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Meg Murphy Roger & Me Summary The documentary Roger & Me uses satire and dark humor to describe the tragic decline of Flint, Michigan after General Motors (GM) closed the various factories that previously made the city’s residents enjoy more prosperity than any other working-class community (Moore 00:01). The central plot revolves around protagonist Michael Moore and antagonist Roger Smith, the GM Chairman. Roger Smith is seen as the antagonist by the residents of Flint because one by one he slowly shut down basically all pipelines of revenue that were flowing into the city by his GM factories, thereby stripping thousands of Flint residents of their jobs and eventually putting one half of the city on government welfare (Moore 01:06). The film depicts shocking comparisons of classism in Flint as well as the city’s desperate and often ill-thought-out attempts to restore its former wealth and glory. The use of juxtaposition is strong in this film, as the audience is often presented with lavish scenes of Great Gatsby-themes parties thrown by the GM founders (Moore 00:18) who have profited off of the factory shut-downs next to working-class families in Flint getting evicted by the Sheriff’s Deputy Fred Ross (Moore 00:19). Moore explains how Flint’s violent crime rate rises as unemployment levels go up, and soon Money Magazine declares Flint, Michigan as the worst place to live in the country (Moore 01:12). The scene where Money Magazine makes its declaration is directly contrasted with shots of the wealthy members of the Flint community celebrating the opening of a state-of-the-art prison in order to hold the overflow of prisoners created by the harrowing unemployment levels. The party is held in the new prison itself and included each guest receiving their own mugshot complete with their fingerprints and the chance to stay overnight in one of the cells for $100 per couple (Moore 01:14). The party emphasizes the extreme disconnect between Flint’s elite (mostly founders of GM including people like Roger Smith) and the reality of the economic crisis happening in their own city. Moore spends a lot of time describing how the city of Flint’s leadership attempted to fix Flint’s economic crisis by promoting tourism (Moore 00:59). However, the issue is that there was nothing Flint had that would be considered a tourist attraction for average Americans. Therefore, instead of investing money back into the community of Flint, the city’s leadership spent $13 million dollars on constructing a luxury Hyatt Regency hotel (Moore 00:59) and another $100 million dollars on the construction of Autoworld, an auto-worker themed indoor amusement park

(Moore 01:01) in order to attract what they predicted to be over one hundred thousand tourists. However, this tourism plan ultimately fails, and the film portrays more and more shots of residents of Flint getting evicted by Officer Ross. The ultimate tension comes to a head on Christmas Eve (Moore 01:20) when Roger Smith throws his lavish Christmas party while we watch the final family of the film get evicted from their home. An extremely powerful dynamic is created when the visual of the family carrying their decorated Christmas tree out of their now former home is accompanied by the audio of Roger Smith delivering his annual Christmas message (Moore 01:22). Ultimately, Moore concludes that the rich are simply getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and it does not seem as though there is anything he can do about it (Moore 01:24). Therefore, Moore leaves us with an ending that mimics the often-abrupt endings we experience in life, and then provides us with some sense of closure through flashes of (often humorous) scenes during the credits, like Tom Kay, the incessant GM lobbyist, losing his job and the woman who slaughtered bunnies for a living declaring that she is going back to school to get a degree (Moore 01:26)....