Bowling for Columbine

Some of you must have watched this extremely intelligent, thought-provoking documentary. If you haven't, I strongly recommend you do.

It covers a great many issues surrounding guns and gun control in the USA, and what causes the rate of gun inflicted murder there. It examines some of the causes, or so-called causes (including Marylin Manson, poverty, fear, media portrayal, etc), and availability of weapons. Highlights include Michael Moore getting a free gun when opening a bank account (perhaps there's room for an irony there if the bank was later robbed with the free gun...), and also in getting K-mart to no longer sell ammunition.

I found this film very rewarding, and highly recommend it to all.

 

every time i see this film i'm thankful that i left that miserable paranoid country a long time ago. the best bit i thought was the 'south park style animation' it rang very true. also maralyn mansons observation that fear and consumerism are linked and therefore the government has a vested interest in keeping the population afraid were quite interesting too.
a briliant film.... has anyone read michael moores 'dude where's my country'?
cheers


julian

 

Rather good, although I can't remember anyone giving a reasonable answer as to why the citizens allow so many other citizens to be murdered by firearms each year. It would have taken most of the Michigan Militia to prise the remote From My Cold Dead Hand.

Auric

 

Well Charlton Heston didnt do much for his public profile eh!

First time i have seen it, and missed the first hour, still very much worth watching though.

Ive read 'Downsize This' and 'Stupid White men', both compeling and infuruating reading. Infuriating when you realise what goes on and how corrupt it has become.

 

A fantastic film/documentary. I've read "Stupid White Men" aswell and am looking forward to "Dude, where's my country?" when I get time.

Hillarious and depressing at the same time.

Marylin Manson was about one of the most sensible and intelligent people interviewed in the whole film, it's quite incredible the way he is demonized by so many people

The fact that Michael Moore was allowed to film and interview inside a nuclear missle factory and then that the spokesperson he interviewed couldn't see the irony of the two Columbine kids's (the school killers) fathers both working at a factory making weapons of mass destruction was mind boggling

Another quite stunning part was when he went to interview people in Canada and found that even in big cities no-one locks their front door Also didn't know that Canada has roughly the same level of gun ownership as the US but gun crime (or any crime for that matter) is almost non-existent. Seems like the US could learn a lot from its northerly neighbour...

Michael.

 

The three Canadain people (mid 20s?) interviewed on athe street seemed to value the human right to free medical care above that of the the right to bear arms and when coupled with a form of social security that does not unduly stigmatize the recipitent may be a cornorstones worth building upon.

Auric

 

Marylin Manson came across very well, and intelligently.

Isn't it interesting how many americans value their rights and freedoms to be different and live as they please, and yet when someone comes along who actuall IS different, they are demonised?

 

Then shot?

 

I have just watched it now after taping it last night. An excellent film, managed to get some very serious points over with a good dose of black humour. Charlton Heston certainly came across as a blinkered and racist idiot.

Tony.

PS do people in Canada really not lock their front doors?

 

Michael Moore is an interesting chap. Read the 'Bowling for Columbine' criticisms off http://www.mooreexposed.com/

At least Oliver Stone's "JFK" wasn't treated as a documentary.

(I hadn't realised that Charlton Heston had been active in the Civil Rights movement in the early 60s, http://afroamhistory.about.com/library/blphotos_march_belafonte_poitier_heston.htm )

Paul

 

Re: http://www.mooreexposed.com/

It's quite amazing the depths to which the extreme right in the US will go to sling mud at anything that criticizes them - more evidence (as if it were needed) that we should all pay attention to what Michael Moore has to say.

Michael.

 

Well he clearly has you hook line and sinker. Nevermind.

You clearly haven't read the critique of Bowling for Columbine. Moore has no defence, his rebuttal doesn't.

I did like Moore's claim that 'every fact in the film is true'. Very equivocal.

