bcholmes | Ethnography and Sarnia (Reply)

So tonight I went to see Bowling for Columbine. I quite enjoyed the film; I can't say that I've been disappointed by much of Moore's work. And there was something really weird about the fact that Moore travelled to my home town of Sarnia to find out why Canada is different than the US. I squealed in the movie. (I had no idea that Sarnia was the kissing capitol -- the things I learn from Michael Moore).

A while ago, I read firecat's comments on the film. I've always really admired firecat's perspective on a lot of things, and I wondered if I'd have similar reservations. I doubted it, as I'm pretty sure that firecat and I have different opinions about gun control.

(BC positions herself within the discourse: I have no problems with people who like guns, who enjoy collecting them, shooting with them, etc. I think that there should be reasonable processes by which people can acquire guns, for some value of reasonable. But I don't believe that gun ownership is a right, and I'd oppose something like the US Second Amendment being passed in Canada.)

mamatiger posted this link to a pretty critical review of the film. For my part I have a lot of thoughts on the review:

Fritz's comments about Moore having altered a campaign ad -- especially the comments about adding text -- just didn't work for me. I never believed that the text was part of the original ad. It was in the same typeface as all the other text in the film.
I don't think Moore is attempting to articulate a single, unified thesis. I think that he consciously undermines any attempt at simple answers. He proposes a lot of ideas in the film and then goes on to question all of them. Is it "history of violence"? No. See Germany. The British Empire. Is it poverty? Too facile. Other countries have huge poverty. Is it "just" racial strife? I think his answer to that is hugely ambivalent.
His fear hypothesis seems to get the most treatment, but even that position has problems. The former executive in charge of COPS talks about how a show that didn't involve car chases and shoot-outs probably wouldn't be palatable to the TV-watching public. We can't be talking about unidirectional causal relationships here.
I think that Moore believes in his gut that guns are too prevalent and a problem, but I think he's pretty up-front about not really understanding the nature and cause of that problem. The most poignant scene, for me, was the one in which he's talking to one of the parents of a kid killed in Columbine. "Why is that?" "Yes, why is that?" "Yes, that's my question. Why is that?" Finally: "I don't know." Something is wrong, and it's evading people's ability to find the root cause.

I guess what I found somewhat thought-inducing was the representation of Canada. Moore presents a funny, quirky Canada where people never lock their doors and our news stations talk about negotiation and health care. And the reason that I was laughing is that I know that that image of Canada is superficial.

And this is a problem that plagues ethnographic documentary-making. Can this other people be documented? Is the Canadian public representable? Is there some checklist of traits that can be itemized and captured on film? Is the Canadian character knowable? And I think Moore's use of tongue-in-cheek humour and irony as he attempts to film "Canadians" is exactly right. He's describing the silliness and ultimate futility of that endeavor.

And in a sense, he's also describing the futility of answering the question: "what is it about America and guns?" It's irreducible. America can't be represented. All answers must ultimately be facile because the question starts with a mistaken premise. It's like the classic, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

So what's a good, liberal intellectual to do? Through up his arms and admit defeat, or try to pry to gun out of Heston's dead, cold hand?