Bowling for Columbine Produced by Charles Bishop, Jim Czarnecki, and Michael Donovan; written and directed by Michael Moore; original music by Jeff Gibbs; cinematography by Brian Danitz and Michael McDonough; edited by Kurt Engfehr; with Michael Moore, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Manson, Matt Stone andDenise Ames. Distributed by Atlantic Alliance.
by Christopher Sharrett and William Luhr Leftist filmmakers working in nonnarrative formats aren’t hard to find, but their films seldom receive mainstream distribution. Except for those by Michael Moore. He stands virtually alone, not as a filmmaker who interrogates social and corporate power, but as one able to place such films into the multiplexes of America.
Why? Two reasons come immediately to mind. The first is that his works—whether Bowling for Columbine, his first film, Roger and Me (1989), his various television shows (such as TV Nation or The Awful Truth), or his best-selling book Stupid White Men—are commonly classified not as sociopolitical criticism but as ‘comedy.’ Moore’s comedy, however, serves a subversive agenda—a goofball wrapper encasing social critique. The second, related reason for his success in mainstream venues is his persona—a big, potbellied slob from the American heartland in a baseball cap who looks like he buys his clothes in Kmart and sleeps in them. During the 1960s and 1970s, Tom Smothers was perceived as having been able to push a leftist agenda on network television because, with his short hair, red sports coat, and aging choirboy appearance, he didn’t look like a counterculture threat. Mainstream America saw him as one of ‘us,’ rather than one of ‘them.’ Moore, with his shambling demeanor, looks less like Leon Trotsky than one of the good ol’ boys at the auto-body plant in his hometown of Flint, Michigan.
Moore places himself at the center of his work, which is almost as much about his persona as it is about the issues he engages. His films jubilate in the fish-out-of-water effect that his personal appearance radiates when shown shuffling through the corporate offices of General Motors, of Kmart, or Charlton Heston’s L.A. mansion. He initially appears comically out of his element and unthreatening—a yokel without the common sense to suit up and wear a tie in such august surroundings. There is, however, a quick rebound effect. His apparent naiveté when dealing with officious corporate security personnel or the expensively dressed power elite garners him considerable spectator sympathy. Isn’t he, after all, just a simple guy looking for answers to a few simple questions? Although he often uses ‘ambush’ interview tactics, his persona makes him appear less aggressive and manipulative than, say, Geraldo Rivera in similar situations.
But is he? The reception of Bowling for Columbine has raised questions about the credibility of his persona and about his integrity as a documentary filmmaker that are not new. This ‘good ol’ boy,’ who purportedly lives in a $1.9-million home in New York City, was accused over a decade ago of manipulating and even falsifying elements of Roger and Me. Comparable accusations have circulated about Bowling for Columbine. Although Moore attacks the statistical maneuvering of various groups in the film, the reliability of his own statistical assertions has been questioned. He has also been accused of various other distortions, such as doctoring the Willy Horton footage he uses in the film and of reenacting the footage showing a dog that inadvertently shot a man in deer camp when a rifle was placed on its back for a prank photograph.
Such carping also suggests an agenda on the part of certain reviewers, since Moore’s humor makes transparent the ‘doctorings’ or reenactments of which he is accused. One commentator notes that Moore doesn’t alert the viewer to reenactments when he tests the laid-back Canadian lifestyle by opening several unlocked residential doors in Windsor, Ontario. Obviously Moore would have been insane not to get clearances from the residents, and reviewers yammering about such moments reveal either naiveté or stupidity. An idea implicit in complaints about Moore past and present is that he somehow violates the aspirations of ‘objective’ documentary filmmaking (as if film history hasn’t exposed this delusion decades ago), or that he fails to ‘tell both sides of the story,’ which would make his work about as compelling as network television. Such complaints reveal a conservative impulse having nothing to do with addressing Moore’s real strengths and limitations.
Bowling for Columbine focuses on American gun violence, using the horrific 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado as its centerpiece and model of exploration. Moore puts numerous issues on the table as he takes the viewer through a first-person tour across the heartland, opting for a steady, at times annoying, ironic humor in his rapid-fire montage approach. This style is often merely suggestive, outlining for the viewer a sense of the illnesses within American society and of what is at stake, but doing so in too allusive a manner to foster substantive understanding. Moore’s great talent is for uncovering the grotesque, almost incomprehensible features of American life, such as a bank that gives away guns as premiums to customers opening new accounts, or the fact that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two shooters who killed or wounded their classmates at Columbine High, went bowling on the morning of the atrocity. Moore visits the home of John Nichols, brother of Terry Nichols, convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing case. When Moore asks Nichols if his own ardent defense of gun rights would extend to allowing citizens to store weapons-grade plutonium, the unnerving Nichols, apparently wishing to appear to add a dollop of cautionary temperance to his agenda, replies, “There’s a lot of nuts out there.” This and other moments—including Moore’s interview with camouflage-garbed survivalists—might have been little more than humorous diversions or cheap shots were it not for Moore’s sympathetic interest in many of the people he encounters, and his efforts to merge his dramatis personae of the cult of weaponry with broader meditations on the nature of the American fascination with bloodletting.