Paul

 

paul,
yes there were some parts of the film that used typical media trickery. i'm sure hestons interview was cut to show him in the worst possible light for example and moore patheticly shouting after the minivan with a star in it was pure manipulation. however as somone who has lived in one of americas most paranoid states (texas) for a good few years, much of what he was saying rang very true. some of the nicest people i met who otherwise seemed normal believed it was ok to sleep with a gun under their matress with only the safety switch seperating themsleves from oblivion. or belief that semi automatic weapons are a legitimate replacement for 4th of july fireworks when said fireworks are rained on is smething to be taken lightly. I was over there on a B1 visa which means that i had to renew it every 90 days however i could (and did) walk into a gun shop and buy over 100 dollars worth of ammunition without any id being shown. what's perhaps worse is that i could have bought any gun in the shop just by slapping my credit card and drivers license on the counter and waiting a couple of days.
Moores film is intended as entertainment with a message so he's used various tactics to elicit emotional respopnses from his viewers and to get his point across. to my mind the point was a question, why is it that an americans first reaction to a problem is to reach for a weapon?
cheers


julian

 

Err...no. Like Julian, I've also lived in the US and Moore is only confirming what I alrady knew.

I read some of it but I don't generally bother reading ultra rightwing propaganda. I'm sure Moore has a perfect rebuttal to everything on that site but it wouldn't be necessary just as it wasn't necessary for the Allies in the Gulf war to rebutt what 'Comical Ali' said

If the film wasn't a documentary I suppose Moore got the Oscar for best documentary because the academy is just a bunch of pinkos who are ruining the country?

Michael.

 

As the films been out a year now, has there been a rash of burglaries in Canada, now that the word is out that they don't lock their doors? Windsor is just a hop over the border - a nice commute for a would be burglar from Detroit

 

I'm as anti-NRA as they come, but I'm with Paul Ranson on the critique of Moore's film. Making a strong argument is okay. Misleading the viewer is not okay, whether you agree with the underlying sentiments or not.

 

I saw it at the cinema a year or two back. What sticks in my mind, was when Moore spoke to one of those seperatists who live in the wild and are involved in an Armed struggle!!

When asked why ge doesnt follow the example of Ghandi and follow a path of non violent struggle, he looked blankly and said
" I am not familar with that" The cinema just burst out laughing.

I have had a number of stays for many months due to work in the mid-west... Very eye opening. the people hardly know what day of the week it is. They walk into bars with there rifles, prop them up against the bar and start pointing them around as they get more drunk!!!!

Exit stage right!!

 

I've no understanding of the gun fetish. But a gun culture exists in places both where gun law is liberal and where it is extreme. And there's no correlation between gun law and shootings.

If michaelab wants to find out what the American Left is saying then rather than use a popular entertainment exploiting a tragedy for shallow personal ends I suggest reading http://www.nader.org

I wasn't suggesting you should. What I referred you to isn't propaganda and isn't 'right wing' although the author appears to have a soft spot for the NRA. Why are you prepared to consume ultra-leftwing propaganda as entertainment? There are many anti-Moore pages on the Internet that are done in a Moore Style and have as much credibility. I deliberately referred you to an analysis of 'Bowling for Columbine' that is obsessively sourced and referenced. And to which Moore appears to have no answer save bluster and dissembly.

To paraphrase, every lie in that film is false.

Paul

 

I've seen MOst of it before and found it interesting.

His website, imaginatively called www.michaelmoore.com is worth a look too.

 

Paul - OK, I overreacted a little. However, MM is only using techniques that the almost universally right-wing media in the US use every day. If "Bowling..." is biased and misleading it's no worse than every signle edition of Fox News (and to a lesser extent all the other news broadcasts in the US with the notable exception of National Public Radio). Since 9/11 if you so much as suggest that maybe US foreign policy was at least partly to blame for it (as a root cause, not directly of course) people start asking which Al Queda training camp you went to :inferno:

MM is merely using the same techinques as his opponents and then they cry foul - well boo hoo.

There's nothing in any of his material which is blatantly false. There may have been detail changes for the sake of entertainment etc but the big picture he paints is totally accurate. If it's all so factually incorrect then why isn't he facing 100s of defamation/libel lawsuits?

It's people like MM that make me think that there's still some hope for the US before it implodes under the weight of ultra-right wing christian fundamentalism. I just hope that Bush doesn't win the '04 election

Michael.