POLITICS, PRO-WRESTLING STYLE

When the famous uproar erupted at Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah about an invitation for filmmaker Michael Moore to speak there in the fall of 2004, Brigham Young University film student Steven Greenstreet dropped out of school, grabbed his video camera, and proceeded to shoot as much of the kerfuffle as he could. The result is the documentary This Divided State, which illustrates some revealing things about Wasatch Front LDS culture (and inadvertently touches on some not-so-flattering realities about the American political left.)

Greenstreet is a competent director despite his limited budget and he captures well the atmosphere of hysteria teetering on farce that surrounded the event. He gets some of the weird details, like the local Republican Moore-look-and-sound-alike who made the national news, and who comments wearily, "The real world's coming here? I've been there. You don't want it."

It soon becomes apparent that most of the people involved in the event, including student government and administrators at UVSC as well as opponents of the visit, succumbed to the corruptions of celebrity culture and ceased to care about the disinterested search for truth as much as they did about the spotlight of fame. The students and faculty responsible for the visit seem not to have realized the vastness of the provocation in inviting America's foremost political extremist to the college only a couple of weeks before the election and staging in effect a campaign rally there. (Or else they just didn't care.) The opponents of the visit had an instant knee-jerk reaction to try to stop the speech from happening, which does not speak well of the appetite for disagreement in Utah County. The leader of the anti-Moore-ites came to be local conservative activist Kay Anderson, presented here as a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde figure of pure rage. Eventually, when he starts waving around a $25,000 check (to pay the school not to have Moore there) it becomes clear that a large ego has come into play and that he too has given into the vanities of appearing on camera.

When Sean Hannity is invited to speak as a counterweight to Moore's appearance, the film almost becomes impossible to watch. Seeing these two buffoons (Hannity and Moore) strut and fret on the stage, their rabid supporters trying to shout each other down, one despairs for the political discourse of the country. (Especially among Utah Mormons, who are supposed to truly value reason and civility.) The UVSC (and LDS) professor, poet, and performance artist Alex Caldiero is in full performance mode here. The effect is entertaining, but in a political context somewhat disconcerting. (In the DVD extras Caldiero and philosophy professor Dennis Potter present an idea of a politically "progressive" Mormonism that makes a lot more sense than their abrasive and polarizing appearances in the film itself.) If anyone were truly interested in a real exchange of substantive opinions about Iraq (rather than just shouting slogans at each other) the school could have invited Christopher Hitchens to speak. His brilliant commentary can be found on the generally liberal Slate (http://www.slate.com) He could have mopped the floor with Moore like he has on several different occasions, and because he has the soul of a street-fighter crossed with George Orwell, he could have put on a good show besides. But no; they had to have Hannity, the radio equivalent of Hulk Hogan.

It seems a little out of focus that This Divided State concentrates so much on the over-reaction of Utah County residents and says relatively little about Moore aside from his speech. One has to chuckle at the president of UVSC talking about the need for civility at the same time an invitation is extended to Moore, a pioneer of the "Bush=Hitler" paradigm. One wonders if you could somehow make a film about a visit of Joe McCarthy to Berkeley, CA and get away with depicting the expectable reaction of the locals as somehow outrageous or unusual.

Grade: A- for the documentary; D for the events depicted therein.

R.W. Rasband