On a number of occasions, Moore steps back from a simple agenda of indictment to open up broader social issues. The indictment aspect at times seems confused and confusing. Although much of the film condemns the actions of the NRA, Moore does not theatrically burn but repeatedly brandishes his own NRA card, describing himself as a product of America’s gun culture. In one of the film’s central sequences, he mounts a highly theatrical ambush interview by bringing two seriously handicapped victims of the Columbine massacre to Kmart headquarters. Arguing that the bullets used by the Columbine killers were purchased at Kmart, they petition management to stop selling ammunition in their department stores. While the episode reveals the sliminess of the PR-supported corporate world, it takes an unexpected turn when Kmart’s PR representative agrees to implement Moore’s demands. Moore seems genuinely surprised and openly grateful. The sequence ends not on the expected note of ‘Evil Corporation swatting liberal yokel and handicapped victims away like flies,’ but with an unsettling progressive moment. Yet the moment actually addresses little of major importance, and one can’t help but notice that Moore is too much at center stage throughout.
Part of Moore’s complicated, at times disjointed, project is to suggest that violence is not caused by the kooks and weirdos who draw so much media attention. He rejects the concept of Harris and Klebold as ‘monsters,’ the term commonly used in media descriptions; instead, he presents them as logical products of American life, no different from any kid at a video arcade, or any self-deluded military manufacturer. Moore builds a case for the cynical interconnectedness of ostensibly disparate elements within the corporate/political/ideological power structure and the disastrous social effects of those interwoven elements. He points out the presence in Littleton (not far from Columbine High School) of Lockheed Martin, and its role not only as a key defense contractor but also as a major sponsor of ‘workfare’ alternatives to welfare that endanger the whole fabric of American society.
Attempting to connect the dots, Moore traces the gun murder, by another child, of a six-year-old left unattended by his mother in Flint, Michigan (whose economic destruction by General Motors was the subject of Roger and Me). On the day of the shooting, the boy’s mother, a parolee, was bussed miles into the suburbs, forced to fulfill her workfare obligations by tending a soda fountain at a shopping mall retro diner owned by rock impresario Dick Clark. In a moment rivaling Moore’s off-hand exposure of game show host Bob Eubanks as an anti-Semite in Roger and Me, Moore tries to interview Dick Clark outside his headquarters in Hollywood. Remaining within the dark confines of his van, the ever-cheerful whitebread promoter of rock and roll, when asked his views on the workfare horrors of which he takes advantage, tells the driver to slam the door in Moore’s face.
This makes for dramatic footage but it again raises questions about Moore’s tactics. It is, after all, an ambush interview. While it drives home its point about the complex network of corporate/governmental involvement, it also involves grandstanding by Moore. The issue is not discussed and explored as much as it is dramatically asserted. Furthermore, Moore’s choice of a media figure such as Dick Clark to discuss workfare presages his choice of Charlton Heston to discuss the NRA. These confrontations seem to say more than they do. The Heston scene, which also contains more accusatory questions than substantive discussion, veils the fact that, in taking on an easy target like Heston, Moore has not interrogated anyone in the NRA lobby, the people with genuine political clout. But would they have been more illuminating than Heston, their ideology any different? Moore has always acknowledged his own nurturance by the mass media, and bringing in celebrities like Clark and Heston gives a more recognizable face to social crises than those of gray-bird corporate or government functionaries. Catching these celebrities off guard tends to render their public charm—and the policies in which they are complicit—suddenly very ugly.
Moore brings smog, corporate crime, racism, and other issues into play before finally associating American gun violence with simple hate and fear. In trying to debunk traditional shibboleths about the causes of violence, Moore tends to leave his own assertions only marginally explored. He raises questions he can’t, and hardly tries, to answer. Using Canada’s relatively low rate of gun murder as a locus of comparison, he questions traditional presumptions about U.S. violence. He notes that poverty can’t be at the root of violence, since Canada has very high unemployment; neither can a violent pop culture (much of it an import from the U.S.); neither can a large number of gun fanatics; neither can the tensions of a multiracial society.
This provides a provocative opening up of Bowling for Columbine’s central issues while, at the same time, marking the point at which the film loses its focus. Moore makes tentative forays into cross-cultural explanation for the national differences in gun violence but his mode of exploration ultimately imperils the film’s cohesion. On a trip to Windsor, Ontario, Moore concludes that the treatment of poverty and race are at issue. He places Canada’s handling of social programs and generous welfare system head and shoulders above the U.S. (not a big discovery really, and a situation rapidly changing with the corporatization of Canada flowing from free-trade agreements). Rather than deal with social problems, the U.S. tries to stigmatize them, scapegoating the poor and minorities in news reports and ‘true-crime’ shows about cops tracking down the raging underclass. The effect is to raise violence as an issue far beyond its actual reality. In support of this, Moore cites paranoid myths created by the mass media, ranging from poisoned Halloween candy to tweaked or unreported statistics about the actual (rather flat) level of violent crime in the last decade.
