Bowling for Columbine

We watched this, ahem, "documentary" in one of my college courses. show more

We watched this, ahem, "documentary" in one of my college courses. It was the first Michael Moore film I'd ever seen, and I've had a firm dislike of the man ever since. The way he cut scenes and organized the whole movie, it had the feel of the propaganda films made in Nazi Germany. It was ridiculous, absurd, and sometimes downright insulting. He threw out facts that were completely false, or sometimes just implied something that had absolutely no basis in reality. What I couldn't disprove with knowledge I had off the top of my head, I was able to dismiss with 30 seconds of research in my dorm room. I suppose it's America, and everyone has the right to release propaganda full of lies, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it.

Documentaries are created and edited to portray a point of view. show more

Documentaries are created and edited to portray a point of view. Their success depends on the number of paying customers. Fiction must appear plausible to be believed by the paying audience. Searching the Internet will locate a site that analyzes the Truth About Bowling for Columbine. Did Moore create scenes by splicing together separate events? Are speeches and events taken out of context? Any film makes money by telling a story.

Does America have more gun violence than other countries? Just like America has more automobile deaths than other countries. America's rate of violent death is less than France, Switzerland, and Japan, but more than Canada. Canada's crime rate was lower before 1977, when they banned handguns; now it approaches American rates. There is no mention of Mexico, Brazil, or Argentina, countries with similar colonial and revolutionary pasts. Any research will reveal these facts, which are often censored by the Media. If America was such a violent place there wouldn't be 3,000 immigrants a day who flee "gun free zones" like Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Do some Canadians leave their doors unlocked in the daytime? You can find this in many small towns in America.

Moore is saying that Americans live by a triple-threat, which is a threat directed back at us and sometimes outward. show more

Moore is saying that Americans live by a triple-threat, which is a threat directed back at us and sometimes outward. We have been de-sensitized to violence, our access to weapons is too easy, and our Media concentrates on sensational, often racist, depictions of violence, sustaining the first two areas.
Moore's research reveals that our number of murders per year is unaccountably beyond all numbers from other "first world", yet they too have been desensitized and have a media which has heavy coverage of violent events. He seems to be saying that number two - the easy access to guns (and the unpopular "waiting period") - really prime the pump.
His segment on "Welfare To Work" is ill-conceived, however. Of course, busing an individual an hour away to work seems inefficient and socially questionable, but it must be assumed that in most cases the implmentation makes geographic sense. So is Welfare better than Work? I think Michael might want to try another Documentary for that question.
Another marginal segment is with the elderly Charlton Heston, the NRA Rally Man. It is shocking that he says he did not know of the one on one shooting near the spot of a recent event. But the viewer gets the sense that the interview is more rhetorical than really interesting.
Another old guy that Moore bothers is Dick Clark, but for a much less understandable reason: seems DC has a terrible habit of hiring people who desperately need a job: he employs the Mother of the six year old boy who shot the young girl, in a tragic turn of events. Do these "Old white men" bear all or som of the blame? Are they the ones who force the child's Mother to ride a bus forty miles away from home for employment? That's like...an hour on a bus!).
Eliminating these three sections and creating *one* involving the "stand-off" situation at Columbine - in a feature segment, Moore mentions his agony in deciding if such scenes would work in the film - would have been powerful.
In the end, however, his naive, slackjawed, hackish hippie-with-the-redneck bent journalism takes a back seat to an amazing display of backbone - he guides us through his *own learning experience* - he begins the film saying that guns are too available and have been made too desireable in his country but then discovers other "first-world" countries have the same situation - he admits to the viewer that while he was looking at tragic numbers he was ignoring the basis for them (in his opinion): we seem to have been programmed to grab a gun to help settle a dispute. The viewer then joins Moore and refers back to 11,000 annual murders and asks...I wonder why I carry this thing?

I am a native Coloradan and I attened a high school very close to Columbine and a Junior High right across the street from Columbine and I noticed several blatant lies about this show more

I am a native Coloradan and I attened a high school very close to Columbine and a Junior High right across the street from Columbine and I noticed several blatant lies about this "documentary." It made it seem like Littleton was just a place where they hash out war machines leaving children to face some Lord Of The Flies like reality. It made it seem as if Lockheed Martin made the town into some kind of Hans Scorpio evil village. It's not like that at all, it is one of the few suburbs where you can see children playing in the street and if anything would be a Stepford Wives like community if put in a negative light. You don't see missles passing by on the highway like he claims, and the stuff about NORAD and the Air Force Academy affecting the way people in Littleton think is rediculous. It's over an hour and a half away and I know Colorado Springs natives that aren't even aware that those things are even there. Those things are very far removed from day-to-day life, it would be like saying that something in Los Angeles affected the children in San Diego. Southwest part of Denver is also a really liberal place; it's not the NRA gun toting wild west as it is portrayed in this.
Also there were things in there that made it seem like he was putting words in people's mouths, especially the Marylin Manson interview where it was made to seem like he was being respectful of the families and canceling his Denver performance. THAT ISN'T EVEN CLOOOOSSEEE to how it was. Kids who listened to Marylin Manson and KMFDM were taken a back by this so much that they wouldn't broadcast that they liked them because there was the inevitable witch hunt that proceeded the events. Nobody would have purchased tickets that soon, no concert promoter would TOUCH a Marylin Manson concert at that time. I've noticed in all of his documentaries he capitalizes on poor decisions made right after troubling and confusing events, waits until everyone forgets and then swoops in. In the first few days after 9/11 people were acting very irrationally, which is 100% natural given the onset confusion and hostility that comes from that. I will let anyone who didn't feel any sorrow, any hostility, and any fear cast the first stone if you disagree. You can't film drunken guys at a bachelor party and say that's the kind of people they always are. I'm also saying you can't vilify or iconize people who are simply protecting their own interests.

I was reluctant to watch this movie at first, because I thought it was only about gun control... show more

I was reluctant to watch this movie at first, because I thought it was only about gun control... which I don't necessarily believe in. It is not even about gun control, but rather shows how Americans are so violent because the media corporation keeps us afraid. We live in this state of fear, so we go out and kill people when they make us angry, in the name of religion, or defense of our families. Very, very good movie. Michael Moore is one of the most patriotic people I know of- because he actually gets involved in the welfare of our nation.