Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:50, 5 October 2006

Bowling for Columbine
IMDB 8.3/10 (44,772 votes)
Directed by	Michael Moore
Written by	Michael Moore
Produced by	Michael Moore
Starring	Michael Moore Matt Stone Charlton Heston Marilyn Manson
Distributed by	MGM Distribution Co.
Release date	October 11 2002
Running time	120 min.
Language	English
Budget	$4.3 million

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

The film won the 55th Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, and received a 13-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening at the festival.

Summary

The film's purpose is to explore what Moore suggests are the reasons and causes for the Columbine High School massacre, and other acts of violence with guns. Moore focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place, and some common public opinions and assumptions about related issues. The film looks into the nature of violence in the United States, focusing on guns as a symbol of both American freedom and its self-destruction.

In Moore's discussions with various people, including South Park co-creator Matt Stone, the National Rifle Association's president Charlton Heston, and musician Marilyn Manson, he seeks to answer the questions of why the Columbine massacre occurred, and why the United States has higher rates of violent crimes (especially crimes involving guns) than other developed nations.

Bowling

The film title originates from the early myth that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two boys responsible for the Columbine High School massacre, went bowling early that morning, at 6:00 am, before they committed the attacks at school starting at 11:18 am. However, that assertion has turned out to be a myth that originated from several testimonies of distressed witnesses who accidentally forgot that they had been absent that day. Moore suggests that it is as reasonable to blame their actions on bowling as it is to blame them on violent video games, movies, and music (during the aftermath of the shooting, many used the opportunity to denounce Marilyn Manson and The Matrix, claiming a connection between violence in the media and violence in schools).

Moore incorporates the concept of bowling in other ways as well (beyond the 6 am rumor). Ironically, a militia in Michigan uses bowling pins for their target practice. When interviewing former classmates of the two boys, Moore notes that the students took a bowling class in place of physical education. Moore notes this might have very little educational value and the girls he interviews generally agreed. The girls note how Harris and Klebold had a very introverted lifestyle and a very careless attitude towards the game and nobody thought twice about it. This calls into question the state of the school system (a fact strongly reinforced by Matt Stone). Moore asks the question of whether the school system is responding to the state of today's troubled youth or if they are simply reinforcing the concept of fear to the children and allowing the youth to wallow in this façade. Moore also interviews two young residents of Oscoda, Michigan, in a local bowling alley and in the process learns that guns are relatively easy to come by in the small town. Eric Harris spent some of his early years in Oscoda while his father was serving in the U.S. Air Force.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Early in the movie Moore links the violent behaviour of the Columbine shooters to the presence in Littleton of a large defence establishment, manufacturing rocket technology. It is implied that the presence of this, and the acceptance of instituation violence as a solution was contributory to the mindset that led to the massacre.

Climate of Fear

Moore's central theme is that the Columbine massacre is not merely a product of the easy availability of guns in the US, but also of the 'climate of fear' that he contends is engendered by American media and society. He illustrates this with news clips, each tending to indicate the prominence given to violence and crime in news reports. Interviews also illustrate the 'security-minded' attitude of US residents.

Moore attempts to contrast this with the attitude prevailing in Canada, where he states that gun ownership is at similar levels to the US. He illustrates his thesis with by visiting neighbourhoods in Canada, near the US border, where he finds front doors unlocked and much less concern over crime and security.

"What a Wonderful World" segment

In one segment of the film, Michael Moore lists a series of military, clandestine, and diplomatic actions by the United States (set to the song "What a Wonderful World" performed by Louis Armstrong). The segment is a satirical response to the comments which immediately precede it: those of a Littleton defense contractor claiming that there is no connection between the inherent violence the parents of Columbine students manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, and the violence of the Columbine students, because, he claims, the United States isn't aggressive towards other countries.

On the website accompanying the film, Moore provides additional background information.

