Bowling for Columbine

[cdybedahl]

About a year after everyone else, we finally watched Bowling For Columbine. Which I had heard a lot about, of course. I've seen many, many discussion on the net about how awful and misleading and untruthful and unamerican it was. Some of them had lengthy, detailed lists of every detail in the movie that the poster found wrong. So I was, to put it mildly, curious to see it.

My immediate reaction is pretty much twofold. First, Moore raises some very good questions (questions that are becoming increasingly relevant for the non-US world, too, as the US culture spreads). Second, every last fucking point on those lists was irrelevant to what the movie was about. Bah.

I will definitely be seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 when it gets here. If nothing else so because it's one of the best titles I've ever heard.

Comments

[madralaoi.livejournal.com]

Did you like it? I thought it was a good movie.

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

On the whole, yes. I think it lost the thread a little with the bit about embarrassing K-Mart, and I wondered exactly how badly Moore detests Charlton Heston. And I wish he'd gone deeper into some issues, like the media's fearmongering (which definitely exists here as well, just compare the statistics on fear of assault rape with actual occurences of it!) and the fear of poverty provoking violence.

But overall, yes, I liked it.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Bowling for Columbine gave me the conclusion that it's not guns that are the problem, it's Americans that are the problem :).

Yes, I'm American and think that.

hugz

-L

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

While I agree that most of the many errors in the movie are irrelevant to his case, i was annoyed that he left them in. As a historian, I'm used to picking at these things, because somehow it's become my fault when errors are not pointed out.

His central thesis, about a culture of fear being engendered by media misrepresentation is what the movie is about and (unless I've missed the point completely) and his own case is no less based on misinformation, distortion, misrepresentation and lies than anybody he complains about.

The point has to be that he doesn't care about the facts and therefore we shouldn't feel obliged to take him in the least bit seriously. It's just a fun thing.

The redeeming feature is that it is a fun movie. The bank giving away guns alone is worth renting the video.