The new docs: Do they change our minds or just preach to the converted?

Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up for a few brief moments in "The Expendables" this year, but the only movie in which the California governor has played a major role since he took office in 2003 is not an action film but a tiny documentary that opened this weekend in five cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

The film, "Gerrymandering," exposes the details of a practice that allows politicians to dramatically alter the boundaries of their voting areas via redistricting as a way to either keep themselves in power or punish a rival party or politician.

It's an especially timely subject, because we have two propositions on the November ballot involving redistricting. Proposition 20 would expand the scope of 2008's Proposition 11, which put state legislative redistricting into the hands of an independent citizens commission -- a fight led by Schwarzenegger and California Common Cause leader Kathay Feng that is the focus of the film. Proposition 20 would extend citizens commission control to congressional districts as well. Opponents have sponsored Proposition 27, which would scuttle the citizens commissions and return redistricting power to the Legislature.

Why should we care? Because gerrymandering effectively disenfranchises the majority of voters. With redistricting in the hands of politicians, only one California congressional seat has changed parties in the last four elections. The film, directed by Jeff Reichert, does a marvelous job of dramatizing the excesses of the current system. In fact, the stories are often so comically outlandish that they seem plucked straight out of one of Preston Sturges’ great political satires.

We see the story of the New York assemblyman who, when he first proved a threat to an established incumbent in Brooklyn, found his district redrawn so that the street he lived on was excluded from it. In Texas, when Tom DeLay set about creating six new safe Republican congressional districts in 2004, the entire contingent of Democratic state representatives -- 53 in all -- disappeared in the dead of night, crossing the border and establishing camp at a Holiday Inn in Oklahoma in order to avoid taking a vote that would approve the new redistricting plan.

In Illinois, gerrymandering had a direct influence on the political fortunes of Barack Obama. Seen as a rising star in the Democratic party, his old state Senate district was reshaped so that it included much of the Chicago lakefront, heavily populated with wealthy white liberals, a key power base for a presidential contender.

There's nothing partisan about this documentary -- both political parties look equally craven and opportunistic. Still, it would be hard to imagine that a tiny documentary playing in a handful of theaters could possibly have any effect on a major election. But Reichert has an ace in the hole -- Stanford physicist Charles Munger Jr. (whose father is the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway). Munger had been a major supporter of Proposition 11, so when he heard about the documentary, he volunteered to help spread the word in a big way. With Munger’s financial backing, the film has been mailed out to 660,000 registered voters across the state.

"I know people just throw away most campaign mailers, but we figured that if they actually got a movie in the mail, maybe they'd watch it," said Reichert. "It's a way of going one on one with the voters and giving them something of value. Gov. Schwarzenegger has been a great spokesman for us -- he went on ['The Tonight Show with] Jay Leno' and promoted the movie, even playing a clip from it."

Still, a big question remains. Documentaries can often arouse passion and indignation. But do they change our minds or just preach to the converted?

Michael Moore's documentaries have earned a tsunami of media attention. But did they really make anyone feel differently about corporate greed or the healthcare system? Did Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," for all the attention it received, really influence the debate on global warming? The question is a pertinent one because there are a number of rabble-rousing documentaries in theaters right now, notably "Waiting for 'Superman,'" Davis Guggenheim's indictment of our public school system, and Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job," which exposes the greed and chicanery behind the global economic crisis.

Sadly, the rabid partisanship that has soiled Washington in recent years has now invaded the multiplex. With rare exception, "An Inconvenient Truth" was embraced by liberals but reviled by conservatives. The same dynamic is at work with "Inside Job." It has a sky-high 93 Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, its only two negative reviews coming from conservative critics.

It gave me pause. After all, critics and entertainment columnists rarely believe that our political biases influence our views and reviews. But did I embrace "An Inconvenient Truth" only because I live in a two-Prius household? Would I have found its argument just as riveting if I thought global warming was a lot of hooey? I recently watched a new documentary, "I Want Your Money," whose conservative filmmaker, Ray Griggs, believes President Obama is leading the country down the path to socialism. I didn't buy his argument, but would I have felt differently if I were a conservative?

So how much influence do documentaries really have? I asked Sheila Nevins, HBO's head of documentary programming, whose films have won countless Oscars and Emmys. "Documentaries don't change the world as much as nudge it in a new direction," she said. "'Waiting for 'Superman' might raise people's awareness about education in the same way that 'An Inconvenient Truth' raised our awareness about the environment, but you're not going to get someone to run out of the house and storm City Hall. You can move people, but you're usually preaching to the converted."

