Question:
I’d never seen Michael Moore before, but based on the general buzz around this film, I expected to like it. And I did - a lot. It’s a wonderful piece of entertainment and one of the best films at the flicks right now. What I didn’t expect was that it would have to be filed under ‘guilty pleasures’. Coz there is no denying that as a piece of social commentary and insight it’s hopelessly juvenile and endlessly contradictory. Strangely though, like the other American doc this year to hit our screens - Dogtown & Z Boys, it remains just as compelling when the director is blatantly talking nonsense. It also joins a small, elite film club who have been allowed to use an original Beatles track (no prizes for guessing which one). I imagine Yoko Ono would not have been hard to persuade.
Bowling For Columbine is beautifully produced, no doubt about it. We are taken from the Columbine massacre, to the killing of a schoolgirl by a classmate, and then, for the big finale, Moore’s showdown with NRA president Charlton Heston. And it’s often fun along the way. Moore is armed and dangerous from the first scene, receiving a rifle as a ‘free gift’ for opening a bank account. But bizzarely, the crosshairs spend most of the time on his own foot.
The ‘Moore’ parts work best during a few of the early interviews. The brother of the terrorist doing life for the Oklahoma bombing is a nugget of near insanity, and happy to tell the world his woes. Two ex-Columbine students hilariously talk of gun-toting and Napalm baking like it’s the teenage way of life. Apart from this, the film scores heaviest as a ‘compilation’ – most of the best footage, other than the above, is old archive material that has been edited into Moore’s quest. And the highlight is, without a doubt, a five minute sequence showing the Columbine massacre on CCTV. I had no idea such footage existed – but it’s a sight to behold. Put to a haunting guitar track, it’s nothing short of cinematic dynamite.
The film’s other coup might not be great cinema, but at least it has Moore’s full on-screen involvement. In what looked every bit like a cheap shot, he takes two Columbine victims, one disabled, to K-Mart to try to stop their sale of ammunition. The fact that he succeeds is nothing short of extraordinary. And whilst it might be easy to write it off as a minor victory – saying that those who don’t buy it in K-Mart will just get it somewhere else – it may not be so. If a group as self-righteous as Nirvana agree to a change of cover art for K-Mart sales, then the assumption is definitely not that these people will just buy their intended product elsewhere. Well done, Mr Moore. I have to give you that much at least.
What Moore wants to know is this – why are there more gun killings in America than in the rest of the civilised world? He tosses out theories, abandons most of them, and fires out figures left and right. But there is rarely a time when it seems like he’s put much intelligent thought into any of it.
You see, the reason this problem is uniquely American is what troubles him. He deals with three other ‘free’ countries for the most part. Germany, Britain and Canada. Now, the reason America is such a gun-toting country can’t be owt to do with its violent past coz just look at Britain, never mind Germany! And it can’t be owt to do with the seemingly obvious fact that America is overflowing with handguns – coz look at Canada! They’re armed to the teeth too, but it isn’t a trigger happy society so what gives?
Oh dear! Did you flunk Chemistry, Michael? Coz if you’re gonna study something, you can only rely on your result if you change just one thing at a time. Otherwise you don’t know what the hell you’ve got on your hands. His dismissal of it being a U.S. phenomenon because of America’s cultural past, twinned with no gun control, makes no sense. Sure, Europe doesn’t have the gun problem – but we don’t have the bloody guns! Sure, Canada doesn’t have the gun problem - but they don’t have the violent character or past! It seems Mr Moore can’t see the wood for the trees. It's also a touch shoddy to compare British and German wartime and colonial behaviour to America's 'Wild West' way of life!
He dwells on America’s foreign policy well past the point of it being redundant. Does it ever occur to him that the country totting up the biggest kill ratio is also the only one on his list which advocates the ‘killing’ of its own citizens? That could be another two hours right there, I’ll admit, but it’s too big a point not to get a mention.
