CHAPTER 23: OH, CANADA! 33. Three Canadian teenagers stand outside a Taco Bell in Ontario. All are skipping school, but it doesn’t seem to be a big deal. Moore asks them all the gun murders in America. “I have no idea. People must hate each other.” When Moore wonders if Canadians hate each other too, the young man says, “We don’t go to the point of shootin’ somebody just to get revenge.” What do they do, then? “Tease ‘em, ridicule ‘em.” Cut to a shot of a police officer sitting behind his desk at the station. Moore asks, how many gun murders this year? None. Last year? One. This is Sarnia, Canada, population 73,000. So how about Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit? Windsor’s a city of 250,000. How many murders? Not for at least three years. Moore’s voice-over: There were no Canadians shooting other Canadians. Now it’s time to dispel some myths about Canadians! In turn, Moore discloses that Canadian youth watch more violent television and movies than Americans do, there is more unemployment in Canada than in the US, and Canada has a diverse population—13% non-white. All of this is to set up the next point. We see a gun range in Windsor, and Moore talks to a few guys about the guns they own. Most own several guns. Then for the second time we see the Mayor of the city of Sarnia in his office, and he talks about the hunting heritage of Canadians, and so it would not be unexpected that Canadians own lots of guns. Then a guy sitting in a car (who is he?) delivers the statistic that out of 10 million families in Canada there are 7 million guns. Cut to the gun range. Moore’s voice-over: Wow! Canada was one gun-loving, gun-totin’, gun-crazy country. Then he talks to a few people who tell him how easy it would be to buy a gun in Canada. Off he goes to a K-Mart in Canada and buys as much ammunition as he wants. CHAPTER 24: UNLOCKED DOORS 34. He keeps the cinema verite style moving: we keep seeing the people he is interviewing and hear him ask the questions before they answer them. He finds two people in bars and asks them if they lock their doors. Nope. He learns that both of them have suffered break-ins. But do they lock their doors now? Nope. Cut to Moore standing outside, looking around as if confused. He is in Toronto, and he is obsessed with this idea of people not locking their doors. He approaches a guy at a sidewalk café. “You don’t lock your doors?” Nope. The guy explains, “You think as Americans the lock is keeping people out of your place. We as Canadians see it as when we lock the door we’re imprisoning ourselves.” Cut to Moore on the street in Toronto. His voice-over: I decided to go a neighborhood unannounced and see if this unlocked door thing was true. We watch him approach and open three doors. The last one he says, “No one locks their doors!” He talks to another woman at her front door—she isn’t afraid. And then he ends by talking to the man at the third house—and apologizes for opening the door unannounced. 35. He notes, in a local bar, that the television news programs Canadians watch seem a bit different from U.S. programs—because they feature articulate politicians saying serious things about policy. Moore’s voice-over; Night after night, the Canadians were not being pumped full of fear. And their politicians seem to talk kinda funny. We return to the mayor of Sarnia, who talks about the importance of social programs. “That’s how you build a good society.” In another scene, he talks on camera: “You don’t win by beating up on people who can’t defend themselves.” Then he makes a pointed comment about political conservatives like President Bush—“and at the same time they are giving tax breaks to people who don’t need them.” Another young man on camera responds to Moore’s question, “Where do the indigent people live?” He shakes his head. “We don’t have that problem here.” Then Moore takes us to where poor people live—a two and three-story housing area, nice brick buildings lit by the afternoon sun. Moore’s voice-over: This is what a slum looks like in Canada. Then back to the kids in front of Taco Bell. Moore asks them “Why should people have health care?” Their answer, “Everyone’s got the right to live.” Moore spots a man outside an emergency room. He has numerous stitches across his forehead. How much did he pay for this treatment? Nothing. Then back to one of the two people in the bar, the middle-aged blonde woman. She notes that in the U.S. the response is to “pull their gun at ‘em. You’re on my property.” Then we spot Moore back at the midway at the spot in Windsor, and there he is talking to a black man, from Detroit, visiting for the night. Another black man says, “People over here are a little more open-minded, a little more welcoming.” Later he adds, “Segregation is more intensified over there.” Back to the kids at Taco Bell. The girl says, “I just think the view of things in the States is fighting. Canada is more, ‘Let’s negotiate. Let’s work something out.’ Where the States is just ‘We’ll kill you—and that’ll be the end of that.” Back to the guy who is shown riding in the front seat of a car. “If guns made people safer, then the United States would be one of the safest countries in the world. It’s the opposite. tc.umn.edu/~ryahnke/filmteach/My-Archive-of-Film-Notes/bowling-columbine-VIEW.htm
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 17:32:27 +0000
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