I first saw Bowling For Columbine (a documentary by Michael Moore about gun violence in America and the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre) in a Film Studies lesson when I was a naive fourteen year old. At the time, it seemed like the answer to my prayers. I was in favour of gun control in a big way back then and still am to an extent, and here was an intelligent and entertaining film about gun violence that made a lot of good points. Then just a few months ago, during one of my usual 1AM trawls of the internet, I discovered that it’s about as truthful as Bill Clinton’s claim that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman”.
Unlike a credible documentary maker like Louis Theroux’s approach which is to observe and ask neutral questions, thus letting the audience make up their own mind about the issue, Michael Moore’s approach to making a documentary is “The facts don’t match my opinion? Oh well, I’ll just cut and edit it so it looks like I’m in the right and then just lie a lot to get the rest of the footage I need”. This is despite the fact that the definition of a documentary is “A work, such as a film or television programme, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.” With that in mind, here are five reasons why Bowling For Columbine isn’t a real documentary…
1. The Guns In A Bank Sequence
Bowling For Columbine opens with a sequence where Moore goes to bank to take advantage of one of their offers: open an account, receive a gun. Various sources including the bank itself have stated that this sequence is a wholly inaccurate depiction of what a customer would go through if they actually took the bank up on their offer. As the above copy of the advertisement shows, the gun is not free (to receive it, you have to deposit a certain amount of money into the account for a certain period of time and by receiving it, you agree to surrender all of the interest from your account until the gun is paid off), and is only one of various “Instant Interest” items available to customers. The bank itself has stated that the customer would have to fill in two sets of paperwork, one of which is the information required for a background check. The gun is then shipped to either the bank or a gun shop from a different location.
The lion’s share of the sequence is fake since acquiring a rifle from a bank is nowhere near as quick and easy as Bowling For Columbine depicts it to be. And because it’s a fake, it immediately breaches both the spirit and definition of what a documentary is. The puzzling thing about this sequence is that it doesn’t help Moore’s overall point that poverty, fear, and the US’s social climate is the reason for a high rate of gun murders, not the presence of guns. So what was the point of going through the hassle and expense of staging it?
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13 Comments
To be fair to Michael Moore, as far as I can recall, he himself views the movie as an editorial, and not a documentary. As such certain allowances can be made.
The fix is in. Enjoy!
http://www.wellaware1.com/columbine.htm
The real lie of that documentary is that it supported the official version of only two suspects being involved. But there were most definitely more:
http://www.jackbloodforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8238&view=next
First: Michael Moore is more of a journalist (and an investigative one at that) who has free reign, therefore, to manipulate the context of things to manipulate the meaning for whatever benefit. Not saying that I think it’s right, just that journalists are held to a different standard than documentarians. I personally believe that watching michael moore requires a certain amount of preexisting knowledge and interest in the topic being discussed, so that you can be smarter than him. because if you aren’t smart enough to see the manipulation then you shouldn’t watch these films. The information is frequently correct, and michael moore never hides how much his influence is on the story. it literally is always him talking, presenting something, and a full body shot, usually, for the poster of the movie. rarely do documentaries feature focus on the documentarian.
Michael Moore is no more a journalist than Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly. He offers opinion, not journalism. And none of Moore’s movies are documentaries, except in the most loose definition of the term.
“required to carry and sometimes use guns as part of their job”. Bobbies have no such requirement, and therefore less gun murders. I’m sorry, but you are not a very free-thinking person if you think police should be exempt from being counted in gun-related violence statistics. a gun is a gun, and a bullet is a bullet.
and I think you mis-understand american history as well. The polarization that led to the civil war was not “north was against slavery, south was against it”. That’s a very cartoonish way to understand history.
Jackdow – I believe the stat the author is talking about is in reference to gun-related DEATHS vs. MURDERS – big difference. I would hope that giving guns to Bobbies wouldn’t result in them going around murdering people.
I would concede that the sentence you quoted is not completely accurate – we should be clear that the duty of the (American and British) Police departments is not to kill people, but rather to serve and protect the law abiding citizens of their communities. Unfortunately, that does mean they have to shoot some bad guys from time to time. Just as you very accurately pointed out the fallacy of over-simplifying the American Civil war, we should be careful not to over-simplify all gun deaths (self-defense, police response, accidental shootings, hunting accidents, suicides, acts of war, and Murders) to the generic term “murders.”
Finally, one more point on the Civil War thing – again, I completely agree that the idea that of “North = anti-slavery, and South = Pro-slavery” is grossly simplistic, but that is almost exactly what is being taught in our public schools here in the States.
JT- I think this is one of the best articles I’ve read on this site – more please!
Very good well written article. Moore is a sensationalist.
Good article, but I wouldn’t say Louis Theroux always asks neutral questions. He’s actually a bit of a provoker. That’s why he’s hilarious.
One of the best articles I have read on this website.
I remember watching Michael Moore back in the early 90′s called TV nation.
I use to like the guy but as time went on I have found him increasingly obnoxious and now can’t stand the site of him.
He lies and sensationalizes just as much as any Fox news hack.
Moore is an Ambulance Chaser with a camera. The only person in this film that profited off of Columbine was him.
I’ll admit that my comments regarding the American Civil War were somewhat fallacious but it’s not a subject you’ll find on the history syllabus in many schools here in the UK hence my limited knowledge. Despite that, I did oversimplify considerably.
What I said about Police being required to carry and use guns was a bit ambiguous. I should have clearly stated that American Police officers are required to carry and sometime use guns whereas Police in the UK only carry firearms if they are members of specially trained groups such as Armed Response Units.
And finally, my statement about there being no connection between the NRA and KKK was a bit too broad. There’s almost definitely some people who are members of both but what I intended to say that there was no official connection between the two.