ABSTRACT
The work of Michael Moore represents a significant shift in the style, rhetoric, and public visibility of mainstream American documentary film, a shift rooted in Moore’s signature device: awkward humor. In popularizing documentary film to an unprecedented degree in the United States, Moore’s films also had a major impact on public perceptions of what a documentary film was. Critics argued that Moore’s creative chronologies and selectively edited interviews undermined conventional ideals of objectivity, and his bumbling screen persona reconfigured expectations concerning the authoritative voice of the documentary filmmaker.
