Jing Ke
Dec, 2009
Course Title: Government Communication
Open the Deadlock? Government Transparency and Communication Policies of Chinese Government during Sichuan Earthquake
At 2:28 in the afternoon of May 12, 2008 the ground in China's Sichuan province shuddered and cracked open. Buildings, roads and lives were torn apart in seconds. During the next minutes, tremors of the quake were felt throughout the whole country and reached as far away as Russia, India and Pakistan. With a magnitude of 8.0, the massive earthquake had left nearly 70,000 dead with over 18,000 missing[1] and about 5 million people (most of them poor and elderly villagers) homeless[2] (though the number could be as high as 11 million[3]), making it the 19th deadliest earthquake of all time.
Eighteen minutes after the disaster, at 2:46 in the afternoon, the official press agency of Chinese government Xinhua News Agency first publicized breaking news of the earthquake on its website. Fourteen minutes later, at 3:00 in the afternoon, the major state television broadcaster and mouthpiece of the government China Central Television (CCTV) started a 24-hour live broadcast of the disaster on both CCTV-1 and CCTV-News channels. At the same time, most of the mainstream media in China (newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, magazines) as well as new media (websites and cell phone news, etc.) began to report the earthquake. According to Asian Weekly magazine, after the earthquake, CCTV had sent over 160 reporters to the disaster zone, and they were doing their job with the support of all the provincial TV stations in China. The quantity and quality of news broadcasting on the earthquake “break the record in Chinese news reporting history” [4].
Besides domestic media, seniors in Chinese central government also had a quick response to the unexpected cataclysm. Ninety minutes after the earthquake, Premier Wen Jiabao, who has an academic background in geology, flew to the earthquake area to oversee the rescue work[5]. Soon afterward, the State Council initiated an emergency contingency plan to deal with the entire rescue, settle and rebuild work after the earthquake. In order to communicate with the public effectively and publicize the latest information of the disaster, the central government disseminated the information primarily via three channels:
State-owned domestic media (mentioned above)
Press conferences and the Chinese government’s official web portal[6]
Overseas media and independent journalists facing the foreign audience
Such is the profile of Chinese government’s reactions on information communication after the earthquake. Based on the event, the question I focus on in this essay is: Can government achieve pure transparency in its communication with the public? If not, then to what extent can the transparency be?
On May 1, 2008, just eleven days before the earthquake, the Regulation on Publicizing Government Information of People’s Republic of China was officially promulgated and came into force in China. From the political science perspective, this regulation, if effectively implemented, would have a far-reaching impact on Chinese society. As the insiders have already revealed, once issued, “it will commit all government organs to publishing most of the information which until now has remained locked in office desks”[7]. In other words, this regulation unprecedentedly represents the principle of citizen’s “right to know” and asserts government’s obligation on disclosure of information about public affairs.
It is quite fair to say that the Chinese central government’s responses and reactions, including their attitude to state-owned and overseas media on news reporting after the earthquake, have highly, although not thoroughly, revealed the principles of this information publicizing regulation. Comment from the International Herald Tribune and other overseas media states that Chinese government’s attitude on the earthquake news reporting is “amazingly open”[8]. As a matter of fact, compared with the long-established tradition of highly centralized administration, lack of transparency, and state-controlled information publicity as well as news censorship in journalism, the central government of China, when facing the Sichuan Earthquake, is trying out a more open and transparent way to communicate with the public. In today’s global discourse and competition of new public management (NPM), these reactions showed the eagerness of Chinese government and the leadership of China to gradually move the huge bureaucratic machine towards a modest form of “good governance”[9] through the ongoing administrative reforms and innovation.
