Moore, Michael (1954–)

Michael Moore is considered to be one of North America's most intelligent critics, activists, and thinkers in our days. Since his upbringing, Moore has become a sharp, intelligent, and ironic critic of his own society, political arena, and culture. He has expressed his points of view through newspaper articles, movies, documentaries, books, television shows and series, his own website, political appearances, and speeches. Thus, he has become one of the most famous activists and critics of the American society in the world.

Moore was born April 23, 1954, into an Irish American family, in Flint, Michigan, very near the U.S.-Canadian border. He grew up in a suburb called Davison, attended Davison High School, and graduated in 1972. His first act of political criticism occurred in his senior year. Moore, still in high school, decided to run for the Davidson school board, with the intention of dismissing the principal. Unlike others before, he won, becoming one of the youngest officials in the country ever elected to public office. His high school principal and vice principal both resigned.

At 22, after dropping out of University of Michigan–Flint, where he was majoring in fictional influences in literature, he founded one of the nation's most respected alternative weekly magazines, the Flint Voice, which soon changed its name to the Michigan Voice. In 1985, Moore appeared as a commentator on National Public Radio's “All Things Considered” and the following year he became the editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine. He moved to California to take this job. Soon afterward, he started the production company Dog Eat Dog Films, which had a great influence with its films Roger and Me and Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint, where Moore shows a critical overview of his hometown labor situation.

Until his movies became famous, Moore was respected as a critic but didn't have much press or a mass of followers. His rise to stardom came only when the documentary Roger and Me appeared in 1989. The plot of the film went deeply into Moore's personal history and that made it more interesting. Moore's neighbors and own family life in Flint had been for decades linked with the development of the General Motors (GM) factory. The GM plant had been the impetus of the development of the city and had built and shaped the residents' lives. Therefore, the plant had a valuable economic, symbolic, cultural, and political value for all the workers and inhabitants. Moore was educated in this GM environment, which employed his mother as a secretary and both his father and grandfather on the plant floor. Moreover, his uncle was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and had taken part in the famous Flint Sit-Down Strike. Most of his relatives, friends, and neighbors were also employed there. In the late 1970s, GM had been announcing cuts in the plants and layoffs because it was moving plants to Mexico, where workers were paid much less. Then, in the middle 1980s, GM closed the plant in Flint, leaving 12,000 employees without jobs. Moore's relatives and family were among them. This economic crisis in Flint encouraged Moore to shoot a documentary describing life in the town before and after the plant closing.

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