The Moore You Know
[pic 1]The Moore You Know…Alfred Naupoto uncovers the hidden truth behind Moore’s anti-gun, anti-capitalism documentary, Bowling for Columbine.The Moore you know about Michael Moore the less you’ll understand him. He’s a man of many contradictions: anti-capitalist millionaire, pro-gun control advocate, former NRA member, journalist and staunch critic of mass media. With this understanding you’d think he’d be the perfect person to objectively hunt down the reason for America’s alarming record of gun-related violence, but he’s not. His documentary consistently exploits the documentary genre to the point fact has blurred into fiction. “Moore has a personal vendetta for Heston and he constantly defames his reputation by using very selective editing.” Moore’s infamous “Bowling for columbine” (2002) took the world by storm, winning numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary and the César Award for Best Foreign Film. It seems hypocritical to give a documentary award to a man who has misused every technique in the book to skew viewer perceptions. Bowling for columbine ventures into Michael Moore’s interpretation of American gun laws and the institutionalised “fog of fear” in the United States. Throughout, Moore skilfully, through the use of different techniques, manipulated facts and figures to position viewers to his side. The biggest bias comes from the big man himself.
Moore spends more time in front of the camera than behind it and constantly uses sarcastic narration and comments to shape viewer opinion on his accompanying footage. He does this to put his point of view across in a humorous matter, as if what he is showing us is common sense. For example, in the first 30 minutes of the documentary, it seems that Moore receives a ‘free’ rifle the instant he opens his new bank account in the US. He then comments: “Do you think its a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?” But funnily enough that scene was staged; the employees of the bank actually performed months of rigorous background checks before handing over the rifle to Moore. They claim Moore asked them to act out the process for the cameras to help make the footage more exciting. Moore did not reveal this purposeful ‘dramatization’ as the shock value of walking into a bank empty-handed and out with a rifle emphasised his point that guns are far too easy to get in the United States. Nor did he mention the rifle’s not free but paid for each month with the account’s interest.