Robyn.Bowles.es

Last night we went to see “Bowling for Columbine” with one of our new Spanish friends and two of her friends. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that it paints a critical picture of our country. It was the first time we had seen the movie – and the fact that we were watching it outside of our country with people who have never been to the U.S. added an interesting element. I found myself often wondering what our friends, and the others in the theater, were thinking about the place I call home; the people whom I call neighbors; and, what were they thinking of us? It was also an added irony that much of the film was made in Michigan, the state where Michael Moore was born. (In one brief scene we saw a man pull out his map of Michigan – his hand – and point to some place on the East side of the state. Our friend got a bit of laugh out of that, becuase we had done the same thing with our “maps” just last week when we told her where we were from. On Samuel’s map, he has a freckle to mark the location of Kalamazoo.)
So, the movie. I think it was well done. I don’t agree with all of the tactics he uses to obtain interviews and information, but I must admit it was very clever, and very thought-provoking. Although it did not answer the question Michael Moore set out to obtain, at least it brought the question to the forefront of the minds of those who see the film, and gave some interesting insight to those “answers” most often heard when asked the question: “What is so unique about the people in the United States that would lead so many of them to kill one another?”
If you are looking for some heavy, meaningful discussion material, I would definitely recommend this film. And if you don’t necessarily make it a habit to set out to search for heavy things to discuss, I would still recommend seeing this film, thinking about the questions, and wrestling to make some sense of it.

We had a brief, yet awkward discussion about it afterwards with our Spanish friends. Awkward mainly because of the language barrier between us, but also because it was hard to know exactly how to respond to such a film with people who have never been to the U.S., but only know what they’ve seen on TV and in the movies.

Ironically, my professor made mention today of the frequency in the U.S. to hear of murders, rapes and other brutal crimes – every day; while here it is very rare. In fact, the homocide rate in the U.S. is 5 times that of Spain (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_cap).

So, why do Americans kill each other; and what are we afraid of?

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