Is poverty involved in all this? ‘Course not - Moore dismisses this right away by supplying a meaningless figure about high Canadian unemployment. Of course, when he gets to Canada later on he finds that even the slums look fairly respectable!
Is colour involved in all this? ‘Course not, coz he points the camera at some ethnic minorities in a Canadian city as if that’s all the proof we need. Again, in another faux pas, the black guy the camera dwells on turns out to be an American tourist. The yank lives just across the water (may, quite literally, be able to see his house from here) - so what is he doing in Canada this fine evening? 'It's lighter over here'. Come again? Maybe he was only talking about the architecture, but it certainly wasn't the weather. Moore doesn't follow it up and a potential 'twist' is left hung out to dry. Indeed, after a short film explaining America’s unique relationship with its ethnic minorities (and, indeed, how this ties in with gun culture), Moore dismisses it all out of hand when it suits him (and it certainly suits him when Heston says it!)
South Park’s Matt Stone is interviewed. He was brought up near Columbine and gives his theory on disaffected youth. God knows what it’s doing in this film, other than as proof that Michael Moore doesn’t give a **** about gun deaths abroad except when he wants the statistics. Matt thinks things would have been all OK if the Columbine killers realised this - that because they were pathetic assholes just now, they might, you know, have become famous and had a TV show or something in later life! Hmmm, does Moore know that Britain’s very own ‘Columbine’ was committed recently by a guy who saw himself as an outsider at 15, and still did at 40 when he cracked? Doubt it. And he neglects to mention that this 'uniquely American' massacre was purposefully arranged to take place on the birthday of a German dictator.
Further proof, of Moore making his mind up before any of these interviews, comes in the form of Marilyn Manson. I know little about Manson, but it looked pretty clear to me that he’d been absolved of everything before they met. Many Columbine parents blamed Manson and his music for the shootings. But Moore loves what Manson has to say - especially all that stuff about 'the culture of fear'. Could this 'culture' be to blame for America's rampant gun deaths? The ‘fear’ is apparently spread by advertising! 'Buy this toothpaste or you'll have smelly breath', etc.
Surely Moore is aware that advertising is a world-wide phenomenon! Has he ever seen it in other countries? U.S. adverts have to be seen to be believed. You might not think much of them in the UK, but they look positively sophisticated and utterly surreal compared to their American counterparts. A typical food advert will feature some model bite into something and then have a fit of ecstasy, screaming 'Yummy, I'm soooo glad I bought this'. Doesn't exactly inspire 'fear'.
'What would you say to the parents in Columbine right now, Mr Manson?' The response goes 'I wouldn't say anything - I'd just listen to what they have to say.' Oh that's just lovely. Had it been anyone else (say, Chuck Heston) Moore would have given him some choice quotes from parents or, even more likely, said ‘Surprise, Surprise’ and produced one on the spot! But no - Manson, for whatever reason, was never 'a suspect'.
When he gets to Canada he also notes that the news is relatively murder free. Moore, in a moment of Homer Simpson-like deductive technique, wonders if the lack of reported murders is the reason why there aren’t any! D’oh.
And what the hell was he doing interviewing the ex-producer of 'Cops'? Moore seemed to be under the impression that Cops is part of the problem, and not just a product of it. For proof, we see half a dozen clips of 'Cops' - which is misrepresented as a ‘Let’s Arrest Us Some Blacks’ show. The questioning is along the lines of 'Why don't you make 'reality TV' about the causes of crime?', to which the producer honestly responds 'Well, I just don't know how to make that show'. Moore refuses to move on and gets the same answer another three times before saying that he knows how to make that work and then... tries to be funny with a short spoof. It's the same as cornering the Big Brother producer and asking him how he can justify such a show in the face of homelessness. The scene belongs nowhere but the cutting room floor.
