This Friday, the film Won’t Back Down will premiere in theaters nationwide. Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis, the movie is about a group of parents who feud with what are portrayed as uncaring unionized teachers. The parents, led by Gyllenhaal, succeed in enacting a “parent trigger,” a policy tool advocated for by corporate front group ALEC, that allows for a public school to be turned into to a privately-managed charter school.
But the movie is already being blasted in early reviewsAi??and many education advocates are questioning its unfair portrayal of teachers unions and dogmatic advocacy for charter schools.
But the film was never meant to be an honest portrayal of America’s education system. It is being produced and promoted by Walden Media, an entertainment company owned by right-wing billionaire Phil Anschutz. Here are a few facts you should know about Anschutz and his long history of advocacy for the far-right.
- He’s Anti-Gay:Anschutz spent $10,000 in 1992 to promote Colorado’s Proposition 2, which let private property owners discriminate against gays and lesbians. He also gave $150,000 to the Mission America Foundation, which condemns homosexuality as “deviance.”
- He’s Anti-Science:Ai??In 2003, Anschutz’s foundation gave $70,000 to the Discovery Institute, which attacks evolutionary theory and proclaims that “Darwinism is false.”
- He’s Anti-Union:Ai??His foundation has donated at least $210,000 to the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation, which works to undermine labor rights.
- He Owns Some Of The Most Influential Right-Wing Media Outlets: Anschutz owns both The Washington Examiner and The Weekly Standard, two of the most prominent right-wing tabloids and magazines that regularly demonize progressives and their beliefs.
When Americans see advertisements and other promotional material forAi??Won’t Back Down, they should know that this isn’t just another feel-good Maggie Gyllenhaal movie. It’s a highly ideological film that has been produced and promoted by one of America’s most powerful right-wing billionaires.
UPDATE: The film is getting bashed by critics, so Michelle Rhee’s organization StudentsFirst is writing astroturf reviews. Click here to read our story about this astroturf pushback.
What it is is PROPAGANDA disguised as entertainment, which is one of the most dangerous, as well as insidious, forms of propaganda. Theatres ought to refuse to show it.
I completely agree. This is nauseating that these charter schools are promoted as the best option. If society really wanted it, we could just reform the public system itself and EVERYONE would benefit. Guess the world wouldn’t want that……….. I hope this film is quickly removed from theaters.
I can’t believe, in an election year, as a life-long progressive Democrat, that I fell for this. My wife and I decided to go to a matinee for the first time in a long time and ended up going to We Won’t Back Down. There is certainly some good acting and film production work behind the film, but this does not change the fact that the film is propaganda, straight and simple. And what’s worse is that it is not truthful.
In some ways, I think the actors, writers, and directors involved in it ought to be ashamed of themselves—unless, of course, they are themselves right-wing and anti-union. I’m certainly ashamed of myself for having dropped around twenty dollars into the coffers of Walden Media, the right-wing corporation that brought us the film. This is the last time this will ever happen with me, I’ve pledged, and I have decided to give three times as much in contributions to the DNC as a result. Atonement.
Whatever the motives that explain why viewers, actors, and film workers have given their support to the film, the irony could not be more stunning. I have spent a lot of money on DVDs by progressive film makers who produce explicitly political films that expose the actions of the American Right, but here I walked in and made myself into an instant idiot. I guess I thought, despite an initial reservation or two about why a film about decaying schools would surface just at this time, that anything with one of the Gyllenhaals in it could not possibly be a piece of right-wing propaganda. Wrong again, idiot, and from here on out, I am going to have to be cautious whenever I see Maggie’s name. As for her brother—well, I’ll probably be suspicious about him, also, sadly, given the excellent messages he has conveyed over the years as an actor.
The American film industry is one of the most successful industries in the world, and it is at least ninety percent unionized. The outstanding quality we have come expect from the film industry is due to the high standards that have been developed and sustained by unions.
Then comes teachers’ unions. This film wants us to believe that unionized teachers are responsible for the decline of education in the United States, and that union officials want to sustain schools of inferior quality. This is just not so. Yes, there are some truly crappy union teachers, just as there are some truly crappy actors and directors, but the few do not set the model for the vast majority, who are able to dedicate themselves to their work. And their vision of their work calls for excellence.