I suspect that more people will be able to agree on the merits of "Gerrymandering" because it preaches to the unconverted -- after all, how many of your friends can name their local congressman? Reichert agrees. "A lot of docs make you feel bad afterwards," he told me. "But if you start to understand the political process, you can make your voice heard. And if enough people speak up, we might get better results."

Comments

[Maybe It's You]

I'm looking forward to seeing the documentary, even though I sometimes feel like people in the media and elsewhere only started caring about gerrymandering when Republicans started pulling the strings.

When I was growing up, I lived in conservative West Texas, which went Republican long before the majority of the state (it was the only area of the state that voted for Goldwater over Johnson in '64, for example). The Democratically controlled Texas Legislature drew up Congressional District maps that split the Panhandle and added enough Democratic-leaning voters to make the the district go Democrat (until 1994). At one point, the 13th Congressional District covered the top half of the Panhandle and extended down Highway 287 to include parts of Denton, Texas (which is more than 400 miles away from some Panhandle towns and about 350 miles away from the largest Panhandle city - Amarillo).

I hardly ever heard about gerrymandering, even after the 1990 census which supposedly resulted in an extremely partisan electoral map.

But then the Republicans finally take both house of the Texas State Legislature, and they get to redrawing the electoral map. Suddenly there's OUTRAGE spewing all over the country. How dare these Republicans try to lessen the voting power of the other party. It's UNAMERICAN and EVIL. There should be a commission that decides these matters on a non-partisan basis.

Of course, it makes sense to use a non-partisan commission to draw and redraw electoral boundaries, and I would support such a law if it came up in my area. But, in Texas at least, it seems like the call for non-partisan map drawing only showed up when Democrats were suddenly on the wrong side of the numbers. Before then, they were perfectly happy to gerrymander their hearts out.

I know the situation is different in California since there's not been the same electoral shift from Democrat to Republican. And that's one reason why I think this documentary might be more enlightening than I might otherwise think - since it is talking about a situation in which both sides rig the game for the benefit of incumbents.

But I don't think I'll ever get the hypocrisy that so loudly reared its head in 2004 out of my mind.

[Darl]

After watching several of this type of "documentary" I have stopped paying attention to them. A documentary is supposed to be educational, giving equal unemotional coverage to all sides of an issue. These feature length political advertisements tend to be one sided. When they do present an opposing rationale, it is portrayed in a dismissive, condescending manner. There can be no coincidence that their release is timed just before an election.

[James Fulton]

Good for you, Patrick, for dealing with an issue that needed such a full airing. You say critics "rarely believe" that their political beliefs influence their reviews. I say, maybe, maybe not. But just in case, I do scan through the Rotten Tomatoes reviews to check out Kyle Smith's opinion as well as those of Roger Ebert, A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. Hey, Smith made some persuasive points about the deficiencies of "Inside Job," didn't he?

[Chris Thilk]

I think to some extent that yes, documentaries have become the feature-length equivalent of cable news pundits shouting at each other or talk radio hosts going on and on about the problems with this, that or the other thing. But that's largely, I think, what they're designed to do in most cases that involve some sort of societal ill.

For instance, docus like Hoop Dreams, the recent Waiting for Superman or even "The Civil War" find audiences on all ends of the political spectrum because they're decidedly non-political. Superman might not be the best example since both sides of the political world found things to latch on to, a testament to a well-made film, but for the most part any time you're trying to change people's minds or highlight a problem you'll wind up alienating anyone who didn't already believe in that problem.

That's why so many non-mainstream documentaries are marketed specifically to certain advocacy groups and advised to find those groups, use their mailing lists and have them help organize screenings.

So the most successful ones tend to be those that either appeal to a non-judgmental audience or those that appeal most strongly to an audience looking to have their feelings and opinions reinforced so they can point their fingers and hold it up as validation of those opinions.

[Tim Horsburgh]

This old debate AGAIN? Do we ask the same question of non-fiction books? Of paintings and sculptures that deal with real events? Of journalism?

Come on! This old, old debate is a non-debate. It's great that you are writing about documentaries: a potent, vital artform that can encompass a myriad of modes of address and subjects. Just please find a new way to engage with them, rather than rehashing this tired argument.