[Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #11

[the madison insurgent]

No easy solutions in Moore's new flick
by Tracy McLellan

Because it shows the truth about United States
imperialism too often neglected in corporate media and
conventional history, the most hopeful thing about
Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore’s new
documentary, occurs about two-thirds of the way
through. Moore, trying to get at the root cause of the
rampant violence in our society, shows a montage of
images revealing CIA and US military interventions in
foreign countries. There’s the oil grab in Iran in
1953 where the CIA assassinated President Mosadegh;
Jacobo Arbenz’s assassination in 1954 in Guatemala
after he nationalized fallow lands contrary to the
wishes of United Fruit Company; Patrice Lumumba in the
Congo in 1960; Allende in Chile in 1973 and the rise
of Pinochet, the Panama invasion of 1990, Grenada,
Vietnam, and others. Indeed, it seems the current
discussion of terrorism, its causes and solutions,
lacks this important context. This sequence alone puts
the film in a unique category. 
An air of emptiness permeates the whole film, as Moore
never really uncovers either the reason or the
solution to widespread violence. Moore’s use of Louis
Armstrong’s soundtrack, “What a Wonderful World” over
a collage of violent images culled from the American
Canon adds to this feeling of unreality. 
Moore takes his camera literally all over the map. He
visits the Michigan Militia and talks with one of its
members, James Nichols, brother of Terry of Oklahoma
City bombing renown, for an eerie interview. It is as
vacuous and has as little reason as the pandemic of
gun-violence. He visits a bank, which gives away a
free gun to anyone opening a new account. He
interviews an executive with Lockheed Martin against
the backdrop of one of its missiles, near Columbine,
who cannot see any link between the violence at the
school and his company being the world’s largest
manufacturer of weapons. He takes two of the Columbine
survivors, who each still have bullets in their
bodies, to Kmart headquarters to “return the
merchandise.” The gunmen had purchased 900 rounds of
ammunition at 17 cents a pop at a Kmart store. He also
talks with some of those who benefit from the
widespread violence like security companies, metal
detector firms, and the like. One of these company’s
spokeswoman suggests high school dress codes can end
the problem of gun-violence. 
	Although the film is a search for the source of
gun-violence, Moore finds as few answers as he does
solutions. Joe Lieberman blusters about Marilyn Manson
being to blame. Although the murder rate is down 20
percent in recent years, coverage of murder and mayhem
in TV news is up 100 percent. Dick Clark slams the car
door in Moore’s face when he inquires about a
welfare-to-work mother in Michigan, whose six-year-old
son gunned down a classmate. She had to travel 60
miles roundtrip daily to get to a minimum wage job
working at Dick Clark’s grill, and rarely saw her boy.
Lockheed Martin of all corporations administers the
privatization of Michigan’s welfare program. 
Charlton Heston is the celebrity on the hot seat.
Heston led a charge of the NRA into Columbine within a
week of the catastrophe. Moore, “the filmmaker,” as he
tells Heston over the intercom at his home, lets Moore
in to “talk about his new movie.” And soon walks out
on Moore, leaving him hostless in his posh house in
the California mountains. 
Perhaps not so coincidentally, April 20, 1999, the day
of the Columbine massacre, was also the day the most
bombs were dropped by allied forces in the Kosovo War.
Clinton was off TV less than an hour after justifying
the bombings when he returned to the television screen
offering condolences for the victims of the Columbine
massacre. 
I had heard from several sources that this movie was
all about Michael Moore’s ego. I detected none of
that. Moore tells his story in his unique style, with
raucous humor, capturing the emptiness of this like
many of the issues of the day in the depoliticized US,
with intelligence and energy. By turns he is somber,
tender, and compassionate with the victims of the
tragedies, stunned by the intellectual bankruptcy of
many of the pro-gunners and a complacent society, and
outraged at the powers that be, which often benefit
from the status quo, who allow and are culpable in the
profound stupidity of citizen killing citizen.
The best answer Moore can provide as to the why of
Columbine, is that a campaign of scare mongering keeps
everyone fearful and afraid, and leads to consumption.
The best solution he can offer, as he did in his
best-selling book, Stupid White Men, when he suggested
Frank Zappa to a corporate executive who was
particularly clueless, is good rock-n-roll music. And
so, rolling the end credits over a punk cover of “What
a Wonderful World” is a nice touch to a movie that
engages the viewer in the issues of the day rather
than provide escapism in mindless entertainment, or
worse, violence for its own sake.

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