Bowling for Columbine

Bowling for Columbine is a film directed by and starring Michael Moore. It won an Academy Award in the category of documentary film and has received both praise and criticism, both for the genre which it occupies (creative documentary), as well as what it claims. The film opened on October 11, 2002, and internationalized Moore's previously cultish American status.

Criticism

The film is highly controversial, and some of its critics have gone so far to call for a revocation of the Academy Award because they do not consider Bowling for Columbine a legitimate documentary. Some of the film's defenders, on the other hand, view these criticisms as symptomatic of the emotionality that characterizes the gun rights debate. Criticism has been made by both pro-gun and anti-gun groups.

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Criticism from pro-gun groups

The gun-rights lobby thinks that Moore unfairly portrayed lawful gun-owners in the USA as a violence-prone group. While few dispute that the gunshot homicide rate is higher in the US than in other countries, it has been shown that Moore's statistics as presented in the montage of other countries sequence are ambiguous http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/bowlingforcolumbine/scenes/countries.htm on two counts: first, the statistics are not adjusted for smaller population of other countries; second, most of the other countries' numbers do not include accidental deaths and shootings performed in self-defense, while the US figure does include these. Finally, it has been argued that other types of violent crime (such as assault with knives or other deadly weapons) were not mentioned, which tend to take the place of gun violence in countries where guns are not prevalent.

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In the film, Moore berates the American media for creating a culture of fear in the American public. Many of his detractors argue that his own movie is geared towards creating fear of guns and gun owners, and accuse him of hypocrisy on those grounds.

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Critics also claim that Moore makes misleading statements in the movie. For example, Moore conducted an interview with Evan McCollum, Director of Communications at a Lockheed Martin plant near Columbine, and asked him, "So you don't think our kids say to themselves, gee, dad goes off to the factory every day - he builds missiles. These are weapons of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?" McCollum responded: "I guess I don't see that specific connection because the missiles that you're talking about were built and designed to defend us from somebody else who would be aggressors against us." The comment then cuts to a montage of questionable American foreign policy decisions, with the intent to contradict McCollum's statement, and cite examples of how the United States has, in Moore's view, frequently been the aggressor nation.

Related Topics:
Evan McCollum - Lockheed Martin - Weapons of mass destruction - Foreign policy

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McCollum has later clarified that the plant he works for does not still produce missiles (the plant manufactured parts for intercontinental ballistic missiles with a nuclear warhead in the mid-1980s), but rockets used for launching satellites which Aviation Week & Space Technology describes as being used "for the rapid targeting of Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles involved in Iraqi strikes." (Cruise missiles are, of course, a potential weapon of mass destruction). Indeed, the plant was also used to take former nuclear missiles out of service, converting decommissioned Titan missiles into launch vehicles for these targeting satellites. Since the interview was conducted in the plant, and on the backdrop of these rockets, critics charge that Moore was misleading his viewers by implying (without saying so) that this particular plant still produced missiles. Some critics have also incorrectly claimed that Moore actually makes that statement. However, he does not, which is why McCollum does not balk at his statement in the interview.

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Moore is also criticized for a cartoon depicting a Ku Klux Klan member becoming the NRA and saying that the NRA was formed "the same year that the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." While supporters claim that this is satire, critics charge that this misleads the viewers into thinking that the KKK became the NRA or that the NRA was founded by former KKK members. In fact the NRA was founded by anti-Confederate, anti-KKK Union officers, and Ulysses S. Grant, who as U.S. President signed the order declaring the KKK illegal, later became the NRA's eighth president.

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Another criticism of Moore has to do with his editing of several Charlton Heston speeches. He juxtaposes Columbine pictures with footage of saying "from my cold' dead, hands" and says that Heston held a rally ten days afterwards, then shows footage of Heston saying that he is refusing demands that he "don't come here" because "we're already here". Critics charge that this juxtaposition implies that Heston deliberately held a rally after Columbine, when in fact the NRA cancelled all Denver events except for an annual meeting required by the group's bylaws that could not be cancelled. The "cold, dead, hands" remark was from a different meeting a year later, and the "we're already here" remark was edited in from a different part of the speech, while Moore edited out lines where Heston says he is cancelling the events.

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Moore is also accused of similar misleading editing later on, where he says "Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up in Flint, to have a big pro-gun rally." He does not mention that the rally was eight months afterwards rather than immediate, nor that the rally was a "get out the vote" rally done at a time when Bush, Gore, and Moore himself were at rallies. Moore also shows a web page saying "48 hours after Kayla Rolland was pronounced dead" which, critics charge, implies that Heston had the rally 48 hours after the shooting, when the full quote from the web page refers to Bill Clinton on the Today Show, not to Heston.

