Moore is one of our few progressive public intellectuals here in the
U.S. He's made a name for himself doing satirical work that highlights
the social inequality that runs rampant here in the home of the free -
sort of a laugh-until-you-cry style of entertainment. I always found
his stuff funny, but also thought that it was sort of easy to do: Play
"dumb" when you're actually rather cunning, run after the CEO of GM
wearing a funny hat and ask him to talk about the devastation that
GM's latest round of layoffs has visited upon the community of Flint,
Michigan. Guess what? The CEO of GM doesn't want to talk about it, and
we see a lot of his back on film, walking away.

In "Bowling for Columbine", he sets out to understand rampant gun
violence in the U.S., using the high school massacre in Columbine,
Colorado as a theme to focus the broader topic. He presents a
particularly ugly vision of the American social landscape, but in my
view, he also manages to make a dark film that is sympathetic and
nuanced. The approach is pretty much the same as in his earlier
work. He adumbrates widespread social ills and power arrangements by
focusing on the specific: the people affected, the people the calling
the shots, the settings. We see social relationships in the material:
the devestated landscapes of communities in distress, an uneasy middle
class inhabiting suburbs with prim lawns, security systems and
basement safe rooms. A Lockheed employee discusses the distress of a
community over a massacre, a massive ICBM in the background (really!).

Rather just showing victimizers and victims, Moore discovers the
"psychic prisons" we inhabit when we internalize the fear and
agression that, somehow, is brewed within our culture. How is it
brewed though? Moore pursues different explanations of America's
astronomical murder rate, and each fails. If gun ownership was the
answer, then how come gun-happy Canada is so safe? If a bloody history
were to blame, than what of the comparative safety of the streets in
Germany or the UK? Exposure to violence in the media? Nope, that one
doesn't pan out either. Since the film takes up as a central theme a
massacre by and of middle class high school students, he doesn't
emphasize social inequality as a causal factor. (Actually, there's a
strong correlation there. Rio and Johannesberg aren't exactly safe
cities.) The film's thesis, insofar as it can be discerned, is that
there are complex currents in American culture underlying American
violence, including obsessive fear, indifference to the plight of the
poor, racism and white flight to the suburbs, imperialism, and a
highly militarized economy. If you think that's not a real answer,
have a look at some recent academic work on culture, not to mention
famous French theorists like Althusser or Foucault. What causes the
patterns in how societies develop is presented as complex and diffuse
in scholarship as well. Too bad the world's so damned complicated!

Towards the end of the film, Moore visits National Rifle Association
President Charlton Heston. We see the director requesting an interview
outside the steel gate of Heston's mansion through the intercom
system. Although Heston grants the interview, the message of the steel
gate is driven home. Without leverage, power is answerable and
accessible at the whim of those who hold it. Watching the scene, I
could hear the objections of what passes for the liberal press in the
U.S.: Wait a minute, that's a cheap shot! Most celebrities live in
mansions behind steel gates with video surveillance systems! But
that's missing the point: Heston, whether misguided,
vicious, senile, or all three - we're not really in a position to know
- inhabits a very specific world, one in which wealth and charisma
have allowed him to promulgate his views in public and influence
American gun legislation. And he can retire in private behind his iron
gate to his castle and speculate vapidly on the significance of what
he does - it's not him that's at risk from gun violence. That's power,
and it's not created by one man, but by a rather elaborate set of
arrangements of people and things - including the iron gate.

I suspect, and I might be wrong, that audiences outside the
U.S. won't fully appreciate the type of tensions that are animated in
this film. The experience of American progressives, including Michael
Moore, is often that of dismay over what's ugly about America, even as
one identifies oneself as American. As I get older, I become more and
more aware of how American culture has shaped who I am. And there are
many people and things American I truly love. But there are many
unpleasant discoveries to make about one's country. I sat in on a
class on the politics of design given by the technology critic Langdon
Winner, here in Troy. On the first day, after introducing the
syllabus, he gave the class an exercise: "I want you to design a
prison." We went around the room and explained our designs. Across the
room, a woman of 19 or 20 described hers. It was the American prison of
the nineteenth century, where penitence was the goal, and mistreatment
extreme. "I don't want to make it comfortable for them. They have
committed crimes. They should pay the price." My roommate, a
psychologist visiting from the Free University of Berlin, described a
prison with an organic garden, structured in many ways to aid in the
psychic healing of the prisoners.

Merry Christmas everyone. Peace and joy to all.