Sicko Review

Sicko Review

Michael Moore's Sicko is a powerful attack on Corporate US and its insistence on making profit by any means necessary. This time the monsters are Health Insurance Companies and its victims, middle class US citizens who can afford to have a Health Insurance and unionized working class people that were able to gain that right from their companies. In order to understand his point of view we must analyze his political beliefs and know what type of public he's addressing. From my perspective, Michael Moore is a Liberal. For me, a Liberal is a left-wing reformist: his goal is to reform capitalism. This can be done by State regulations on private companies (like environmental) or the State taking control of indispensable services like education and health in order to provide these services on a non-profit base. That's why he presented countries labeled as Social Democracies like Canada, France and England. His classic sarcasm was pretty good while comparing this countries with the US, but still you can sense his conservatism, hopefully for the public his trying to address, when he pointed out that high middle class doctor in England that could afford a BMW.

My big and happy surprise was the way he presented Cuba with a total support of one of the greatest successes of the Cuban Revolution: free health care for everyone. His ironic move of bringing the US patients to the Caribbean Island to be medically treated was just great. He also pointed out how medicine in Cuba is practiced totally not for profit which means that a doctor becomes a doctor because he really wants to help people, not because he wants to become part of a higher class. The main difference between a Social Democratic country and a Revolutionary one is the people's state of mind and that is gained, not only through education, but through a radical change of the economical system as a whole. The Cuban Health Care system, among other revolutionary successes, have been overlooked world wide because of different reasons like the media blockade, Cold War propaganda, the Cuban lobby pressure and also bad propaganda among the left.

So Michael Moore was not afraid of being labeled as a "commie" among his conservative Liberal public by the way he presented Cuba and for that he ingeniously ridiculed the Cold War Anti-Socialist propaganda (Reagan's LP was my favorite). But the way he introduced the revolutionary island by stating that the Al-Kaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were getting free health care paid with tax payers money was pretty fucked up. He also presented the images shown by the US government as propaganda which portrayed the prison as a hotel. He probably forgot to show the torture rooms. So it can be said that he was being sarcastic, right? But still, his ironic sarcasm may not be detected by the conservative part of his public which can lead to more Islamophobia. My opinion is that he was just using patriotism and Islamophobia to reach this conservative public. The other thing that can be said is that he was mono graphically just talking about health care, which I totally understand when talking about other countries, but that simply don't apply to one of the most horrendous prisons and a symbol of US imperialism. Another Imperialist joke was when he presented Slovenia as an under developed country with a doctor using a saw. There's was also sexism by the way he presented Hillary Clinton as: "mmm... sexy".

Another bad thing about the movie is that, because he only focuses on middle class people, it can contribute to the myth of the middle class being squished from both sides because of the Health Care provided for low-income families.

Taking this fucked up stuff out that respond to his and his public conservative ideals, the movie was a success in terms of giving Corporate US and its State policies a slap in the face. Still my favorite is Bowling for Columbine.

Javier, CMI-Puerto Rico & Rochester IMC volunteer

* I presented a lot of topics very briefly so please comment if any questions or disagreements