The following is an exact transcript of the onscreen text in the Wonderful World segment:

1. 1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran. U.S. installs Shah as dictator.
2. 1954: U.S. overthrows democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians are killed.
3. 1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem.
4. 1963-1975: The Vietnam War, supported by the U.S. military, kills an est. 4 million people in Southeast Asia.
5. September 11, 1973: U.S. stages a military coup in Chile. Democratically elected president Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator General Augusto Pinochet installed. 3,000 Chileans murdered.
6. 1977: U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns were killed.
7. 1980s: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion.
8. 1981: Reagan administration trains and funds Contras. 30,000 Nicaraguans die.
9. 1982: U.S. provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.
10. 1983: The White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis.
11. 1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as de facto military leader of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3000 Panamanian civilian casualties.
12. 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.
13. 1991: U.S. enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait.
14. 1998: Clinton bombs “weapons factory” in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making aspirin.
15. 1999-date of the film: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.
16. 2000-2001: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in "aid."
17. The final instance in the montage depicts the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, with a title card adding that Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3000 people.

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 this was humanitarian aid that was sent through the UN and nongovernmental organizations, and was intended to bypass the Taliban.

In the same "What a Wonderful World" sequence Moore claims that the United States trained and gave money to Osama bin Laden's terrorist groups. However, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission concluded in chapter 2 of its final report that the United States gave bin Laden himself little or no money or training. They cite a passage from Ayman Al-Zawahiri's biography Knights Under the Prophet's Banner in which he denies accepting any money from the US. Bin Laden has also denied receiving money from the US. Large factions critical of American Foreign policy have maintained that the United States government in all probability supported and even funded bin Laden's Maktab al-Khadamat organization following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (as the MAK and the United States both opposed the Soviet presence there), though the US government and the CIA have denied this, claiming they gave aid only to Afghan fighters, not the MAK. Former support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan by the American government during this time is likewise common knowledge and widely accepted by most.

Criticism

Despite being praised by most professional film critics, Bowling for Columbine is highly controversial and has received criticism has been made by both pro-gun and anti-gun groups.

Accusations of editorialism

Critics of Moore such as National Review's Dave Kopel claim the film omits key facts while stringing together other facts to lead to a conclusion For example Kopel points to an early scene that has Moore visiting a savings bank which had advertised a complimentary firearm upon the customer's creating a bank account. Kopel argues that this sequence may lead one to believe is that it is possible to obtain a free gun immediately upon signing an application. In March 2003, John Fund reported in a Wall Street Journal diary page that the bank employee who handled Moore's account, Jan Jacobson, claimed that Moore had arranged the transaction weeks in advance, and that customers have "a week to 10 days waiting period" before collecting their guns.

However later in 2004, Moore responded to these criticisms in a posting on his website, writing,"Nothing was done out of the ordinary other than to phone ahead and ask permission to let me bring a camera..." He also states that the background check took less than 10 minutes and he was handed the rifle 5 minutes later. To back up his version of events, he posted out-takes from the documentary. The video shows Jacobson explaining the process to Moore, including that the rifles are held in the bank's vault. The footage in which an employee states that the guns are stored in the bank's vault appears in televised broadcasts of the film.

Criticism from pro-gun groups

The gun-rights lobby believes 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, Richard Bushnell claims his statistics as presented in the montage of other countries sequence are ambiguous on two counts: first, they maintain Moore's statistics are not adjusted for smaller population in other countries; further, Bushnell claims that Moore includes acts such as self-defense, which are not in uniform with US murder statistics. However, Moore's statistics are much broader category of homicide, and not murder, which are legally distinct.

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, 'Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles 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. McCollum has later clarified that the plant no longer produces missiles (the plant manufactured parts for intercontinental ballistic missiles with a nuclear warhead in the mid-1980s), but rockets used for launching satellites. Indeed, the plant was also used to take former nuclear missiles out of service, converting decommissioned Titan missiles into launch vehicles for satellites. Moore later added to his statements from the movie, to say that satellites were equally responsible as nuclear missiles for US-instigated violence, to maintain this point.

