This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.
Movie #38: Bowling for Columbine
Look, I know I’m solidly on the Liberal side of the political divide, and I know Michael Moore is famously so. I also know he’s often intentionally incendiary and extremist in his views, which causes a lot of people to shut him down immediately, not willing to hear what they already know will be remarks and opinions that challenge their own views. I get that. I still think his movies are valuable.
I remember seeing Bowling for Columbine the year it came out and being so utterly moved by it — by certain sections of it, anyway, because sometimes Moore makes me roll my eyes too — that I included it in these email rundowns I used to do of the Oscar nominations. I would highlight major categories and make predictions and give insight, not into just the films but into the Oscar process itself. It’s something I did for years, and even though no one really outside of my personal friends ever received or read them, I put a lot of effort and thought into them, and I sold this movie hard, strongly encouraging all of my friends to seek it out and watch it, regardless of their views.
I’d get feedback here and there on those emails over the years. My mother, for example, thought they were great and that I should be the next … whoever it is that talks about those things professionally. Most people, I assumed, ignored them completely, just as I know for a fact most of the people I send these My Movie Shelf links to ignore them completely. (Eh, I’ll probably live.) That year, though, I got a response from a friend of mine who I suspected, though never confirmed, had a very pro-gun husband and was probably pro-gun herself (either on her own or through his influence). I could tell she was kind of pushing back against my praise for the ideals of the film, but she very diplomatically simply asked me what I liked about it. In a nutshell, it’s the message — not that guns are bad or should be banned or whatever, but that we as Americans have a very complex relationship (and fascination) with guns, violence and fear. And there are no clear answers as to why.
There’s no denying that all of Moore’s films have an obvious agenda. He’s not out to objectively document both sides of an issue; his films are just as edited and framed and given a producer’s slant as your typical season of Survivor. Just like Jeff Probst, Michael Moore has his favorites in the game and he angles questions and situations to make those people look favorable and perhaps even give them an advantage. Of course he does. If Charlton Heston had been a vocal leader of an anti-gun group, it’s doubtful Moore would’ve ambushed him at his house. Or tried to conduct a guerilla interview through the open door of a minivan, as he did with Dick Clark. Everything that’s filmed is technically real; it actually happens, but there is most assuredly context that is left out on both sides to present the argument Moore wants. The thing is, though, this is Moore’s intent. He’s trying to sell a point of view — not simply to document his subjects and let the chips fall where they may, allowing conclusions to arise naturally — and he uses his fearlessness and his willingness to keep pushing the envelope and his affinity for challenging people’s logic with the absurd to highlight that point of view. In this way, he’s incredibly skilled.
Who doesn’t recognize, for example, the insanity of handing out guns at a bank? The bank workers, obviously, but Moore presents it in such a way that it’s almost laughable, it’s so bizarre. And who doesn’t find it disturbing to watch the security footage from Columbine or to hear the 911 call from Buell Elementary in Flint? Who doesn’t find it uncomfortable when a politician or a corporate PR person is caught between logic and the company line? Moore presents these situations, in all their unsettling glory, to force people to look inward and ask themselves why is that insane, why is that disturbing, why is that uncomfortable, and to question the status quo. Yes, he wants people to see things the way he does, which is maybe a little hubristic and arrogant of him, but I think the questions themselves are what’s important, whether or not you necessarily come to the same conclusions.
Bowling for Columbine isn’t just about guns and mass shootings. It touches on issues of poverty and racial strife and our historical violence as a nation. It searches for the answer to why we have so many more gun murders than other developed countries, and the answer still eludes us. The answer may always elude us, actually, but at least the movie acknowledges the fact that gun murders are a serious problem and must be addressed. It’s fifteen years after the Columbine shooting and we’re still having a hard time getting people to agree on just that little piece of the puzzle.
Even now, whenever a mass shooting occurs, NRA representatives immediately flood the airwaves and loudly proclaim their right to bear arms, as Moore highlights they did after both Columbine and Buell. Not only did they flood the airwaves then, though, they went to the towns and held loud, belligerent conventions, which in no way comes off as anything but disrespectful to the very real people who lose loved ones in these tragedies. And yet they continue to do it, and they get louder and louder each time. And each time it makes me angrier and angrier, not with the majority of American gun owners (law-abiding, responsible citizens), but with the political lobby of the NRA, more concerned with their own pocketbooks than with the well-being of our people, of our humanity.
Guns are not evil, they are not the cause of all our strife, but they are inextricably linked to it, they are an agent of it, and it’s something like Bowling for Columbine that could help, at least in part, start a conversation about our national woes.
The part of the movie that affects me most is actually only tangentially linked to guns. The mother of the 6-year-old boy who shot and killed his classmate in Buell Elementary in Flint, Michigan, was not around to teach him that guns are dangerous, or to monitor him as he got ready for school that day. She left in the wee hours of the morning every day to ride a bus 40 miles as part of the Welfare to Work program, where she would work two low-paying jobs in an affluent Auburn Hills mall, ride the bus home, and arrive late into the night. And still she didn’t make enough money to support her family or pay the rent, which is how they ended up living with her brother, where her son found the weapon he brought to school. That woman’s story is a tragedy to me, at least as much of one as that of these two little first graders — one with a ruined life, and the other with an ended one. Who’s going to address that problem?
I often joke that everything I know I learned from movies, but it’s not entirely untrue. Movies have taught me more empathy and tolerance for lives and situations different from my own more than probably anything else I’ve been exposed to. Movies have taught me compassion. Movies have shown me life outside the lens of my own perspective. I am forever grateful for that, because I believe it makes me a better person overall. So while I don’t believe people will watch this movie and see the same things I do, I do believe it’s capable of opening their eyes to things that exist outside their personal sphere.
Early on in the film, we see a clip of Chris Rock’s comedy show “Bigger & Blacker” in which Rock jokes about the need for bullet control. About how, if bullets cost $5000 each, there would be no more innocent bystanders, that people would have to get a second job and save up money before they could shoot anyone, and that anyone who did get shot must’ve really had it coming. It’s funny, sure, but it’s also not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.
When I first saw Bowling for Columbine, I remember finding the trip to Kmart pretty unfair. You bring cameras into a corporation’s headquarters and ask to speak to someone who can do something about the 9mm handgun ammunition sold in Kmart stores, you’re putting the company in a difficult spot, for one, and, for another, the decision by Kmart (the next day, when the entire local media was present) to phase out ammunition sales felt like a hollow victory. What would it change in the giant scope of things, really? However, tonight I looked at it differently. I felt such pity and compassion for these boys who had been wronged, not by Kmart directly but who still had Kmart bullets lodged in their bodies, and I realized that sometimes — especially when dealing with a monolithic corporation with dozens of levels of underlings trained to shuffle you off to the side with a promise to “note your feedback” or to recite the company policy while having neither the position nor the authority to help you at all — you have to go to the top. And you have to be persistent. And if all else fails, sometimes you have to draw public attention to your plight. Because some companies only speak in dollars, and nothing can impact dollars quite like a public relations problem. And I also felt that, even though it’s just one chain of stores, small steps make a difference. Maybe by making guns and ammunition just a little bit harder to get, fewer people will shoot other people. It makes sense to me.
Viable Option 