I think some of you hate the film because you hate the film and Moore and have worked yourselves into a stew about it.
Moore does make some good points. None of them relate to guns however. Your murder rate is high. Nothing necessarily to do with guns.
I wrote the following a while back but never finished it, probably won't now as I haven't got a copy of the film and haven't seen it for months.
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Bowling for Columbine - provisional title
Michael Moore's film, winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary, is a touchy subject with some Americans. Moore, a Lifetime Member of the National Rifle Association, made a film perceived as 'anti-gun'. The film is the subject of many websites, some aimed at getting Moore stripped of his Oscar, some at highlighting errors and omissions, others just at attacking Moore as a fat, pompous, liberal windbag. Moore himself has replied to many of these criticisms on his own website, for some of these criticisms need answering.
A website devoted to the subject of this film can be found at
http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html. David T Hardy's website is a fascinating and indepth analysis of the film, it concentrates a good deal on the techniques and tricks used to divert and hold the viewers attention and emotions. For example, after talking about the Columbine massacre and the visit of the NRA to Denver soon after, there is a clip of Charlton Heston, President of the NRA holding a musket aloft and declaring; 'I have five words for you: from my cold, dead hands'. In his website Hardy points out several interesting things in relation to this NRA conference and this clip. Firstly, the conference had been booked much in advance and all that could be cancelled under law had been. Under American coporate law an organisation has to give its membership 10 days notice of a cancellation or a switch of venue, the Columbine massacre happened 11 days before the conference was due to begin. The NRA has four million odd members. Secondly the clip of Heston uttering those seemingly incredibly insenitive words is actually taken not from that conference, but from a conference eight months later. As a critique of the film making process this is fascinating to those of us who want to know, but that is what it is - a critique of the film making process. Moore employs nothing new, this is not the Matrix of the documentary genre, using cunning special effects and cut and paste techniques never seen before on the inherently truthful media of celluloid. Read Hardy's website for further criticisms and alleged fakery with regard to the bank scene at the beginning, the interview with Heston and the ammunition purchase in Canada.
These criticisms go on and on, especially referring to the animated middle section and its apparent attempts to link the NRA to the Klu Klux Klan. This is a sore point with the pro-gun lobby. I arrived on a discussion forum a while back and read some criticisms of this. The counter argument runs that lots of gun control is inherently racist, as the film itself discusses when it talks about disarming the black populace of America. The other line of disagreement, as stated by Hardy, discusses examples of the NRA supporting racially oppressed groups. Ulysses S. Grant whilst President of the United States was responsible for the Klan Act, legislation through which the Klan were dealt a severe blow. After his term in the Oval Office Grant was made President of the NRA. In the 1950's and 60's the NRA supported black organised NRA chapters, arming them so they could defend themselves. It is true that some white racists regard the NRA as one of their own, this view is apparently not shared by the NRA. It is unclear what Heston is talking about in the end interview when discussing America's 'ethnicity' some have accused him of racism, others assert that Heston is not referring to 'racial violence' or racial predilection to crime, but 'racist violence'. Heston was at the head of the 'arts contingent' at the 1963 civil rights 'March on Washington'.
Critics should also point out, and some do, that this is not one film. It has at least two clearly definable premises that are cut and inter-weaved to make one mazy, incoherent film. Moore discusses Columbine and Flint, he talks to Marilyn Manson, the brother of Timothy McVeigh's accomplice and pulls the stunt with K-mart and the Columbine victims in one film. In the other he interviews Heston, talks about Canada and interviews some militia men. The distinctions as to where one premise ends and another takes over are not easy to make, film makers do not shoot films necessarily in the order that they end up on your local screen. Some identify the changeover moment as near the beginning where an obviously stunned Moore is talking about the September 11th 2001 attacks, he questions what he is doing by making a film about violence with guns when an incredibly violent attack has just occurred where the only clearly identifiable weapons were box-cutters. In the chronology of the Bowling for Columbine filming this event actually occurs near the end of filming, and some have argued caused a significant change in the whole film, especially the last twenty minutes or so. One film is clearly about the proliferation of guns and the violence perpetrated with those guns, especially in the hands of America's disaffected youth and its poor children. The other film is about the culture of fear in the United States, with an emphasis on the role of the media.
This second theme is the newer, and more valid one. Moore asks of Heston: "...why is it that they [Canadians] have all these guns laying around yet they don't kill each other at the level that we kill each other."
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I've probably not covered the valid points relating to this thread in that. I do feel however that for some of you you read 'Michael Moore' and your easy stock answer is 'fat liar'. This doesn't engage the crucial points and does nothing to further your argument.