It should be noted that McCollum, in the part of the interview that is shown, does not refute Moore's statements about Lockheed's weapons manufacture, which implies Moore is attacking (and McCollum is defending) Lockheed in general, not specifically the Littleton plant. As of 2005, Lockheed was still the world's largest defense contractor by revenue, which Moore states in the film.

Moore is also criticized by Richard Bushnell 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.

Bushnell also points 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. Heston's supporters say he 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.

Another criticism of Moore has to do with his editing of several Charlton Heston speeches. He juxtaposes Columbine pictures with footage of Heston 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 the demand "Don't come here" because "we're already here". David Hardy makes the charge that this juxtaposition implies that Heston deliberately held a rally after Columbine. The NRA however cancelled all Denver events except for an annual meeting required by the group's bylaws and by New York State law. 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.

Regarding the shooting of Kayla Rolland, David Hardy also accuses Moore of misleading editing when he says "Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up in Flint, to have a big pro-gun rally." Hardy points out that Moore 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, Hardy charges, implies that Heston had the rally 48 hours after the shooting, when the full quote from the web page refers not to Heston, but to Bill Clinton appearing on The Today Show 48 hours after the shooting.

Richard Bushnell also accuses Moore of omitting facts about Kayla Rolland's shooter when he says that "no one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl". Bushnell points to reports in the Dayton Daily News and Deseret News that suggest 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.

Criticism from anti-gun groups

Moore argues that high gun ownership is not responsible for violence in America, and instead argues that there must be something about the American psyche and the media that makes the nation uniquely prone to high rates of murder and shootings. In support of his claims, Moore argues that Canadian gun ownership levels are as high as the U.S. Ben Fritz in Spinsanity considers this misleading because "Moore ignores the fact that Canada has significantly fewer handguns and a much stricter gun licensing system." The 1996 International Crime (Victim) Survey from the Canada Department of Justice found that handguns were owned by 6.02% to 16.07% of households, depending on the province (the remainder being shotguns or long guns). 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 attempts to prove this by buying some ammunition.

Criticism from liberals

The American Prospect published a piece by Garance Franke-Ruta 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."

Criticism on B-52 Display

Critics have accused Moore of misrepresenting the contents of a plaque on the B-52 bomber's display at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and of trying to equate "fighting enemy pilots and perpetrating war crimes against civilians" by showing the Vietnam War era B-52 Bomber immediately after showing footage of airplanes hitting the World Trade Center. Moore states that "...the plaque underneath it proudly proclaims that this plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve 1972..." while according to the Colorado-Mall website the plaque reads:

"Dedicated to the men and women of the Strategic Air Command who flew and maintained the B-52D throughout its 26 year history in the command. Aircraft 55,003, with over 15,000 flying hours, is one of two B-52's credited with a confirmed MIG kill during the Vietnam conflict. Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during "Linebacker II" action on Christmas eve 1972."

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. While publicising the 2004 film Team America: World Police, Stone explained that Team America depicts Moore as a suicide bomber, because of a segment that followed his interview in Bowling for Columbine. The animated segment, written by Moore and produced by FlickerLab, depicts the National Rifle Association and Ku Klux Klan as interchangeable evil organizations. Stone, and Team America co-creator Trey Parker, believe that because the segment follows Stone's interview it may lead people to think that they were involved in producing it. They also believe that the segment is animated in a similar style to the South Park cartoon that may also lead people to think they were involved in creating the cartoon. Subsequent releases attempted to distance this implication by delaying the animation until ten minutes later in the film, and correctly crediting the animation.