It gets much, much worse. When a black kid shoots dead his six year old classmate in Moore’s hometown, he looks for a scapegoat. What follows is pathetic. He finds out that the mother worked in a restaurant 80 miles away – so the guy whose name is attached to that restaurant chain (Dick Clarke) gets the blame! Coz, you see, if she didn’t have a job, she would have been in the house when her kid left for school and, unlike his Uncle, may have spotted the gun in his pocket in the way only a mother can do! Oh, he does it all in the guise of it being an unfair government policy of welfare-to-work (which got her the job), but that certainly isn’t Dick Clarke’s fault. Indeed, given the area’s crappy housing, and the fact that she’s making at least $300 a week, there is more to her financial problems than Moore is interested in.
He also looks 100% unconvincing when he’s ‘involved’ in intimate moments – as he tries to comfort an upset teacher, or walk away all solemn from the Heston estate, leaving a picture of a murdered child. I didn’t really take to the man at all – even his attempts at humour (as an on-screen presence anyway) aren’t that funny and almost always out of place.
Finally, for Moore’s last missed opportunity, comes the finale – the interview with National Rifle Association president, Charlton Heston. I’m slightly suspicious that Moore, who admits to being in the NRA himself, only does so to make it look like this is the only reason Ben-Hur agrees to see him. It just doesn’t appear to be the case. Heston, who has a lot to answer for, is never less than 100% courteous. Hell, when Moore gets his address from a ‘star map’, he even answers his own buzzer and politely agrees to an interview the next morning.
Michael Moore spectacularly fails to slam-dunk Heston. Just like the ‘Cops’ interview, he wastes too much time by asking the same inane question over and over. ‘But Mr Heston, as you’ve never been a victim of crime, why are the guns in your house loaded?’. Jesus H. Christ! And when Heston mentions America’s violent past, Moore isn’t pleased (even after he’s said so himself). When Heston mentions the country’s ethnic history, Moore isn’t pleased (even after he’s said so himself). As it becomes clear that Moore wants Heston to get racist, Chuck terminates the interview. No ill feeling, no ‘get out of my house’, no going to get the loaded guns, he simply walks away a frail old man, leaving Moore & co in his property to do as they wish. Moore even stalks him around the mansion for a bit. An opportunity missed and after all the frankly horrid shots of Heston at NRA gatherings, he finishes the movie with more grace than he started it.
I’ll end with a nasty cheapshot of my own. Another uniquely American phenomenon is the attitude of their obese people (of which they must have record per-capita numbers). In the UK I get the impression that obese people are rather uncomfortable being so fat, and are almost humbled by it. Not so in America, where they wear the tightest tops, shorts showing off their fat legs, and develop an opinionated attitude to match their waistlines. Someone really should look into that…
extra additions & amendments made - even more torture
i haven't seen bowling for colombine yet so i cannot comment on the film but i do feel the need to comment on your last paragraph.
you seem to be condeming fat people in america for not feeling terrible about their weight. your statement sounds like you're saying all fat people should be ashamed of ther weight and wish to make amends by becoming thin, wonderful members of society. so what if the great fat masses (which you are correct there are many, many of) don't care they are fat. let them be if they want to. just because they are fat doesn't mean they should all be walking aroung with their heads lowered, with no self esteem or confidence. i'm sure the vast (no pun intended) majority of them are perfectly aware they are fat, and are either too lazy to do anything about it or just don't care. let them be fat, let them wear tight clothes f they want to. if others find it unsightly, tough! that's their problem, not the problem of the fat people. and as for the opinionated attitude, i was under the impression that came with a US passport and was nothing to do with there blatant disregard for the enjoyment of others out to ogle beautiful people. let the fat people do what they please, in fact, let them eat cake.
I agree, people may get as fat as they can. As long as they are happy to pay for 2 seats on a plane, and if they use the Tube in rush hour buy 2 tickets for that too, and so on.
I wonder if all those size 12s subsidise the size 20s?