You want to talk about causes? Well, how about fanatic Republican politicians refusing to fund public education? These are left out of the picture (pun intended) given by Anschutz’s Walden Media’s We Won’t Back Down. It’s interesting. It’s as though public schools have been suddenly detached from the political process and put in the hands of a small group of really disgusting opportunists who have high-ranking union jobs. This is just not so. If you don’t believe me, just ask your local principle or go to a PTA meeting. It’s just not so.
It is deeply disturbing that that Gyllenhaal and Davis sold their talents in this way; it is something like scabbing, but in another way, it is just plain professional suicide. I don’t think it is suicide just because of the political message. It is something else, something closer to the most fundamental aspects of film psychology. We love our actors. We learn to hear their voices as our own. We identify with them, dress like them, picture ourselves being them. So you end up with someone like me, a fat, balding old guy who views himself as a failure being able to get up each day and face the hardships of life because he motived, in part, by the fantasy of himself as Matt Daimon, who has everyone knows, ALWAYS speaks the essential truth and NEVER fails to march into the depths of hell and make things right.
The films are fictions. They might be “based on real life,” but they are still fictions. But when those images start flickering on the big screen, the fiction goes away, disbelief is suspended, and we trust the actors with our lives to tell the truth. They might be lying to us in the general scheme of things, as artists, but as Hemingway said, art is a matter of lying so that you can get at a deeper truth, and the deeper truth is what we expect.
But there just no way that unionized teachers can be blamed for what has happened to education in America. For one thing, if you check the statistics, it’s unionized schools that are at the top of the list in terms of creating excellent students. Here in Colorado, check out Fairview and Cherry Creek. Unionized. An putting a huge number of students each year into the National Merit Finalist categories. That is, simply, the deeper truth.
And allow me tell you something else about Anschutz. He wants to immortalize his name through things other than films, and here in Colorado, he has spent a huge amount of money to create a health education empire with his name on it. But then we all heard a few weeks ago was that a kid brought to us by the Anschutz empire was brutalized beyond belief, to the point that he flipped out an murdered a dozen people in a local movie theater. Should we blame the strict lack of unions Anschutz advocates? Those creeps who psychologically tortured that kid to the point that they turned him into a monster were definitely not unionized. No sir, not in Anschutz’s world.
But then, had those teachers (or professors) been unionized, I think they would they have done things differently. We’ll never see a movie pushing this theme, and Anschutz won’t believe it, but I think that they would have. I really do. Unions make a difference.
I wanted to tell Maggie something. You know, stop the film, respectfully request a few minutes of Maggie’s time, and talk with her. I wanted to say to her that if wants to play the parent of a dyslexic kid, she should talk with the parents of such kids and learn about how, over the past forty years, begging with the reforms of Anschutz’s good buddy Reagan, conservative politicians created things like block grants and cut programs that addressed the needs of such kids. She needs to talk with lots and lots of parents. And along with the parents, she needs to get the story from the trenches. Changing schools involves a lot more than just blaming unions.
And she should know that if parents want to reorganize a school as poorly managed as was the fictional Adams Elementary, somewhere in fictional Philadelphia, they can do so with the endorsement of many, many unionized teachers, organizers, and, yes, bureaucrats. For example, a real school might be reorganized as a “teacher-parent owned” entity, and as teacher-parent owned business, such a business could find any number of unions willing to give their full support to helping with the effort.
Yes, there are people in unions who are idiots, but those who are most prominent on the American scene—and constitute the vast majority—are not, and the first thing they are able to tell you and demonstrate is that unions are concerned with the quality of education because the quality of education is a reflection of the quality of the union. Contrary to the fiction the film introduces, unions were not formed to ensure that those who work as teachers can be cynical and bad at what they do.
I’m not in union, by the way. But I have been a teacher, and what I have seen happen in schools that are not unionized has often made me angry and depressed.
One other thing. When I was in third grade, I was in a non-unionized school. The teacher was a woman who one day forced a little girl to sit at her desk until she wet her pants. I remember this vividly. The urine was running all around my feet, running and running and running, and the little girl was crying, and I was also forbidden to get up and do anything. In the movie, we are shown a “union teacher of the year” who supposedly did what my non-union teacher did. I just don’t believe it. My kids have unionized teachers, and there’s not one of them who was not shocked by the story.
