Bowling For Columbine is an AWFUL piece of propaganda (even objectively)

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
I think part of why you thought it was so bad is that you went in assuming that it was anti-gun propaganda. At which point you were looking at every scene and thinking “what? What does this have to do with being anti-gun? Haha! This movie is awful!”.

Except that it’s not anti-gun propaganda. In fact, it’s not really anti-anything. It’s (as I recall) just bringing up issues about the culture of fear and violence in America. The part that I remember being most interesting and effective was where they were just standing on a streetcorner in one of the sections of LA that is supposedly the worst and most violent. And look! No one was killing them!
[/QUOTE]

Agreed. A lot of times people who are hypersensitive to gun laws will try to find an agenda to take away guns anywhere they look. Just from the few posts here, it seems the OP may fall into that category.

[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
Even if that’s true, it makes no coherent argument. It doesn’t really explain why America supposedly has so much violence. There’s no strong evidence to support him.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think Moore indicated that he knew exactly why America has so much violence. Supposedly? Hardly. Compare our rates of violence with other similar countries. I’m not talking about 3rd world countries or cities where people are starving or under a police state. Look at Great Britain, France, Canada, Australia, etc. There’s no supposedly about it.

To me, the movie was about questioning and discussing the why, not telling you the answer. He doesn’t know the answer, nobody seems to.

22

[QUOTE=HenryGale]
I know you weren’t the first to use the word propaganda in here, but seeing it again has me thinking.

I liked the movie, but I can see where detractors who say it’s just Moore making a movie about Moore are coming from. He does seem to spend a lot of time arguing without an actual position, especially if you compare the film to his vastly superior Sicko.

But the propaganda charge I don’t get. Sure, Moore is very selective about what info he chooses to discuss (or make up), and that’s an attribute of propaganda. But what political agenda do you think he’s trying to convert people to with this film?
[/QUOTE]

Honestly?

I think he was “preaching to the choir”. I think his target audience was the subset of Americans already convinced that guns (and violence) in America is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Was there a serious attempt to sway the undecided (or any of the “opposing” point of view)?

It seems much like Ann Coulter’s books are written for right wing conservatives. Not to sway anyone on the left. (Coulter admittadely tries to be very outrageous, more so than Moore.)

23

[QUOTE=mlees]
Honestly?

I think he was “preaching to the choir”. I think his target audience was the subset of Americans already convinced that guns (and violence) in America is a problem that needs to be addressed.

[/QUOTE]

I’d have to disagree with that. Moore certainly pokes fun at (what he presents as) the ready availability of guns in the US. But, his Canada piece was clearly intended to suggest that guns, contrary to what many think, are not the problem.

Actually, I’d go one step further, and suggest that Moore examines that hypothesis: “Guns are the cause of increased violence in America,” and turns it on its’ head: “Americans are the cause of increased violence that is blamed on guns.”

(Hence the bit with Lockheed, the discussion with Manson about the Columbine kids, the montages of American violence)

But, I am interested in understanding your viewpoint, because it comes up often when this film is mentioned. What gives you the impression it’s meant as an anti-gun film?

24

[QUOTE=kelly5078]
I thought it was quite a good movie. The Charlton Heston part made me squirm (not because I’m fond of Heston; it just didn’t work),

[/QUOTE]

Apparently there was a lot of creative editing at play in many of the pieces about Heston.

25

Style and tone are everything. Depending on tone and voice inflection, the meaning of a sentence, or scene, can be changed (from an academic one, to a sarcastic one, a scathing one, etc.). How he asks a question (or sets up a scene in a film, with lighting, music undertones, the expression on his face, pieces edited out, highlighting certain reactions from various people in the area, etc.) may indicate a bias towards a particular conclusion.

Various parts of the movie stress how easy it is to get a gun in parts of the US. (For example, a free gun given by a bank for opening an account.)

While it is a valid question to examine if America’s relationship with guns as a symptom of some deeper issue, is that the actual question meant to be highlighted by the bank scene, or does the scene seem intended to illustrate a different point? Can we tell by the way the scene was edited and so forth, exactly what impression Mr. Moore was trying to leave the viewer with?

There is a part where Moore tries to get a refund from Kmart for ammo lodged in the bodies of two Columbine victims. How does this address a question on America’s violent nature?

In reviews of the film, some critics point out that Moore’s grandstanding style to be an issue. I don’t think Moore is a dummy, so his style is more than likely a deliberate one. A lot of the reviewers (including the ones that give the movie a positive review) fully admit that Mr. Moore was not objective. If he is not objective, than which axe was he grinding? What was the message?

The question of the acceptance of violence as being more acceptable or mainstream than, say, sex, in film and other aspects of American/Western life is an interesting one, but his irreverent style distracted somewhat from that examination, hasn’t it?

Why pick this style? One possible explanation is that the film was not necessarily meant to address the question, but actually to appeal to a certain target audience. (My “preaching to the choir” theory.) Another is that Mr. Moore was trying to use humor to soften the sting of a serious issue.

There is a stereotype that some gun rights advocates carry, one that feels that gun control advocates “look down” upon them (the owners), that the gun control advocates are elitist, intellectual snobs, who make party jokes about rural America. Moore’s style seemed to give credence with that stereotype, in the minds of those gun rights advocates, and detracts from the subtler question of violence in American culture. This stereotype should not really be news to Mr. Moore, either, since he is an NRA member… right? (Some of the NRA literature I have seen contains articles that capitalise on this stereotype within them.)