Sb
Originally posted by ought
I agree, people may get as fat as they can. As long as they are happy to pay for 2 seats on a plane, and if they use the Tube in rush hour buy 2 tickets for that too, and so on.
Sb
Then you are an idiot.
:rolleyes:
Just to get back to McD's last paragraph, I think that's an excellent idea for a documentary - not least because it ties in more closely with <I>Bowling for Columbine</I> (or at least my impression of it: I haven't seen it yet) than one might expect.
You only have to spend five minutes in the US to realise that there are a great many quite astonishingly fat people over there - and by "fat" I don't mean "pleasantly plump and jolly in a Dawn French kind of way", I mean "so elephantine that they can barely function as normal human beings" (and a size that you almost never see in Europe), and, like McD, I'm astonished at how a great many people seem to think that there's nothing remotely unusual or reprehensible about this - because there clearly is something deeply wrong with a society that lets a worryingly large proportion of its population get like this.
And, as with the gun laws, it's a cultural problem - it's the logical conclusion of an overwhelmingly sedentary existence (driving anywhere more than 100 yards) coupled with a diet that's based around an extreme abundance of very cheap but for the most part very poor-quality food with a heavy concentration of fats and sugars.
So it's not remotely surprising that obesity is rampant - Michael Moore probably isn't considered especially fat in his native country - echoing the bafflement that TV execs felt when the BBC tried to sell them <I>Two Fat Ladies</I>: they liked the programme, but didn't understand the title!
there clearly is something deeply wrong with a society that lets a worryingly large proportion of its population get like this.
their biomass will be used for energy creation/storage purposes when the giant lizards take over america. 280 million * 25 stones of unadulterated lipids, who needs nuclear fusion?
Originally posted by McD
[B]Further proof, of Moore making his mind up before any of these interviews, comes in the form of Marilyn Manson. I know little about Manson, but it looked pretty clear to me that he’d been absolved of everything before they met. Many Columbine parents blamed Manson and his music for the shootings. But Moore loves what Manson has to say - especially all that stuff about 'the culture of fear'. Could this 'culture' be to blame for America's rampant gun deaths? The ‘fear’ is apparently spread by advertising! 'Buy this toothpaste or you'll have smelly breath', etc. .
I agree with most of what you wrote, but I'd take issue with this - it seems to me that Moore's exploration of "the culture of fear" goes rather deeper than just the advertising industry: it permeates much of the US mass media, particularly so-called factual programmes.
And it's matched over here - one of the things I've always truly loathed about the <I>Daily Mail</I> (and I suspect it's not unconnected with the fact that it was the only major newspaper to significantly dislike the film) is that the vast majority of its stories are written and presented in such a way as to terrify their readers into conformity with what they consider to be the norm: anything foreign or "different" is to be feared and attacked (though of course the <I>Mail</I> denies having anything to do with subsequent racist hate mail sent to people that they've been energetically demonising).
I think the <I>Mail</I> and its ilk do immense damage in spreading fear and hatred for no good reason - but where we differ from the US is that we're not armed to the teeth and are far less trigger-happy (and far less prone to religion-inspired fundamentalist ideology, something Moore rather plays down) - conversely, Canada has the guns but also a strong tradition of tolerance that also encompasses its mass media.
Of course, part of the problem with the film is that Moore attempts far too much and inevitably ends up drawing overly simplistic conclusions (most painfully in the Charlton Heston interview - I honestly think the film would have been far better for its removal and indeed the removal of much of the last couple of reels) - it might have been a rather more thought-provoking film if he trusted his audience more than he evidently does. Then again, muckraking documentaries like this are far more common in Britain than they are in the US, so I suspect we've been conditioned to expect something rather more sophisticated.
But it's well worth seeing - for all its flaws it does at least attempt to ask the kind of questions that American film-makers have preferred not to think about, and I was delighted to see that the cinema I saw it in yesterday afternoon was relatively full: apparently it's Charlton Heston's biggest British hit since the original <I>Planet of the Apes</I>!