Yuch. He seems so anti anything progressive I want to look for the horns behind his power craze.
SO WHAT??? Democrats have Michael Moore, and Republicans have Phil Anschutz. I see little difference between the two. Additionally, I two question the sincerity of the teachers union. It seems to me that if a school is lucky enough to find a teacher who is ambitious, driven, accomplished, and effective, they are lucky, but because of the teachers union, their is no way to reward this teacher. At the same time, this teacher may share an office with a lazy, careless, teacher, who relies on lesson plans written years ago, and could care less if kids learn, they will simply pass them along and not give the students a second thought. TO me one of these teachers should be rewarded, and one should be canned. The teachers union ensures this does not happen, and keeps the pay of the two equal. How is this fair? Who is the union helping in this situation?
While some unions are good and essential, some get to big and powerful and lose track of their original mission.
I three (snarkyness) question somethings. Such as did you ever learn the difference between to, too and two? (I two should be I too some get to big should be some get too big) Maybe your teacher was not up to the job. Education and teacher evaluation and compensation are issues that need a good long hard look at to bring them up to date. However when one comments on that subject they need to proof read their comments if they expect those comments to be considered relevant and not just “me too” teacher bashing.
Amen Thomas!!! Careful not to stir our alphabet soup too hard…one letter becomes the same as two. Just an observation. Lol
You question the sincerity of the teacher’s union but you don’t question the sincerity of the right wing movement to gut our public schools? Do you think so called conservatives are acting out of concern for the education of our country’s kids? Also, here in California, we just shut down a chain of charter schools for mass cheating. Teachers, with no union protection, we’re being told to cheat on the tests or they would be fired immediately. They female teachers were told they had to wear high heel shoes. I don’t think you have the slightest idea what it is you are supporting. Turn off FOX and wake the f**k up.
AMEN!!!!!
Micheal Moore isnt a billionaire
Equailty is fairness, your divide tactics are capitalistic, and not a social benefit to society. A society built on inequality in terms wealth and education will only lead to Slavery-
I do agree that an evaluation system must be put into place that keeps all teachers in the system up to par with research based educational strategies and best practices for the students that year, but you must also take into account those principals that give horrible evaluations to those teachers they have a personality conflict with. these teachers are then blacklisted in these big districts, however if the principals were held accountable for appropriate hiring procedures, then there would be no reason for the union. Unions right now are working to protect public education. It is a constitutional right and would be more efficient financially if some reform occurred. Teachers don’t go into the field to be “rewarded”. Teaching itself is rewarding. I don’t want my paycheck to be dependent on my students’ test scores. What are we really preparing children for?!?!?! when was the last time you took a standardized test more than four times a year as a kindergartener… then your entire educational career was based on it. When was the last time you were taught using books that are years old, and had a teacher who was not trained as an educator?!?!?!? Charter schools do not have to hire educators. Now what do you think about this.
I for one fight to save the public schools. I wish for the day that public schools can replace all charter and private schools, to provide a well-rounded education that is not standardized test driven. We are no longer teaching children to think critically because we must “train” them to take a test…. as the businessmen of the educational system sit back and assign more tests; fire more teachers; and make financial cuts. ……. look into the Broad Institute. Wouldn’t you rather have a dedicated teacher that loves what she does, is not expecting any reward, and is able to teach the children in the best way possible? Curricular freedom? thinking outside the box? Learning to best function in the world and have a worldly view?
They showed this film at the DEMOCRATIC national convention. That is what is disturbing. Everyone knows that the republicans want private schools funded by tax money. It IS surprising to see union bashing from democrats.
It was shown at the RNC as well. I too find it disturbing.
Michael Moore is transparent about what his message is. He doesn’t mask it behind some Hollywood drama.
I four( snarky as well but the moron it’s aimed at will probably not pick up on it) question BKu’s schooling and basic intelligence.
After working as a General Building Contractor for 25 years, I was fortunate to land a teachers position for a union school district at a county jail. It took 6 months to get a credential and clear the criminal check. I also had to spend $1800 for three classes to keep my credential current. Two years later, my school district was replaced by a non union school district with no benefits and I wasn’t retained. They laid off all 20 teachers and I decided to retire. Now they want my social security.