Awards and nominations

• 2002 Winner, 55th Anniversary Prize, Cannes Film Festival
• 2003 Winner, Cesar Award, Best Foreign Film
• 2003 Winner, International Documentary Association (IDA), - Best Documentary of All Time
• 2003 Winner, Academy Award, Best Documentary Features

Gross

With a budget of only $4,000,000, Bowling for Columbine grossed $40,000,000 worldwide, including $21,575,207 in the United States. The documentary also broke box office records internationally, becoming the highest-grossing documentary of all time in the U.K., Australia, and Austria. These records were later eclipsed by Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

References

1. Cullen, Dave (April 16, 2005). "A little unfinished business on Bowling and Columbine".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
2. "Bowling for Columbine : Library : What a Wonderful World". MichaelMoore.com.
3. Labott, Elise (2001). "U.S. gives $43 million to Afghanistan". CNN.
4. 9/11 Commission, The Foundation of the New Terrorism
5. 9/11 Commission, NOTES
6. ^ Kopel, Dave (April 4, 2003). "Bowling Truths". National Review.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
7. John Fund (March 21 2003). "Unmoored From Reality". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2006-06-26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
8. ^ Michael Moore (September 2003). "How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about "Bowling for Columbine"". Retrieved 2006-06-26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
9. Bushnell, Richard. "Violence in other Countries".
10. Moore, Michael. "Bowling For Columbine : About the Film : FAQ".
11. Bushnell, Richard. "Reprehensive Defensive, Lockheed in Littleton".
12. Defense News research. "2005 Defense News Top 100".
13. Bushnell, Richard. "A Brief History of America".
14. Bushnell, Richard. "Interview With Charlton Heston".
15. Flynn, Kevin (April 22, 1999). "NRA curtails convention". Denver Rocky Mountain News.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
16. New York State law NPC § 602 (b) (Article 6)
17. "Heston's full Denver speech". michaelmoore.com.
18. Hardy, David. "Moore's version of Heston speech vs. its transcript". hardylaw.net.
19. Moore, Michael (October 31, 2000). "Michael Moore Writes to Al Gore". zmag.org.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
20. "The Gloves Come Off, The Fight Is On". National Rifle Association. June 2000.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
21. Bushnell, Richard. "Heston Holds Another 'pro-gun' rally".
22. Bushnell, Richard. "Murder of Kayla Rolland".
23. Ben Fritz (Nov ember 19, 2002). "Viewer Beware". Spinsanity. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
24. "Firearms in Canada and Eight Other Western Countries: Selected Findings of the 1996 International Crime (Victim) Survey" Canada Firearms Centre. Accessed: 2006-06-29.
25. Garance Franke-Ruta, Moore's the Pity, The American Prospect, November 22, 2002
26. Brendan Nyhan (September 2 2003). "Moore alters "Bowling" DVD in response to criticism". Spinsanity. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
27. "B-52 Stratofortress". Colorado Mall.
28. Associated Press, ‘Team America’ takes on moviegoers, MSNBC, October 15, 2004

Further reading

• The dex.htm United Nations International Study on Firearm Regulation has country-by-country statistics about both gun ownership rates and death by firearm rates.

See also

• Moore's other documentaries Roger & Me, The Big One and Fahrenheit 9/11
• List of documentaries

External links

• Official Bowling for Columbine homepage
• Michael Moore's homepage
  • Michael Moore's defense of his film against criticisms
• html New York Times review of the film
• Bowling for Columbine at IMDb

Critical views

• "Factual errors and staged scenes in Bowling for Columbine" from spinsanity.org
• "Bowl-o-Drama" from Forbes Magazine, charges that several claims in the film are misleading
• "Bowling for Truth" by Richard Bushnell, criticism of several key scenes and arguments of the film
• "The Truth About Bowling for Columbine: Documentary or Fiction?" by David T. Hardy.
  • "A defense of Michael Moore and Bowling for Columbine". An open letter to David Hardy by Erik Möller. Published and discussed at Kuro5hin
• A Moore-style documentary that aims to show the distortion in Bowling for Columbine
• "BFC Criticisms" - seventeen criticisms of the movie

• 2002 films
• Columbine High School massacre
• Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners
• American documentary films
• Films directed by Michael Moore
• Gun politics
• Independent films
• United Artists films
• Political films
• Films about school violence