Before examine the transparency issues of government communication, I’d like to figure out some fundamental elements and definitions of transparency in the field of political science. In the field of political science, “transparency” can be defined as “legal, political and institutional structures that make information about the internal characteristics of government and society available to actors both inside and outside of the domestic political system”[10], this definition emphasizes the structural measures that create a climate that promotes transparency in government actions. Cotterrell also argued that “transparency is the availability of information on matters of public concern, the ability of citizens to participate in political decisions, and the accountability of government to public opinion or legal processes”[11], focusing on the opening organizational behavior. Finel and Lord at the same time defined transparency as “legal, political and institutional structures that make information about the internal characteristics of government and society available to actors both inside and outside of the domestic political system”[12]. In one word, open administrative procedures and citizen’s access to information and decision-making process are key aspects of transparency.
According to Fairbanks, Plowman and Rawlins, an ideal model of a transparent government communication, the Transparency Model[13], can be visualized as a three dimensional triangle: The base of this model is a commitment to transparent communication processes, the three sides, or key elements of the model are communication practices, organizational support and the provision of resources[14]. This model can be used to understand how to make the workings of a government or public sector more transparent and how government should interact with the public.
One principal goal of this transparency model is citizen’s access to information, which increases the public’s knowledge on government’s activities and attendance in decision-making process. As Fairbanks, Plowman, and Rawlins argued, transparency in government actions and decision-making processes create an informed public, which is the basic stone of a healthy democracy[15]. On the other hand, there is a direct connection between government transparency and its accountability. Scholars have suggested that good communication and interaction with the public can increase trust, since open access to information and transparent systems will increase the public's knowledge of government activities. Oppositely, the decline of trust in government is an outgrowth of poor communication between government and its publics, where publics feel that they are not well informed about government actions. The accountability of public sectors is a crucial factor for modern scientific administration, especially in crisis period. The image of accountability and trustworthy of a government would facilitate a more effective and efficient way for policy making as well as undertaking.
It seems Fairbanks’s model has perfectly depicted how to create a good, responsible, accountable, and transparent government communication, it represents us a vision of “government transparency” in liberal democratic political systems. However, pure transparency only establishes itself on the conceptual and theoretical side. On the practical side of government administration and public management, pure transparency in government communication is no more than a “cheerful willingness”. More accurately, I would argue that pure transparency is neither realizable nor advisable on the empirical level of government communication.
Fairbanks and his colleagues’ research[16] has shown that, nowadays leaders and communicators in government have clearly recognized that the openness in the communication process of federal agencies is one of the basic requirements of a democratic government. However, we have spent most of our class throughout this semester discussing the un-transparent practices of government, such as strategic truth, plausible deniability, democratic propaganda and integrated circuit, etc. In other words, we were digging out the “ugly truth” of public management and the nature of political world: How to maintain a controlled or at least translucent communication under the mask of being transparent? From my perspective, this question is irrelevant with the political system, the ideologies, or the extent of democracy of a country. As a matter of fact, the issue of government transparency might be a never-ending dilemma for government leaders and social servants everywhere in the world. At least till now, we haven’t seen any political entity solve this problem perfectly.
In the context of Canadian parliamentary political system, as well as other western democratic countries, the un-transparent communication practices I mentioned above widely exist. Especially in the Westminster political system of Commonwealth of Nations countries (UK, Canada, Australia, etc.) which hold parliamentary opposition (multi-party) as a key characteristic and tend to have a more adversarial style of debate and contest between parties. In this situation, the game is all about “winning the power”, which means, the first objective of a government to be elected/re-elected and to stay in power. The competition between the majority and minority in the parliament is so severe that both sides would spare no pains to dig out any tiny mistakes and missteps of each other in order to embarrass and shame the competitor. Consequently, a paradoxical situation is shaped: on the one hand, government passes legislations to facilitate and protect transparency under the hat of being “democracy” (e.g. Access to Information Act and Freedom of Information); on the other hand, government has to control, attain and keep power, pure transparency is not realist -- such is the nature of governance.
