At 05:03  13/06/03 -0400, Dan wrote:
>Why does Moore's film have such a bad reputation?  In a review for a =
>proposed book on Ethics and Film, one of my readers said that Bowling =
>for Columbine is so inaccurate and manipulative that it should be ruled =
>out for pedagogical use.


Well for me it is obvious.  Moore is the only left wing artist I know who
can speak to the American working class.  His persona/mask/character is a
great comic creation.  Homer Simpson, Archie Bunker would be the other ones
that would make a meaningful comparison.  But Homer is a creation of the
liberal middle-class and his worker as moron is hardly likely to politicise
working class Americans.  Bunker of course was a racist and fundamentally a
means for the middle class to circumvent Political Correctness while
blaming it all on the workers.

Moore has the talent to make people laugh and think at the same time. By
contrast listening to the average leftist is about as as funny as having to
eat a ton of raw potatoes.

In preparing for a talk I gave at the opening of the film here in Brisbane,
I researched the reviews in the American Press and the reluctance to come
to terms with the film's international success was evident.  To those of us
who live outside America Moore seems to be addressing the nature of the
Behemoth that Bush's America has become.

There is such a tremendous gap now between  Americans and the rest of the
world.  Even a moderate like Hobsbawm describes the American leadership as
the "crazies in
Washington" (Le Monde, 2003).  That I think helps to some extent to explain
Moore's huge popularity outside the USA.

Within the states he articulates a liberal communalism which I suspect has
always been the main source of opposition to American Capital. His constant
ploy is to expel symbolically the corporatist/militarist from the
community.  Hence his great joke of taking a house-warming present to Bill
Gates.  The very impossibility of making such a standard communal gesture
illustrated Gates' not belonging to the basic American community.

As for Moore being slanted and unethical I use Bhaskar's take on Isaiah
Berlin's "example of the most accurate social scientific explanation the
Holocaust as also being the most morally forthright and truthful('the Jews
were murdered') (Archer, M et al Critical Realism: Essential Readings,
Routledge, 1998: 572; See also Bhaskar, R. Plato Etc, Verso, 1994: 110)".
It is simply not true or ethical to say that the Jews died or even were
killed.  Nor is it true or ethical to describe what the USA & the British
did in Iraq as "delivering ordinance" - the standard description on Fox News.

I repeat what I said in my earlier post - the challenge that Moore
represents in theoretical terms is quite complex.  Roger and Me manipulates
time sequences to convey an absolute truth that American Capital does not
care about the American community. This brings us close to Walter
Benjamin's point that the meaning of life is not available empirically.  It
requires an act of imagination often to uncover the truth.

That is why in theoretical terms we have to come to grips with the New
Documentary's raiding of the armory of fiction to convey the truth.

regards

Gary