Columbine: Bowling or Molding? Perception is Reality
The movie "Bowling for Columbine" is not in need of any more recognition or attention today, as everyone--political science major or not--has either seen the film or heard about it. It addresses the shooting massacre at Columbine High School in 1999. Michael Moore, the film's narrator and master editor, attempts to answer the inevitable questions that surface whenever a tragedy like this occurs: essentially, the "why?!"
The problems addressed in the film have two main prongs--The first: Why are the American people so trigger-happy and violent? The second is a question of objectivity. Mr. Moore is no stranger to ruffling political feathers with his revised, collective outlook on issues like this one. But he digs his own grave with the question of whether his film is rooted-in fact--or at least an honest journalistic attempt at objective integrity, or whether he just chose a tragedy like this to use as a soapbox to spread his personal political views and get rich at the same time. His film is a lot of things, but it is most certainly not the former in facts and objectivity.
Indeed, Mr. Moore's attempt at objectivity was useful at times, as he asked some thought provoking questions. Without realizing his own hypocrisy, he exposed how every politician seemed to have a different yet parallel view of what led Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to kill like they did. Unfortunately, he never focused on the mindset of either Dylan or Eric, nor did he delve too deeply in the provocations that led them to mastermind this terrible massacre. He dismissed the thought that someone could find out why they did what they did in a segue between 2 well-edited and provocative theories in his film: "We'll probably never know what caused Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to do what they did on that terrible day..."--Says who?!
The solution to every problem is internal--not external. He tried to give an answer to a personal problem--that being the plight of Klebold and Harris as social-outcasts--with a much broader revisionist view of society as a whole. That was his mistake.
Nev Pierce of the BBC said in his review of the film: "Funny, chilling and provocative, 'Bowling for Columbine' is a documentary that works as a hugely entertaining movie, as well as a double-barreled blast at American gun culture and the media." Whether or not he intended to do it, Nev Pierce laid out the essence of the problem with the film in this introduction to his review. If there is ever such a thing as objective journalism, the journalist has to be more concerned with facts, and less with opinions. The celebrity aspect comes into play here because journalists who are also celebrities must operate and make their decisions much like a politician operates and makes his/her decisions to keep their base constituency satisfied.
Just like the problems posed in the "Taking a Stand" campaign which detailed the plight of the women of India who are culturally and financially encouraged to smother their newborn babies to death if they are female, the problem with all of Michael Moore's films is one between conscience vs. ambition. The disadvantage of the objective celebrity-journalist comes into play when they have to decide which opinions to question, and which to accept. Michael Moore is, without any doubt, a celebrity. He was famous before he did "Bowling for Columbine" and had already identified himself with a certain "celebrity fan-base." One could argue that an entertainer like Moore would feel conflicted between investigating the personal histories of Dylan and Eric, or going for the fan-base, and including a broader sociological, societal perspective. He chose the latter, it seems, as he touted Canada, and many other countries, as being some sort of a safe-haven for innocence. He gave the impression that the Socialist Canadian governmental system was responsible for their lack of violence as compared to America's Capitolist system, which encourages social and financial self-reliance and competition between individuals. He cited the numbers of gun-related deaths in countries like France, Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada in a consistently descending order. Canada, supposedly, had less than 200 gun related deaths in 1998, seemingly contrasting to America's trigger-happy-tally standing tall at over 11,000 in that same year. Here, he chose to expose one statistic, while denying other crucial factors and statistics such as population differences. Canada has about 30-million people, while the U.S. has about 300-million people...Surely that puts Moore's numbers into a different, and less provocative perspective.
But if you ask any marketing major--especially one who is interested in the film industry--they'll tell you this:
factual accuracy
+
a less provocative approach = not enough sales potential to generate profits
Again, the crux here is a conflict between Michael Moore's Conscience vs. his Ambition.
History has a funny way of proving provocative opinions wrong. Recently, Kimveer Gill, a student at Dawson College in Canada, carried out another school shooting. He killed 1 person and injured at least 19 others, before he was killed himself. Jen Gerson, of the Toronto Star newspaper, wrote an article about Mr. Gill's fascination with an online video game titled "Super Columbine Massacre." The game's creator, Danny Ledonne, was touched by Michael Moore's movie, and took it upon himself to 'pass the torch' of wisdom he gained from the film out to other people. He created the game and uploaded it on the Internet in 2005 with the hope that it would serve to educate young people about the dangers of guns and violence in our society. He has been sent hate mail ever since the Dawson school shootings, but he still persists in his belief that the game he created has saved lives because it attempts to put you into the mindset of the Columbine shooters--yet his game follows Michael Moore's "collective society outlook" more than it attempts to put the player into the internal perspectives of Klebold and Harris. Whether it's logic is flawed or not is up to the individual, but the game is still available for download online.
It is always the Ambitious man who claims to know the collective cause of and solution to all of life's problems. Ambition is the tool of the powerful--not the wise. Men of conscience rarely rise to power in politics, and when they do, they have to put their conscience on the back-burner if they hope to get anything done...Jimmy Carter serves as a great example of that. As a man, he was probably the greatest the White House has ever housed--save for Lincoln--but ol' Jimmy just wasn't mean enough to be a good President. I believe that this entire "gun-control" issue is merely the tool of all ambitious political Cockroach-Taxidermists who are determined to recruit voters through fear, hate and division. We can never stop gun violence in our society because we can never keep guns out of any determined criminal's hands. If we outlawed firearms, then only Cops and outlaws would have them--which would open the floodgates of corruption. The only plausible solution to a problem like this one, in my opinion, is for the media, journalists and film-makers to be more open with society about where they stand on certain issues—especially when reporting a story that in some way conflicts with their overall outlook in politics and in their daily lives. The job of a journalist is to report the news--not interpret it. Interpretation is the duty of the viewer.
In conclusion, I ask this question: why are issues like gun-control, global warming, the Pro-Life and/or Pro-Choice stances on the abortion issue, and a multitude of other "issues" that prey upon a collective crisis of conscience always used as a platform--or soapbox, if you prefer--for a Socialist agenda?
