The Year Armond White’s Historical Perspective Broke

I know very well that you don’t read Armond White’s articles to
be convinced by them, and I feel a little silly taking up my pen to
argue against something he wrote. Still, his latest piece
for National Review is bizarre even by his gloriously
strange standards, and I feel compelled, as though mesmerized by
some magickal Troll Crystal, to debate it.

It’s called “The
Year the Culture Broke.” The year in question—the time, White
tells us, that partisan division finally overtook the country, as
“no-longer-impartial media used their prominence to drive those who
disagreed into quiet but resentful enclaves”—is 2004.

No, really:

In the spring of 2004, there was the
media’s lynch-mob excommunication of Mel Gibson and his film
The Passion of the Christ, soon followed by the Cannes
Film Festival’s ordination of Michael Moore’s anti–G. W. Bush
documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. These events proved the
effectiveness of pre-release hype, furthered acquiescence to
cultural authority, and discouraged social unity. This was a moral,
aesthetic, intellectual, and political shift—a break and a
decline.

Through these two films, religion and politics—topics one had never
argued about in polite company—became the basis for categorizing
moviegoers as members of factions. Beliefs and positions calcified.
Passion became a red-state movie, and Fahrenheit
became a blue-state movie.

That turning point may also be where the canard of calling for a
“conversation” (about race, sex, violence…take your pick)
began.

I included that last sentence just to show how much recent
history White has forgotten. No, people did not start calling for
national conversations in 2004. The phrase
took off in the ’90s, most famously when Bill Clinton called
for a “national conversation
about race.”

That’s a minor point, but it underlines how much amnesia is at
work in this essay. When White finally alludes to some earlier
moments of partisan division, near the end of his article, he
treats them as a mere prelude to the Moore/Gibson face-off, though
every one of the examples he cites had a more lasting impact than
either film did:

This break in public
civility—unbridled hostility for Bush, disrespect for the office of
the presidency, ruthless personal attacks on ideological
opponents—resulted from pent-up political differences and partisan
complaint going back to Robert Bork’s dismissal, Clarence Thomas’s
Supreme Court nomination hearings, Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and
Al Gore’s concession in the 2000 presidential race.

“Pent up”? There’s nothing pent up about that series of events.
They exploded, one after the other, making a rubble of “public
civility” each time. Needless to say, it’s easy to extend the list
of rancorous battles long
before Bork. And needless to say, the parallel universe of
conservative alternative media—what White calls “quiet but
resentful enclaves,” though they’ve never been quiet in my
lifetime—existed
long before 2004. If anything, in the last 10 years it has been
unprecedentedly easier, not harder, for outsiders to hear what
those once-enclaved voices have been saying. That’s part of the
actual significance of Gibson’s film: It proved that those
alternative networks could make a movie a hit.

But what makes 2004 an especially odd place to locate the break
is that Fahrenheit and Passion, despite the hype
around them, were not irresolutely opposed. Gibson and Moore,
unlike Bush and Gore, actually admired each other. Here’s a New
York Times report from
January 2005:

Asked if he had seen Mr.
Gibson’s film, Mr. Moore lighted up.

“I saw it twice,” Mr. Moore said. “It’s a very powerful film. I’m a
practicing Catholic. My film might have been called ‘The Compassion
of the Christ,’ though. The great thing about this country is the
diversity of voices. When we limit the voices, we cease being a
free society.”

When Mr. Gibson walked to the press room lectern, he and Mr. Moore
seemed delighted to meet each other.

“I feel a strange kinship with Michael,” Mr. Gibson said. “They’re
trying to pit us against each other in the press, but it’s a
hologram. They really have got nothing to do with one another. It’s
just some kind of device, some left-right. He makes some salient
points. There was some very expert, elliptical editing going on.
However, what the hell are we doing in Iraq? No one can explain to
me in a reasonable manner that I can accept why we’re there, why we
went there, and why we’re still there.”

I suspect there was more than a little overlap between the two
films’ audiences too. Certainly much more overlap than there was
between the supporters of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.

Bonus link: In a sidebar of sorts, White
offers capsule
descriptions of 20 films that “effectively destroyed art,
social unity, and spiritual confidence.” If you ever wondered what
would happen if they asked Ed Anger to fill in for Leonard Maltin,
here’s your chance to find out.