If Mr. Moore were attempting to start a serious debate, why alienate half the country?

26

[QUOTE=mlees]
According to IMDB ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0310793/taglines ) the tagline is “Are we a nation of gun nuts or are we just nuts?” and “One Nation Under The Gun”.

(I think taglines are taken directly from the marketing used to draw audiences to see the movie. You can see those lines in the movie poster picture to the left.)

The first tagline might be seen as addressing a greater violence-in-America question, but EMMV.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, a lot of the movie is ABOUT guns. But is Michael Moore, through the movie, endorsing specific types of anti-gun legislation? Is the message “we should pass laws so that fewer people have guns”, or anything like that? I don’t see it at all.

27

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
We are not prone to group violence, and probably less prone to social vengeance.
[/QUOTE]

Would you care to expand on that, becuase I don’t understand what you mean. That is, what do you mean by group violence? Riots at Western European soccer stadiums? Looting at blackouts? Vigilante lynch mobs?
And social vengeance? I think that by definition, a country/people that uses the DP as liberally as the U.S. can’t be said to be “less prone to social vengeance”.

Again, I don’t understand what you’re saying.

28

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
Yeah, a lot of the movie is ABOUT guns. But is Michael Moore, through the movie, endorsing specific types of anti-gun legislation? Is the message “we should pass laws so that fewer people have guns”, or anything like that? I don’t see it at all.
[/QUOTE]

Please read my post just before yours, here. I tried to explain a little more fully.

29

One element regarding the Lockheed coverage that really annoyed me was the mention of how the missiles were shipped “while the children of Littleton slept”, as though something furtive and shameful was going on. If Lockheed does have a policy of shipping at night, it’s far more likely they do so because of lighter traffic (making it easier for truck convoys to stay with their escorts, for example) rather than trying to be sneaky.

The Manson interview pretty well summed up that this was (or should have been) a documentary about a culture of fear, not guns, but there are so many pointless digressions and so much of Moore’s sad-voiced sanctimony that this message gets lost.

30

Honestly I think if this movie were just about the sensationalistic media, I would have LIKED it. Because Moore has some good points about that specific topic. It would have been great if he made a movie that was just about that, with no connection to Columbine or gun control. I think that because of the mixed messages and unstructured argument, the film fell on its ass.

31

Yeah, it ain’t Moore’s best work. Still, it was funny, and I took a certain guilty pleasure at watching him make old Charlton Heston squirm. :smiley:

32

[QUOTE=mlees]
Please read my post just before yours, here. I tried to explain a little more fully.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not totally certain I see how your post answer my post, but bear in mind that I’m not trying to claim that BFC is a flawlessly well constructed and well thought out movie. For instance, the answer to this question from you:

Might well, at least in part, be that Moore is a rabble rousing douchebag. My point, though, is that BFC isn’t trying to make a specific argument for a specific type of gun control. And thus, if you analyze how well it makes a specific argument for a specific type of gun control, it of course fails miserably.

33

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
I’m not totally certain I see how your post answer my post, but bear in mind that I’m not trying to claim that BFC is a flawlessly well constructed and well thought out movie. For instance, the answer to this question from you:

Might well, at least in part, be that Moore is a rabble rousing douchebag. My point, though, is that BFC isn’t trying to make a specific argument for a specific type of gun control. And thus, if you analyze how well it makes a specific argument for a specific type of gun control, it of course fails miserably.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think he was trying to make an argument for a specific type of gun control. I don’t recall saying he was.

[Dons tinfoil hat]But he could have been hoping to generate an argument for some kind of gun control. “What we have isn’t cutting it! We need to do something!”

He doesn’t have to answer what it is we have to do, he just needs to convince us that something needs to be done. Indeed, if he leaves that for someone else to figure out, he can make the legitimate claim that he was just trying to raise awareness, start a dialog, or whatever. But how he presents his info definately shapes the debate.[/tinfoil hat]

34

Almost all the criticisms one hears of Michael Moore tend to be flawed.

Here’s what people don’t get: he doesn’t TRY to make logical arguments from start to finish in his movies. You want such a thing? Go read a mathematics proof.

He does do what mlees is talking about, and there’s nothing tinfoil-hatty about it. He tries to convince us that something has to be done without talking about specifics. He tries to change the dialogue. He tries to present counterpoints to mainstream media IN THE SYLE that the MSM originally presented the same points. . .through blowing up instances of single, egregious cases, through hints and innuendos, etc. He did it in BFC. He did it in Fahrenheit. He did it in Roger & Me. He did it in Sicko. These aren’t films of reasoned arguments.

He is media.

He’s not above it. He’s not necessarily better than it, or more logical than it. He thinks that there are things in our culture that have been grossly overlooked, and mis-represented by the media, and makes a case the other way.

People like the OP get completely flipped out by him because he comes off as holier-than-thou. But, it’s really just an ad hominem attack. They ascribe a certain motive to the MAN, and then review the movie on those terms. But, it’s not a breakdown of the movie. Not at all.

As others said, BFC was much more about the American culture of fear, than culture of guns. He used highly publicized gun cases to get to that point. It’s just the narcissistic easily-offended nature of our gun owners (and they think liberals are thin-skinned crybabies :rolleyes: ) who thought the movie was about them.