Originally posted by Michael Brooke
...apparently it's Charlton Heston's biggest British hit since the original <I>Planet of the Apes</I>!
I assume this is a joke. Even Burton's POTA, with Heston cameo, made a fair few quid and will still no doubt cream Bowling for Columbine.
Bowling For Columbine is beautifully produced, no doubt about it. We are taken from the Columbine massacre, to the killing of a schoolgirl by a classmate, and then, for the big finale, Moore’s showdown with NRA president Charlton Heston. And it’s often fun along the way. Moore is armed and dangerous from the first scene, receiving a rifle as a ‘free gift’ for opening a bank account. But bizzarely, the crosshairs spend most of the time on his own foot.
The ‘Moore’ parts work best during a few of the early interviews. The brother of the terrorist doing life for the Oklahoma bombing is a nugget of near insanity, and happy to tell the world his woes. Two ex-Columbine students hilariously talk of gun-toting and Napalm baking like it’s the teenage way of life. Apart from this, the film scores heaviest as a ‘compilation’ – most of the best footage, other than the above, is old archive material that has been edited into Moore’s quest. And the highlight is, without a doubt, a five minute sequence showing the Columbine massacre on CCTV. I had no idea such footage existed – but it’s a sight to behold. Put to a haunting guitar track, it’s nothing short of cinematic dynamite.
The film’s other coup might not be great cinema, but at least it has Moore’s full on-screen involvement. In what looked every bit like a cheap shot, he takes two Columbine victims, one disabled, to K-Mart to try to stop their sale of ammunition. The fact that he succeeds is nothing short of extraordinary. And whilst it might be easy to write it off as a minor victory – saying that those who don’t buy it in K-Mart will just get it somewhere else – it may not be so. If a group as self-righteous as Nirvana agree to a change of cover art for K-Mart sales, then the assumption is definitely not that these people will just buy their intended product elsewhere. Well done, Mr Moore. I have to give you that much at least.
What Moore wants to know is this – why are there more gun killings in America than in the rest of the civilised world? He tosses out theories, abandons most of them, and fires out figures left and right. But there is rarely a time when it seems like he’s put much intelligent thought into any of it.
You see, the reason this problem is uniquely American is what troubles him. He deals with three other ‘free’ countries for the most part. Germany, Britain and Canada. Now, the reason America is such a gun-toting country can’t be owt to do with its violent past coz just look at Britain, never mind Germany! And it can’t be owt to do with the seemingly obvious fact that America is overflowing with handguns – coz look at Canada! They’re armed to the teeth too, but it isn’t a trigger happy society so what gives?
Oh dear! Did you flunk Chemistry, Michael? Coz if you’re gonna study something, you can only rely on your result if you change just one thing at a time. Otherwise you don’t know what the hell you’ve got on your hands. His dismissal of it being a U.S. phenomenon because of America’s cultural past, twinned with no gun control, makes no sense. Sure, Europe doesn’t have the gun problem – but we don’t have the bloody guns! Sure, Canada doesn’t have the gun problem - but they don’t have the violent character or past! It seems Mr Moore can’t see the wood for the trees. It's also a touch shoddy to compare British and German wartime and colonial behaviour to America's 'Wild West' way of life!
He dwells on America’s foreign policy well past the point of it being redundant. Does it ever occur to him that the country totting up the biggest kill ratio is also the only one on his list which advocates the ‘killing’ of its own citizens? That could be another two hours right there, I’ll admit, but it’s too big a point not to get a mention.
Is poverty involved in all this? ‘Course not - Moore dismisses this right away by supplying a meaningless figure about high Canadian unemployment. Of course, when he gets to Canada later on he finds that even the slums look fairly respectable!