But if violence isn’t so bad in America, what’s the point of the film? From its early images of the realistic toy guns so popular in 1950s male juvenile culture, Bowling for Columbine argues that America is not only a nation obsessed with guns, but also one never hesitant to use them, especially against the racial Other. Moore makes great capital from the horrors of Columbine; the widespread gun culture; readily available weapons and ammunition; the insensitivity of the NRA; the links among Lockheed-Martin, the defense establishment, and other structures of social repression, but then seems to reverse direction and undercut all of it.
Moore discounts the notion of America as an endemically violent nation—after going through a checklist of U.S. aggression in the postwar period from the imposition of the Shah of Iran in 1952 to the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz to the Vietnam War, the 1972 coup in Chile, the Iran-Contra scandals, and the training of Osama Bin Laden by the CIA. Yet Moore still counters notions of American exceptionalism, intercutting fleeting atrocity footage of Nazi Germany and imperialist Britain, France, and Japan to undercut notions that American violence has its foundations in its especially brutal conquest of its Wild West past. But comparing America to Europe may create a false debate.
Considering its very short history as the only major nation founded during the Enlightenment under principles of democratic compromise, U.S. history has been especially violent. Noam Chomsky has noted that the conservative European business press of the twentieth century was shocked at U.S. capitalism’s savage assaults on workers. The Civil War, a conflict, as Shelby Foote notes, at the crossroad of our being, showed the murderous failure of democratic compromise, which may exist only as a façade to protect powerful financial interests, suggesting a basic hypocrisy regarding American notions of liberty and prosperity that may in the last several decades be coming home to roost for the white middle class. Acknowledging this demands that we reject a view of the Columbine shootings and other forms of juvenile violence as aberrant, which Moore clearly does. His refusal contains, however, a glaring omission long noted by scholars and critics of media representations of Columbine: schoolyard shootings have been commonplace in inner-city minority communities for decades. As with the spread of narcotics, such crimes are frightful tragedies, it seems, only when the middle class is threatened.
Associating gun violence chiefly with hatred and paranoid fear of the racial Other tends to ignore the evidence of the political economy of violence that Moore rather haphazardly assembles. Racism isn’t about racial paranoia alone. After all, racialist mythologies in America flowed from the need to dehumanize the people serving the stoop-labor economy of the agrarian slavocracy (African Americans), and the people in the way of mining, railroad, and cattle interests (Native Americans). Moore gives impressions of this dynamic, but not an ordered understanding.
At certain times Moore’s compare/contrast editing sustains his insistence on humor; at other times it misfires. He deftly juxtaposes a speech by the smarmy, rabble-rousing Senator Joe Lieberman, the quintessential opportunist politician who loves to blame pop culture for the world’s problems, with a chat with shock rocker Marilyn Manson, who, not surprisingly, is one of the more intelligent voices in the movie. But a long ‘cartoon history of America’ is cute for only a bit, and almost stops the movie with its sense that Moore can’t make a transition without a joke, and that these issues, which the film poses as overwhelmingly important, are regularly represented with a hip blitheness. The soundtrack for a montage of American atrocities is Louis Armstrong’s version of “What a Wonderful World”—Moore’s constant need for forced irony often feels adolescent.
Bowling for Columbine loses any attempt at sustained argument after its raising of the provocative comparison of American with Canadian violence. It builds to its climactic interview with aging film star and National Rifle Association front man Charlton Heston, whom we have earlier seen in file footage proudly uttering his mantra about not giving up his primeval flintlock rifle until it is taken “from my cold, dead hands.” Some have argued that Moore bears down too brutally on the slightly enfeebled actor, who is, after all, courteous enough to allow the interview. It is a complex moment, filled with awkward tensions. While it provides the film with a dramatic conclusion, it also enables it to sidestep its central issues. Moore shows Heston his NRA card, then raises the question of the differences between the U.S. and Canada; Heston fumbles for a response. Moore then shifts gears and assaults Heston’s insensitivity and the NRA’s viciousness in staging rallies in towns such as Littleton while they are mourning children lost to gun murder. Heston walks away from the interview in a snit, losing himself in his L.A. estate. Moore leaves behind a photo of a child killed by a gun in a town where the NRA quickly flexed its considerable organizing muscle.
It is a curious ending. On one level it deflects the major concerns of the film because NRA insensitivity isn’t really the issue, at least not the sole one. Moore himself repeatedly proclaims his NRA membership. The ending enables the film to drop its larger issues in favor of an awkward interview with Charlton Heston that implicates him in a social dynamic leading to a little girl’s death. On another level, however, the image of the irate actor scurrying away as Moore props up the photo of the dead child of the American underclass against a pillar of Heston’s palatial, gated home may be the best coda any recent film has enjoyed, a summary statement on life in a miserably polarized, heartless society.
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