fishbob said:
Parts of the film may well be propaganda, but again, the major question raised by the film was "why do Americans shoot each other so much"; and Moore did not provide an answer. A propaganda film would have a clear cut, simple, easily digested answer.
Oh, sure, it IS propaganda, and there
was a "message to be delivered. However, there is a cultural difference operating here too, and I say what follows with trepidation. The difference is that there is a tendency in US cultures to use loud, up-front, in-your-face styles to get messages across: Here's a point, BAM!, here's another, BAM!, see this problem?, SLAM! Subtle it ain't, although there is certainly the
ability to be subtle, and a well-developed appreciation of subtlety. It's just that the steady diet of confrontational style (slapstick comedy, Smackdown, Jerry Springer, even Judge Judy) leads to an
expectation with average US audience that "the message", whatever it is,
will be delivered in soundbite-size chunks in six-foot-high flashing letters, with pyrotechnics, at some point. And when it isn't, some people do indeed miss the point.
By comparison, other cultures really do notice the contrast - the above examples are considered typical "American-style" loud, shouting, finger-pointing fare, and are a clear exception, culturally. You just do not see programmes being made like that anywhere else. (I might also point out that America is more than capable of producing highly impressive "subtle fare" too - this isn't a put-down post).
So, getting back to Moore and
Bowling for Columbine, Moore's message IS there - there is a culture of media-fed, possibly politically backed fear that has led to a constitutionally-supported culture of gun-ownership in the US as a response (an arguable point certainly, but let's stick to
this point first) - but it isn't spelled out directly in flashing capital letters by the film. It needs to be gathered up as the film progresses, as Moore examines points in order, gets diverted with stunts, and waxes lyrical for the overdub.
Now, both my wife and I AND our teenage daughter, picked up on Moore's theme and message immediately, the first time we saw the film. The few people I know here who have seen the film did so likewise, and we even independently received the same message. And yet some American commentators reckoned Moore did not make any points at all and that the film was just a totally jumbled scrapbook. Amazingly, even though we thought the film to be crude, brash and confrontational, deliberately or otherwise, these people were either so thick they needed it in comic form, or their
cultural expectation was that "documentary style" must equal Jerry Springer or Mauri Pauvich (or National Geographic highbrow).
Could Moore have done it differently? Better? Sure. But I'm betting his intended audience was the USA, not the world. I thought he was definitely holding a mirror up to his own culture. It just seemed that some people preferred looking at their own portrait instead.
