the world has turned and left me here

bowling for columbine

Saw Bowling for Columbine last night at UNL's film theater. Incendiary is definitely the right word. It's a pretty harsh criticism of America which centers around the question: why do we shoot each other here more than anywhere else? (Apparently over 10,000 Americans die each year in gun-related deaths, while in Japan, Britain, Australia, Germany, etc. the number is under 300).

Moore explores several possible answers, among them that we have more racial tension because of our higher ethnic mix, that bloodshed is a part of our national history/identity, or that we're simply a gun-saturated culture, with guns and ammo available over every counter and present in every home. But Moore discards these explanations because they don't differentiate us from these other nations without the "gun problem." We don't have a significantly higher racial mix. Germany, Britain, or basically any other industrialized country you can think of has had their share of bloodbaths. Canada has 10 million homes and 7 million guns, and arguably more "gun culture" than the U.S.

Halfway through the documentary Moore interviews Marilyn Manson, who (oddly enough) gives the explanation Moore eventually settles for: guns and shootings are a symptom of our fear of each other, a fear fed by the news media, by the government, and ultimately by the corporate world--because there's a huge profit in doing so.

As for me, I can't buy into this rage-against-the-system message, because it's just too adolescent. Sure, there's some truth in it. But pointing your finger at corporate America, or "the system," or whatever blanket conspiracy you care to conjure up, is a cop-out. Anyone can do that. And nothing is made better; you've just transferred the blame to a non-entity.

My own explanation seemed pretty different to me at first: guns and shootings are a product of our fierce individualism. It's also why, for instance, we drive cars everywhere instead of developing efficient public transportation, as other industrialized nations have done: because a car is about one driver controlling his or her destiny, and a train is not. And I think our individualism is something which sets us apart. The rest of the industrial world is socializing, and there's pressure on us to do so too, but there's more resistance from the individual here in America than anywhere else. So our growing pains are much worse.

Then I got to thinking...maybe individualism is just the name we give to our essential fear of "the other." Maybe it isn't the highest of virtues, as we'd like to believe, but an inability to cope with the idea of other people. This brought me around full circle...