Is colour involved in all this? ‘Course not, coz he points the camera at some ethnic minorities in a Canadian city as if that’s all the proof we need. Again, in another faux pas, the black guy the camera dwells on turns out to be an American tourist. The yank lives just across the water (may, quite literally, be able to see his house from here) - so what is he doing in Canada this fine evening? 'It's lighter over here'. Come again? Maybe he was only talking about the architecture, but it certainly wasn't the weather. Moore doesn't follow it up and a potential 'twist' is left hung out to dry. Indeed, after a short film explaining America’s unique relationship with its ethnic minorities (and, indeed, how this ties in with gun culture), Moore dismisses it all out of hand when it suits him (and it certainly suits him when Heston says it!)
South Park’s Matt Stone is interviewed. He was brought up near Columbine and gives his theory on disaffected youth. God knows what it’s doing in this film, other than as proof that Michael Moore doesn’t give a **** about gun deaths abroad except when he wants the statistics. Matt thinks things would have been all OK if the Columbine killers realised this - that because they were pathetic assholes just now, they might, you know, have become famous and had a TV show or something in later life! Hmmm, does Moore know that Britain’s very own ‘Columbine’ was committed recently by a guy who saw himself as an outsider at 15, and still did at 40 when he cracked? Doubt it. And he neglects to mention that this 'uniquely American' massacre was purposefully arranged to take place on the birthday of a German dictator.
Further proof, of Moore making his mind up before any of these interviews, comes in the form of Marilyn Manson. I know little about Manson, but it looked pretty clear to me that he’d been absolved of everything before they met. Many Columbine parents blamed Manson and his music for the shootings. But Moore loves what Manson has to say - especially all that stuff about 'the culture of fear'. Could this 'culture' be to blame for America's rampant gun deaths? The ‘fear’ is apparently spread by advertising! 'Buy this toothpaste or you'll have smelly breath', etc.
Surely Moore is aware that advertising is a world-wide phenomenon! Has he ever seen it in other countries? U.S. adverts have to be seen to be believed. You might not think much of them in the UK, but they look positively sophisticated and utterly surreal compared to their American counterparts. A typical food advert will feature some model bite into something and then have a fit of ecstasy, screaming 'Yummy, I'm soooo glad I bought this'. Doesn't exactly inspire 'fear'.
'What would you say to the parents in Columbine right now, Mr Manson?' The response goes 'I wouldn't say anything - I'd just listen to what they have to say.' Oh that's just lovely. Had it been anyone else (say, Chuck Heston) Moore would have given him some choice quotes from parents or, even more likely, said ‘Surprise, Surprise’ and produced one on the spot! But no - Manson, for whatever reason, was never 'a suspect'.
When he gets to Canada he also notes that the news is relatively murder free. Moore, in a moment of Homer Simpson-like deductive technique, wonders if the lack of reported murders is the reason why there aren’t any! D’oh.
And what the hell was he doing interviewing the ex-producer of 'Cops'? Moore seemed to be under the impression that Cops is part of the problem, and not just a product of it. For proof, we see half a dozen clips of 'Cops' - which is misrepresented as a ‘Let’s Arrest Us Some Blacks’ show. The questioning is along the lines of 'Why don't you make 'reality TV' about the causes of crime?', to which the producer honestly responds 'Well, I just don't know how to make that show'. Moore refuses to move on and gets the same answer another three times before saying that he knows how to make that work and then... tries to be funny with a short spoof. It's the same as cornering the Big Brother producer and asking him how he can justify such a show in the face of homelessness. The scene belongs nowhere but the cutting room floor.
It gets much, much worse. When a black kid shoots dead his six year old classmate in Moore’s hometown, he looks for a scapegoat. What follows is pathetic. He finds out that the mother worked in a restaurant 80 miles away – so the guy whose name is attached to that restaurant chain (Dick Clarke) gets the blame! Coz, you see, if she didn’t have a job, she would have been in the house when her kid left for school and, unlike his Uncle, may have spotted the gun in his pocket in the way only a mother can do! Oh, he does it all in the guise of it being an unfair government policy of welfare-to-work (which got her the job), but that certainly isn’t Dick Clarke’s fault. Indeed, given the area’s crappy housing, and the fact that she’s making at least $300 a week, there is more to her financial problems than Moore is interested in.
