The other night I watched the documentary Bowling for Columbine. It was suprisingly good. I think Michael Moore does a stapedius job of reasoning out the causes of violence in America. He is also a hypnotic editing genius. I had to watch the film to critique the editing and man does he know how to use it.
The film is full of plugs for Moore's own political agenda and though the viewer knows that it is easy to be drawn in. Maybe I am just predisposed to a more liberal mind set but I feel that most people who watch it will find themselves agreeing with many of his extremities just because of the way it is edited. He breaks up interviews with subtitle sound cuts to different answers and visuals that help drive home his point of view with answers laid over that may in fact contradict one another. Also in his interviews that are so cut he often does not actually show himself who asks the questions his voice just booms over the speakers. It makes one wonder if those where the questions asked during filming.
Though this sounds like I'm making Moore out to be a sniving, canaving, brain washer out just to plug his own ideas. Well I actually am. But what film maker isn't. Nothing is innocent in this world. We all have our motives. We want people to agree with our views because we think it will make the world a better place. I don't think he is being a sniving canaving brain washer purposefully I think he is just trying to portray what he feels is true. Is he doing that properly or is he warping truth. Well I couldn't say since I was not in his cutting room or brain seeing how he really was spinning things. That analysis is ultimately spectualation.
I must say I do agree with his analysis of what has caused all the violence we experience in America though. I think he reasoned it out very well and ultimately it makes sense. He went though all our normal blames of violence. Violent video games, our gun laws, ethnicity, poverty, and a violent history and reasoned all of them out not to be the case. For instance most of our violent video games come from Japan and while our murder rate with guns is well over a thousand every year there's is absurdly low in comparison only around 20 or 30. Canada owns more guns per capita then we do and they also have very low gun crime rates. Canada also has higher unemployment rates and about the same percent of minority as America. And though we have a violent history so does Germany and for goodness sakes only 20 something people are killed by guns in Aulstrilia every year and Aulstrilia was founded to send prisoners to. I bet the majority of the population is descendent from murders there.
He argues the real reason we have become so violent is the fear we live with. We turn on the evening news and there is another murder story. Even as murder rates decrease our news coverage increases. We are so injected with this fear our government needs no reason to put us on high terriost alert. We are scared of people who look different, scared of people who act differently. We jump to the worst conclusion.
The sad thing is I'm aware of this and I even can't help it. Last summer I was on a Subway in NYC and was sitting next to a woman typing a text message in some foreign script. I wasn't sure if it was Arabic or Hebrew as I didn't speak either at the time but she was looking around nervously as she typed and of course my mind with it's over active fearful imagination jumped to the worse. I knew I was over reacting in my mind so I glanced again over her solder and realized that it was in fact probably Hebrew. Then I followed one of her nervous glances and noticed another elderly lady and a small child. I realized she was also not used to riding the subway or her family that she was with was not used to riding the NY subway and she was simply keeping an eye own them sense it was so crowded and they could not sit together. I felt stupid. So much so that I almost leaned over and apologized but I decided against it because I am first too shy and also did not want to spook her. Further more I have sense begun to learn the beautiful tongue of arabic and have met lovely people who speak the language. And though I tried never to buy into that whole all Muslims are terriorts thing it's hard not to judge all middle eastren's sub consciously after all we are told to do on the news. But learning the language of the people has drastically changed my view. That along with some facts I've been paying attention to has made me much more suspect of my own race (White) when it comes to not feeling safe.
It all comes down to though that we are so hyped up on fear these days. We can't help but suspect one another because we are constantly told to do so. And of course it's cyclical we suspect one another so we act in such a distrustful manner that others distrust us. We are all out to save our own butts and as we continually ignore the difficulties of others we promote this idea of distrust and fear.
(More to come of Fear as a form of control.)
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