And imposing your own assumptions of what he wanted us to think onto the rest of us makes you a genius? :rolleyes:
And just how, pray tell, am I “imposing” anything on you? Does someone have a gun to your head, forcing you to accept my beliefs on the matter? Or is this one of those liberal things where if someone dares to tell you you’re wrong, they must be somehow “opressing” you?
Oh don’t be silly. All you’ve done is ignore my interpretation of the KKK comment in the film, and call me an idiot. You’re acting as if your view is the only possible valid one. Hardly helpful.
No, you’re the one acting as if you have the only correct interpretation and pooh-poohing anyone that might think you’re wrong. Which makes you a hypocrite as well, since you’re criticizing me for doing the same thing.
Sigh.
The whole KKK/NRA connection was made in jest as part of the animated segment called “A Short History of The United States” by cartoonists Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who were also interviewed in the movie. Only a seriously hobbled intellect would take the 1871 “connection” assertion seriously, although SOME pro-gun owners and MANY KKK members do blame and fear black men (and other more etheral bogeymen). But hey, I guess if such irony and facetiousness are ever used by liberals at face value, we must label them “deceptive, deceitful and innacurate”, right? I mean, just because the fearmongering is true doesn’t mean we have to look at any shared root causes or anything.
Jaysus.
Actually no, that’s wrong and it’s another deception on Moore’s part. He put the cartoon right after the Parker/Stone spot DELIBERATELY to make viewers think they were responsible for it, but they were NOT. Parker and Stone had no part in the creation of the deceptive cartoon and are pissed at Moore for the unspoken implication that they did.
Hmf. I hate eating crow, but imdb.com seems to bear that out that Parker and Stone didn’t do the animated segment, or even the voices, for BfC.
Fuck. I’m an animation fan and I was deceived!!
Cite for Matt Stone and Trey Parker being “pissed at Moore.”
… never mind. Google Parker + Stone + Moore and up comes a bunch of “Team America” reviews that make their beef plain. How is it that I missed that Michael Moore was the target of their disdain before now?
I think hype and misinformation tie in with the movie a little more than Moore hopes anyone would notice.
This largely depends on where you live, in my opinion. I’ve lived in Virginia and Washington State. Most of my life was spent in Northern Vriginia, and there were places I lived where you always locked te door, others where you only locked it at night, or if going out.
The place I live now, in Washington State is pretty rural, and we generally only lock the door at night, more out of habit than anything else. But I DO own guns, so don’t try anything! 
SR
Really? Where did I say I had the only correct interpretation?
Precisely. Number of people who walked out of the cinema thinking “Wow, the NRA is a covert continuation of the KKK”? Probably zero. Number of right-wingers frothing at the mouth that Moore would try to make people believe that? Many. Number of people who took it to be a tongue-in-cheek gun-nut-baiting reference which only has meaning of any kind through third-party interpretation? Many.
However, I agree that presenting the South Park pastiche in the way he did was misleading as to authorship - but does it really make any difference to the message of the film knowing the animation was by Flickerlab?
I don’t think he was mocking them; when Moore is mocking someone he’s not subtle enough for there to be room for doubt. I was actually a bit surprised by how evenhanded he was in his portrayl of the Michigan Militia. He did present a few absurdities, like the calendar with bikini-clad and gun-toting female militia members, but he also including the militia men’s own explanation for this calendar. It was meant to be a light-spirited fundraising activitity that would show the world that the militia wasn’t a bunch of grim paranoids that wanted to keep their identities secret.
When Moore asked the militia men about their jobs, their answers showed that membership was not limited to the unemployed or barely-employed, but solid blue-collar laborers and even white-collar workers. When he interviewed a miltia woman who talked about wanting to be able to protect herself and her family, she was surrounded by her small children. You may remember that the little girl was goofing around and trying to get attention, and her mother dealt with this in what struck me as a very loving and patient way without interrupting the interview. Moore made it pretty clear that these people weren’t just a bunch of nasty, violent, ignorant hicks. They were pretty ordinary.
To some extent he probably does identify with them, but he doesn’t agree with all of their beliefs. I’m sure he doesn’t agree with that one, although one might take the rest of the movie as an attempt at an explanation for why an American might come to believe that the country was so dangeous that they had to own guns.
The idea that any American failing to own a gun is “in dereliction of duty” doesn’t have much to do with the Constitutional right to bear arms. One could certainly support the latter without believing that Americans are somehow obligated to own guns. I know some Americans really do believe that, I’ve met a few and I’ve seen the same sentiments expressed on these boards, but it was still unsettling to see it on the screen. It would be easy to dismiss this as the statment of a rednecked loon in fatigues, if Moore hadn’t shown us that these people otherwise seemed pretty nice and normal. One could take the rest of BfC as an examination of some of the reasons why an ordinary American might come to believe that their country was so dangerous that anyone who didn’t own a firearm and know how to use it was behaving foolishly and irresponsibly.
No he didn’t. And I don’t mean that in some vague “How do you know what he intended” way, I mean he didn’t put the cartoon “right after the Parker/Stone spot” at all. It’s much later in the film. And the “Parker/Stone” spot wasn’t even a “Parker/Stone” spot, it was just Matt Stone. It’s very interesting how people who slam Moore for being “deliberately deceptive” have such a difficult time keeping their facts straight on the subject. Did you even see this movie?
Whoops, sorry. It’s not that I think you’re all too stupid to get the point unless I repeat it! I had some browser trouble during writing/previewing and mistakenly thought I’d edited things a bit better than I had. Apologies for any other errors I might have missed.
Just for reference the city across the lake (by bridge or tunnel) is Windsor, Ontario.
And just to be really technical, it’s a river.
So here’s my question: How could you possibly confuse the animation as being by Parker and Stone? It’s nothing like their style at all.
Thanks!
The same reason I still think of “Steamboat Willie” and “Snow White” as Disney cartoons even though they’re wildly different. I assumed that they deliberately affected a slightly different animated style, or merely lent their voices to the narration while working with a different team of animators. I definitely thought they had a hand in scripting and voicing the animated segment. I’m slightly stunned to find out they didn’t.
Having been to South Central (now “South Los Angeles”) before, I can say that the folks there keep their front doors firmly locked, even on a Sunday morning.
The final word: