeling Twain or friggin' Bill Shakespare and making Republicans shoot themselves with their Constitutionally-protected handguns out of pure shame for ever voting for Bush the first time. Instead, Moore goes all Howard Dean and parses his predictable jib-jab with unmodulated hollering, and when he is stalling and grasping for words, you almost expect him to shout, "Party on, dudes!", Bill & Ted style, to save his ass and perpetuate what momentum he did manage. Even for Moore fans (he lost this one in 2004), watching his phoned-in, silly sock puppet theatre performance might be a bit like the disillusionment of finding out that the All-Powerful Wizard of Oz was little more than a feeble codger with a powered amp and a pyro rig.

Conservative Republicans (redundant: see redundant) will not have much to champion here, either (righteous indignation notwithstanding). In an attempt to offer a preemptive counterpoint -- or "balance" -- to Moore's anti-Bush stance, the school backpedaled and then invited TV soapboxer Sean Hannity to speak. The outspoken Fox News pundit and Hannity & Colmes star's free appearance (if you don't consider the savings-negating private jet service he insisted upon) does nothing to change the minds of blue staters, either. Like a bad stand-up comedian, Hannity routinely tosses lame, pre-fab barbs at all who dare heckle him by expressing a differing opinion. Dude, we get it - all Democrats are from Bizarro World and if we let them, they'd run the economy on hugs, pot and rainbows. At $100 large a show, though, you can afford to hire a couple renegade Simpsons writers (and a fact-checker) to punch up your routine, 'cause right now, you're out there alone pumping your tired old shtick.

While Moore and the more eloquent Hannity here prove themselves to be proselytizers who are easy to tune out (and who each bend less than pro-lifers), a person it is difficult to write off as a common fact of this red/blue life is Orem millionaire Kay Anderson. He is so threatened by Moore that he offers the school a check for $25,000 if they will cancel the appearance. His arrogance is far more vast than Moore's or Hannity's, thinking that his money can buy his community thought-free protection from Moore's insidious influence. By this thinking, I, a pale-skinned WASP, should vehemently hate Whitey after seeing Louis Farrakhan speak in 1988. It's this kind of thinking that primes people to accept crackpot theories like "telegeny", the pseudo-scientific principle often applied by White Nationalists. Telegeny suggests that a mother's DNA can actually be altered by engaging in sexual intercourse with members of another race, resulting in children years later born with characteristics of that race, despite the different genes of that child's actual father. It makes me wonder if Anderson teaches his children to not shake hands with gay people, for fear of osmotically becoming fabulous.

Greenstreet is wise to point out the Mormons settled Utah back in 1847 (after their founder, Joseph Smith, and his brother were shot and killed by an angry Illinois mob in 1844, making this kind of hysteria all the more ironic, though if Scientologists settled Salt Lake City, it would be Lronic.) Anderson routinely tags UVSC Moore supporters as "ignorant", "selfish", "evil" or "anti-American", though if we need to label anyone anything here, then I'm siding with Greenstreet, as he is obviously "anti-dumbass".

"Michael Moore hates us," a fearful Anderson says on the "Angry Man" section of the DVD's bonus features. Another segment of outtakes suggests, through a story about Anderson complaining about swear word-using hip-hop star Nelly's very loud UVSC show, that "The Moore War" is just one in what will likely be a lifetime of fights for the self-appointed community watchdog. Some of the other low points include Hannity telling the crowd, "Tell Michael Moore that he is a gutless coward for not showing up tonight," and Michael Moore having the balls to point out how the media should be true to "the public trust" and should "tell us the truth".

Greenstreet, who was raised Mormon, does not come out against Moore or Hannity, instead letting them damn each other and themselves. He neither defends his LDS upbringing, nor does he mock the LDS contingent (leaving that to Trey Parker and Matt Stone on South Park). While there is no such thing as a true documentary, something Greenstreet concedes to early on by letting animated UVSC professor Alex Caldiero rant about objectivity, Greenstreet does a fine job in capturing the mood of a noteworthy campus snafu and the far-reaching fallout that resulted.