He also looks 100% unconvincing when he’s ‘involved’ in intimate moments – as he tries to comfort an upset teacher, or walk away all solemn from the Heston estate, leaving a picture of a murdered child. I didn’t really take to the man at all – even his attempts at humour (as an on-screen presence anyway) aren’t that funny and almost always out of place.
Finally, for Moore’s last missed opportunity, comes the finale – the interview with National Rifle Association president, Charlton Heston. I’m slightly suspicious that Moore, who admits to being in the NRA himself, only does so to make it look like this is the only reason Ben-Hur agrees to see him. It just doesn’t appear to be the case. Heston, who has a lot to answer for, is never less than 100% courteous. Hell, when Moore gets his address from a ‘star map’, he even answers his own buzzer and politely agrees to an interview the next morning.
Michael Moore spectacularly fails to slam-dunk Heston. Just like the ‘Cops’ interview, he wastes too much time by asking the same inane question over and over. ‘But Mr Heston, as you’ve never been a victim of crime, why are the guns in your house loaded?’. Jesus H. Christ! And when Heston mentions America’s violent past, Moore isn’t pleased (even after he’s said so himself). When Heston mentions the country’s ethnic history, Moore isn’t pleased (even after he’s said so himself). As it becomes clear that Moore wants Heston to get racist, Chuck terminates the interview. No ill feeling, no ‘get out of my house’, no going to get the loaded guns, he simply walks away a frail old man, leaving Moore & co in his property to do as they wish. Moore even stalks him around the mansion for a bit. An opportunity missed and after all the frankly horrid shots of Heston at NRA gatherings, he finishes the movie with more grace than he started it.
I’ll end with a nasty cheapshot of my own. Another uniquely American phenomenon is the attitude of their obese people (of which they must have record per-capita numbers). In the UK I get the impression that obese people are rather uncomfortable being so fat, and are almost humbled by it. Not so in America, where they wear the tightest tops, shorts showing off their fat legs, and develop an opinionated attitude to match their waistlines. Someone really should look into that…
extra additions & amendments made - even more torture
Answers:
i haven't seen bowling for colombine yet so i cannot comment on the film but i do feel the need to comment on your last paragraph.
you seem to be condeming fat people in america for not feeling terrible about their weight. your statement sounds like you're saying all fat people should be ashamed of ther weight and wish to make amends by becoming thin, wonderful members of society. so what if the great fat masses (which you are correct there are many, many of) don't care they are fat. let them be if they want to. just because they are fat doesn't mean they should all be walking aroung with their heads lowered, with no self esteem or confidence. i'm sure the vast (no pun intended) majority of them are perfectly aware they are fat, and are either too lazy to do anything about it or just don't care. let them be fat, let them wear tight clothes f they want to. if others find it unsightly, tough! that's their problem, not the problem of the fat people. and as for the opinionated attitude, i was under the impression that came with a US passport and was nothing to do with there blatant disregard for the enjoyment of others out to ogle beautiful people. let the fat people do what they please, in fact, let them eat cake.
Answers:
I agree, people may get as fat as they can. As long as they are happy to pay for 2 seats on a plane, and if they use the Tube in rush hour buy 2 tickets for that too, and so on.
I wonder if all those size 12s subsidise the size 20s?
Sb
Answers:
Originally posted by ought
I agree, people may get as fat as they can. As long as they are happy to pay for 2 seats on a plane, and if they use the Tube in rush hour buy 2 tickets for that too, and so on.
Sb
Then you are an idiot.
:rolleyes:
Answers:
Just to get back to McD's last paragraph, I think that's an excellent idea for a documentary - not least because it ties in more closely with <I>Bowling for Columbine</I> (or at least my impression of it: I haven't seen it yet) than one might expect.