Same thing happens in China’s single-party socialist political system. Though the central government has been pushing an extensive restructuring of public sectors for two decades[17] in order to catch up with the pace of the country’s economic development and integrate with the rest of the world, current situation is still hardly optimistic. The uniqueness of China’s public sector administration and reform are widely known as “Chinese Characteristics”:
Firstly, the country’s leadership has to maintain an ideological correctness. Secondly, the leaders are eager to “learn from the west”, they largely adopt the NPM reforms originating in the Anglo-American countries[18] to accord with the economic reform and to facilitate the economic success. Thirdly, since the world has seen China’s rise in recent years, the central government is bearing increasing pressure from western world to change the governance to be more democratic and transparent, especially after China’s accession to the WTO. Finally, current conditions of Chinese society are rather complicated and the country’s economic development has suffered many growth-related problems[19] (e.g. inflation pressure, income gap, regional imbalance, and unemployment concerns). The Chinese society has also experienced many problems in the areas of school education, public health, public safety, and social welfare, etc. And now they have to face new problems -- the separatist or even terrorist thoughts and activities in the country.
From my perspective, Chinese society is now quite unstable under the superficial quietness and risk may occur (and is occurring) anytime. Based on all the considerations, the central government of China is also facing the dilemma I mentioned above in government communication and cannot achieve pure transparency on administration and information. As a matter of fact, until now China has refused to issue a press law because it might curtail the privileges of Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda department in disseminating information.
Sometimes I feel this deadlock situation quite ironic and I would personally describe it as “good people doing bad things” -- Rationally, everyone in this domain knows that in government communication “greater transparency promotes accountability and better management” [20] but practically no one can put it into practice. This is not only a phenomenon throughout the western world, but actually the whole political world. Grunig’s two-way symmetrical communication model[21] is a rather amiable belief for transparent government communication, but in contemporary political arena it’s a lofty aspiration.
Personally speaking, I prefer to look at this issue from a more realistic perspective. Thousands of years of human experience tells us that, any existence of government, no matter democratic, republic, communist, dictatorship, or, in history, monarchist and Christian etc., is a monopoly of organized forces. Control is necessary since the so-called “free markets” and “individual initiative” is not always reliable. Numerous historical events as well as social experiments have proved that no matter to what extent a society develops, the rationality of human mind is tend to be over-estimated and public opinion is always easy to be manipulated. Examples are Nazism’s upsurge in post-World War I Germany and the notorious Culture Revolution in 1960s China, as well as other political movements in human history that have agitated the public into fanatical obsession. Moreover, as some ancient Chinese politicians and philosophers believed, dialectically speaking, good social order depends on governance and people’s freedom depends on a certain extent of forces and restrictions. To be honest, I personally disapprove of the political philosophy of anarchism and I agree that a compulsory government is always necessary.
I’m not advocating high-pressure politics here. Pure transparency might be advisable and plausible at a low level of governance in a relatively small region (e.g. municipal government in cities, towns, villages and municipalities). In such circumstances, the population is smaller and the demographic structure is simpler, it is possible for government to hold assembly and to obtain a unifying public opinion and agreement on a given issue or policy. For instance, the municipal governments in Canada may set out some statues named as the Municipal Act, the Local Government Act, the Cities and Towns Act and the like to provide services that can be more effectively handled under local control[22]. Also, the origins of the term democracy in ancient Greek have represented another good example of pure transparency and direct democracy in politics. Plato claimed that, to achieve democracy, all citizens were eligible to speak and vote in the Assembly, which set the laws of the city-state[23]. As a matter of fact, of the 250,000 inhabitants in Athens at that time, only some 30,000 on average were “citizens”, and of those 30,000 perhaps 5,000 might regularly attend one or more meetings of the popular Assembly[24].