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Moore is also criticized for omitting facts about Kayla Rolland's shooter, saying that "no one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl" without mentioning that the boy had already been suspended once for stabbing a student with a pencil, that his father was in jail, and that his uncle (from whose house he got the gun) was a drug dealer and the gun had been stolen and exchanged for drugs.

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Critics also point to a part of the movie where Moore quotes Charlton Heston as saying that the US has a violence problem because "we had enough problems with civil rights in the beginning," implying that he and the NRA are racist. Critics point out that Heston was a strong supporter of civil rights in the 1960's and that Heston's remark most likely refers to racism being a cause of violence, not to a racist belief that blacks are the cause of violence.

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Criticism from anti-gun groups

Moore argues that high gun ownership is not the problem, but rather something about the American psyche. Gun control advocates argue that it is the higher rates of gun ownership, especially handgun ownership, that are to blame for the higher gunshot homicide rate in the US.

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In support of his claims, Moore argues that Canadian gun ownership levels are as high as the U.S. However, it has been pointed out that high gun ownership in Canada and some other countries is mainly related to hunting rifles, which are stringently regulated by the government, and mostly owned by people in small towns and rural areas. By contrast, gun deaths in the U.S. are generally related to handguns in inner cities. It is easier to legally purchase a handgun in the United States than in any other industrialized nation. In Bowling for Columbine, Moore claims that it is easy to buy guns in Canada too, and "proves" this by buying some ammunition; in reality, the purchase of a hunting rifle is well regulated in Canada, and obtaining a handgun is substantially more difficult.

Related Topics:
Canadian - Hunting rifle

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Criticism from progressives

The American Prospect published a piece criticizing the movie for ignoring the role that municipal governance plays in crime in America, and ignoring African-American urban victims of crime to focus on the unusual events of Columbine. "A decline in murders in New York City alone — from 1,927 in 1993 to 643 in 2001 — had, for example, a considerable impact on the declining national rate. Not a lot of those killers or victims were the sort of sports-hunters or militiamen Moore goes out of his way to interview and make fun of."http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2002/11/franke-ruta-g-11-22.html

Related Topics:
The American Prospect - African-American

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Canada

In addition to gun ownership, Moore's other comparisons of the United States and Canada have also been criticized. In attempting to depict Canada as a more equitable society, he describes a Toronto housing cooperative as the nearest Canadian equivalent to a "slum". In fact, Canadian cities can and do have slum-like areas; several neighbourhoods in Toronto, including Jane and Finch, Regent Park and St. James Town, are significantly less safe and clean than a housing cooperative.

Related Topics:
Toronto - Housing cooperative - Slum - Jane and Finch - Regent Park - St. James Town

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When comparing the ethnicities of Canada and the United States, Moore states that "Canada is 13% non white" and "we're pretty much the same." However, the United States population is more than 30% non-white (including all Hispanics, which comprise approximately 13% of the U.S. population, as 'non-White').

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When comparing American and Canadian television news, Moore contrasts American local 6 p.m. newscasts with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's The National, which is essentially the Canadian equivalent of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. Canadian television stations do in fact have local newscasts which closely resemble American local newscasts in their focus on crime and violence.

Related Topics:
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - The National - The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - PBS

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Media critics have also pointed out that leaving the front door unlocked is not, in fact, the norm in Toronto which Moore portrays it as being, and that at the time Moore was in Toronto, the province of Ontario had a work-for-welfare program similar to the one he blames in the film for a shooting in Michigan.

Related Topics:
Ontario - Michigan

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However, it should be noted that Toronto is a very large city with a level of ethnic diversity almost unparalleled in any other Canadian city and can generally be regarded as an exception to the rule. Most other areas of Canada do exhibit the kind of situation depicted in the film (unlocked cars and homes, or less violence oriented newscasts).

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Non-gun related criticism

Critics point to a passage saying that the US gave $245 million to "Taliban-ruled Afghanistan" (see above). Although literally correct in the sense that the US did give the aid, its placement in a list of evil acts by the US and its careful wording suggest that the US gave the aid to the Taliban, when in fact the aid was humanitarian aid that was sent through the UN and nongovernmental organizations and bypassed the Taliban.

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Criticism from Trey Parker and Matt Stone

Bowling for Columbine includes a brief interview with South Park co-creator Matt Stone, who suggests that South Park was largely inspired by Stone's childhood experiences in Littleton, Colorado. Stone presents a vision of Littleton as painfully normal, and highly intolerant of non-conformist behavior. Stone's appearance was followed by an uncredited cartoon in a style strongly reminiscent of South Park, but was not his work or that of Trey Parker. It became a point of contention between them and Moore, as they believed Moore meant to imply they had contributed to his film beyond the interview. They have said the appearance of Moore as a suicide bomber in their 2004 film ' is their sardonic response to this incident.

Related Topics:
South Park - Matt Stone - Littleton, Colorado - Trey Parker - 2004 film

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