According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no link between vaccines and autism. As a father of two children, I don’t just believe that to be true but accept it as such. The CDC’s scientific evidence is strong enough, and both my kids have been vaccinated. They will continue to be vaccinated. It’s not a matter of majority public opinion. The data and facts are there.
That said, I’m interested in all points of view, whether well-argued or based on conjecture. I watch a ton of documentaries. I especially like those with contrarian perspectives. If most weren’t so badly made, I’d see all the films that directly respond to popular films, like An Inconsistent Truth. At Nonfics, I always recommend Netflix subscribers stream FrackNation as a double feature with GasLand.
So, I was conflicted last week when the Tribeca Film Festival was defending its decision to program Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Conspiracy as part of its line-up this Spring. And I am conflicted again now that the event has changed its mind and pulled the documentary from its schedule. Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro provided personal statements at both times. Here’s the first:
Grace and I have a child with autism, and we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined. In the 15 years since the Tribeca Film Festival was founded, I have never asked for a film to be screened or gotten involved in the programming. However this is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening Vaxxed.
And here is his comment following the decision to cancel the film’s screening:
My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for. The Festival doesn’t seek to avoid or shy away from controversy. However, we have concerns with certain things in this film that we feel prevent us from presenting it in the Festival program. We have decided to remove it from our schedule.
Not that I am or was planning to attend Tribeca, but part of me felt disappointed about the doc no longer being a part of its program. A small part. Out of curiosity more than because I believe it has a right to play there. Of course, there will eventually be an outlet for us all to see the film if we want to. Director Andrew Wakefield and producer Del Bigtree issued a statement to that effect:
To our dismay, we learned today about the Tribeca Film Festival’s decision to reverse the official selection of Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. It is our understanding that persons from an organization affiliated with the festival have made unspecified allegations against the film. We have just witnessed yet another example of the power of corporate interests censoring free speech, art, and truth. Tribeca’s action will not succeed in denying the world access to the truth behind the film Vaxxed.
Many who support the anti-vaxxer movement are of course now criticizing Tribeca for censoring Vaxxed. But there is no real suppression going on. If anything, the doc has gotten a whole lot of free publicity through this ordeal, and people will seek it out and find it alongside the various versions of Loose Change and numerous other conspiracy docs and responsive docs and other films the mainstream considers to be the work of nuts and quacks.
It’s a festival’s prerogative if they want to book a film or not. It was a shame when many denied Caveh Zahedi’s The Sheik and I in 2012 because of a misunderstanding about its potential to bring harm to its subjects, but that was their programmers’ decision and their audience’s loss. It was also unfortunate for Zahedi at the time, too, but at least the film is widely available now. It wasn’t banned from being shown in the US or anything.
Sure, the situation makes Tribeca and De Niro look bad that they couldn’t have known better before booking the film or couldn’t stand their ground in spite of the controversy. I wonder if De Niro and other officials really did suddenly sit down and actually watch the doc and decide that way. Or if a viewing even mattered, if the criticisms are more so the reason for its being pulled regardless. And some in the industry are worried this sets a precedent for any controversial film to be pulled due to backlash.
But is Vaxxed, unlike The Sheik and I, a dangerous film? Could it cause the deaths of children, as is the concern from those who complained about its selection? That is a big question. Documentary influence has always been difficult to measure. But now we’ve seen with the anti-SeaWorld feature Blackfish that docs can indeed directly change the world. And others, such as An Inconvenient Truth, have at least been significant with popular opinion.
Other documentaries throughout history can be seen as having been very dangerous for a time and then all but forgiven. Triumph of the Will is accepted as not just an important propaganda artifact but a classic of nonfiction cinema, yet it was in support of a political party and dictatorship that executed 11 million people, including six million Jews. In retrospect we can appreciate Leni Riefenstahl’s artistry in its making while still damning its content, subjects and effect, right?
We can do the same regarding America and Britain’s own war propaganda films, which are interesting for their historical and artistic value yet are still filled with racially insensitive material and which also pushed people into war without always fully communicating why. Could Vaxxed be looked at differently by the documentary community in the future, if the anti-vaxxer movement died out completely?
Again, I haven’t yet seen Vaxxed, so I can’t comment on its artistic value. But the trailer (seen above) indicates that this is not an artistic venture. It is a journalistic report (or pseudo-journalistic?) with an attempt to convince viewers of something. And that something is a lie. A lie that has led parents to not vaccinate and to put their own and others’ at risk of serious illness and death.
It is a showcase for Wakefield, who also appears prominently in the film, and he’s credited with the origin of the hoax regarding vaccinations and autism via a disproven 1998 paper that led to him losing his medical license. If it was merely an outlet through which we could listen to him try to explain himself, that could be as fascinating as other docs providing a voice to serial killers, imposters, embezzlers, Indonesian death squad leaders and the US Secretary of Defense.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as altogether skeptical and curious as I am. Many do watch such films as Unraveled, The Act of Killing and The Fog of War to try to get an understanding of heinous real-life villains, but most of them are made for that purpose, with varied levels of defense or sympathy or lack thereof. Wakefield isn’t trying to get us to understand his point of view. He’s trying to get us to accept it and side with it and follow it based solely on what he shows and tells with his film.
And a lot of people will at least consider it all to be the truth. I don’t want to imply that I’m smarter than most people or that too many documentary viewers are dumb and easily duped. Conventional documentaries have long been built up as something they’re not. For the most part they are just movies, like anything else at the multiplex. Yes, they can inform, enlighten, reveal and expose, but that they can also misinform just as easily. Sorry to those filmmakers who do want their films to be the sole thing responsible for the whole truth about a certain thing, but that’s just not realistic. Documentaries should always be taken with a grain of salt, or as merely one piece of a bigger puzzle and/or discussion. Nobody should ever walk away from a film feeling totally knowledgable about its subject matter..
I would definitely watch a film on Wakefield and the history of his anti-vaxxer activism that allowed us to just see how it all unfolded. I would even watch a film that explained why people believe vaccinations cause autism. I don’t want to watch a film that just tells me it’s so, whether or not it has evidence in support of the claims. You can literally make a film claiming anything and do it well enough to make it convincing. If anything, I wish festivals like Tribeca wouldn’t accept any documentaries of the sort that Vaxxed falls into, in terms of its methods and structure.
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