You only have to spend five minutes in the US to realise that there are a great many quite astonishingly fat people over there - and by "fat" I don't mean "pleasantly plump and jolly in a Dawn French kind of way", I mean "so elephantine that they can barely function as normal human beings" (and a size that you almost never see in Europe), and, like McD, I'm astonished at how a great many people seem to think that there's nothing remotely unusual or reprehensible about this - because there clearly is something deeply wrong with a society that lets a worryingly large proportion of its population get like this.
And, as with the gun laws, it's a cultural problem - it's the logical conclusion of an overwhelmingly sedentary existence (driving anywhere more than 100 yards) coupled with a diet that's based around an extreme abundance of very cheap but for the most part very poor-quality food with a heavy concentration of fats and sugars.
So it's not remotely surprising that obesity is rampant - Michael Moore probably isn't considered especially fat in his native country - echoing the bafflement that TV execs felt when the BBC tried to sell them <I>Two Fat Ladies</I>: they liked the programme, but didn't understand the title!
Answers:
there clearly is something deeply wrong with a society that lets a worryingly large proportion of its population get like this.
their biomass will be used for energy creation/storage purposes when the giant lizards take over america. 280 million * 25 stones of unadulterated lipids, who needs nuclear fusion?
Answers:
Originally posted by McD
[B]Further proof, of Moore making his mind up before any of these interviews, comes in the form of Marilyn Manson. I know little about Manson, but it looked pretty clear to me that he’d been absolved of everything before they met. Many Columbine parents blamed Manson and his music for the shootings. But Moore loves what Manson has to say - especially all that stuff about 'the culture of fear'. Could this 'culture' be to blame for America's rampant gun deaths? The ‘fear’ is apparently spread by advertising! 'Buy this toothpaste or you'll have smelly breath', etc. .
I agree with most of what you wrote, but I'd take issue with this - it seems to me that Moore's exploration of "the culture of fear" goes rather deeper than just the advertising industry: it permeates much of the US mass media, particularly so-called factual programmes.
And it's matched over here - one of the things I've always truly loathed about the <I>Daily Mail</I> (and I suspect it's not unconnected with the fact that it was the only major newspaper to significantly dislike the film) is that the vast majority of its stories are written and presented in such a way as to terrify their readers into conformity with what they consider to be the norm: anything foreign or "different" is to be feared and attacked (though of course the <I>Mail</I> denies having anything to do with subsequent racist hate mail sent to people that they've been energetically demonising).
I think the <I>Mail</I> and its ilk do immense damage in spreading fear and hatred for no good reason - but where we differ from the US is that we're not armed to the teeth and are far less trigger-happy (and far less prone to religion-inspired fundamentalist ideology, something Moore rather plays down) - conversely, Canada has the guns but also a strong tradition of tolerance that also encompasses its mass media.
Of course, part of the problem with the film is that Moore attempts far too much and inevitably ends up drawing overly simplistic conclusions (most painfully in the Charlton Heston interview - I honestly think the film would have been far better for its removal and indeed the removal of much of the last couple of reels) - it might have been a rather more thought-provoking film if he trusted his audience more than he evidently does. Then again, muckraking documentaries like this are far more common in Britain than they are in the US, so I suspect we've been conditioned to expect something rather more sophisticated.
But it's well worth seeing - for all its flaws it does at least attempt to ask the kind of questions that American film-makers have preferred not to think about, and I was delighted to see that the cinema I saw it in yesterday afternoon was relatively full: apparently it's Charlton Heston's biggest British hit since the original <I>Planet of the Apes</I>!
Answers:
Originally posted by Michael Brooke
...apparently it's Charlton Heston's biggest British hit since the original <I>Planet of the Apes</I>!
I assume this is a joke. Even Burton's POTA, with Heston cameo, made a fair few quid and will still no doubt cream Bowling for Columbine.
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