Let’s start with the positives. Fire and Fury is unquestionably well made. The editing is slick, the photography is first-class (the riot on the last day of the Camp Freedom protest at Parliament has never been more graphically captured) and the music is suitably dark and ominous.
The makers have dug deep, unearthing a wealth of damning video footage and exposing a web of connections between various malignant "influencers" and conspiracy theorists, who stand accused of poisoning the public conversation with online misinformation and toxic rhetoric.
So it showcases formidable journalistic skills. But to say it’s well made isn’t necessarily, by itself, a ringing commendation. Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi Party’s favourite film-maker, made impressive documentaries too.
As with many propaganda projects (which Fire and Fury is), the producers appear to have started out with a particular premise and set about gathering whatever information and images were necessary to substantiate it. But an equally skilled documentary maker might arguably approach the subject from the reverse direction and come up with something just as persuasive.
Here are some of my misgivings, in no particular order:
- Fire and Fury paradoxically amplifies messages that the producers tell us are a threat to democracy and national wellbeing. It provides a platform for extremist fringe activists, who I suspect will revel in the exposure. If there’s a common characteristic the main players seem to share, it’s that they are egoistical loudmouths and fantasists who are gratified by their notoriety. Fire and Fury gives them more of the oxygen they crave.
The documentary will also serve to reinforce their conviction, and that of their followers, that a corrupt mainstream media is deaf to legitimate grievances, has no interest in the truth and is determined to discredit them and suppress their messages. But more on that later.
- Because the makers set out with a preconceived objective, there’s not even a token attempt at balance, and most notably no attempt to understand what drove the Camp Freedom protesters, some of whom gave the impression of being fairly normal, conservative, middle-class New Zealanders who had never before engaged in protest activity.
It’s almost axiomatic in journalism that there are always two sides to a story, yet Fire and Fury makes no attempt to get to the bottom of whatever sense of discontent led an extraordinarily disparate group to converge spontaneously on Wellington from all over the country in an unprecedented phenomenon.
In that respect, Fire and Fury is an epic fail because it gets us no closer to comprehending what happened outside Parliament six months ago, possibly because the producers didn’t want to know. The documentary makers preferred to get the truth, or at least their version of it, from approved voices of the left-wing establishment. It goes without saying that none of these supposed authorities could possibly be suspected of having an ideological agenda of their own.
Again, this perpetuates the yawning them-and-us gap — no, lets call it a chasm — and sense of alienation that generated such ill-will towards what was seen during the occupation as an elitist, hostile media. There was no more telling image, symbolically, than that of Trevor Mallard and a group of press gallery journalists looking down on the protesters from the balcony of Parliament. It was predictably characterised as a Marie Antoinette moment.
- Crucially, Fire and Fury doesn’t ask a central question that arises repeatedly: namely, why so many people no longer trust the media. It’s more convenient to leave that particular stone unturned. Yet distrust of the media was a potent issue at Camp Freedom, as Penfold concedes when she comments: "Since they [the protesters] distrust journalists, they bypass the media entirely." She goes on to say she and her colleagues have never encountered that level of hostility anywhere in the world. Well, there’s a rather big clue, right there. Rather than sounding hard done by, Penfold might ask herself how things got to this point.
I have my own ideas about that. I believe most mainstream media in New Zealand have lost sight of what was previously their primary objective, which was to reflect society back to itself and report, as neutrally as possible, on matters of interest and concern to the communities they purported to serve. Instead, key media outlets have positioned themselves in the front line of the culture wars and put themselves at odds with their diminishing audiences by haranguing them with an ideological agenda.
To summarise: While purporting to be concerned about the potential harm done by wacko extremists, Fire and Fury drives another wedge into an already dangerously fractured society. Oh, and by the way: did I mention that it was made with funding from the Public Interest Journalism Fund?
- Karl du Fresne is a freelance journalist, blogger and former newspaper editor.