Nevertheless, on a larger scale, for federal government and other types of government in contemporary world, to undertake pure transparency in government communication might cause huge disorder and chaos, and the situation will definitely lose control. Take China’s government communication strategy and activity after the earthquakes for example, though the communications between Chinese government and the public requires honesty and openness to stop rumors and halt panic, the impediments and balancing interest in pure transparency are still easy to perceive:
First and foremost, the central government of China needs to maintain public order and control the situation in the post-earthquake mess. When crisis happen, government sometimes cannot communicate all the facts and must “hide” some part of the truth for the public good. I would personally view this as a kind of obscurantism, which means the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known or a policy of withholding knowledge from the general public[25]. But it really works in certain context, especially in China where the vast majority of the population is undereducated and easy to overthrow self-control in crisis period.
Secondly, the existing censorship practiced in China’s mainstream media constrains the media’s capacity to report the disaster objectively and independently. As I mentioned above, until now China has no press law and the propaganda department of central government is in charge of all the information disseminated from the mainstream media. As is always the case, the “reportage policy” of the earthquake was sent to all state-owned media in the country soon after the disaster happened in form of official documents through an intranet. Consequently, the mainstream media’s reports have to fulfill the government’s requirement of propaganda and the so-called “guidance of public opinion” (yulun daoxiang).
Last but not least, the ideological conflict between China and western countries and the world’s hostility to China’s recent year’s rise “forced” the central government to withhold information, in order to protect state interest and maintain a good (or at least neutral) national image. For instance, lots of schools collapsed in the earthquake and the bodies of teenagers are, as reported, “Too many to count”[26], experts on global hazards pointed out that the loss of life could have been significantly reduced using known methods for designing or retrofitting structures in earthquake zones[27] and they named those collapsed buildings “tofu-dregs school houses”[28]. However, government till today refuses to accept responsibility and doesn’t admit that there is any quality problem of the school houses nor publicize the member of death in school collapse. It is probably because to do this will implicate other issues like the rampant corruption and misconduct in Chinese bureaucratic system. – In my opinion the government’s reaction is quite unsophisticated, as one can never solve a problem by cover it up.
Based on the above analysis, I would go to the conclusion that practically speaking, pure transparency in government communication is neither realizable nor advisable in any political context. It is not realizable because government has to win a power, there is no room for pure transparency; and it is not advisable because government has to run, there is still no room for pure transparency. Thus I personally believe that it is impossible to open the deadlock between theoretical and practical side of government transparency, Chinese government’s communication activities after Sichuan Earthquake also reflected this dilemma.
To close the essay, I want to add that the optimistic side of the deadlock needs to be highlighted. Although pure transparency is not realizable in contemporary government communication, the political practice of liberal democratic countries as well as some developing countries like China proves that the citizen’s access to information and government’s transparency is much better than decades ago. The widely adoption of E-Government in modern public management and all the legislations providing the right of access to information and protecting the citizen’s “right to know” guarantee that generally, government information is available to the public. Besides, with the development of public education and the information communication technologies, people are tend to shape more deliberate and considered opinions over public issues and can get information via non-professional media. From my point of view, the rise of today’s civil/citizen journalism may change the existing relationships between government, media and public in “public sphere”, and it will probably bring a more hopeful future of government transparency.
[1] “Casualties of the Wenchuan Earthquake” (in Chinese). Sina.com. 2008-06-08. http://news.sina.com.cn/pc/2008-05-13/326/651.html.
[2] Jacobs, Andrew; Edward Wong; Huang Yuanxi (2009-05-07). “China Reports Student Toll for Quake”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08china.html.
[3] Hooker, Jake (2008-05-26). “Toll Rises in China Quake”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/world/asia/26quake.html.
[4] Zhang, Jieping. Sichuan Earthquake and Opening of Journalism (in Chinese). Asian Weekly. 2008. issue22
[5] Simon Elegant. China's Quake Damage Control. Time. 2008-05-13
[6] http://www.gov.cn /
[7] Zhang, Junhua. 2005. Good Governance through E-Governance? Assessing China’s E-Government Strategy. Journal of E-Government, Vol. 2(4)
[8] http://www.zaobao.com/special/forum/pages6/forum_zp080521.shtml
[9] Christensen, Dong, and Painter. 2008. Administrative reform in China’s central government - how much ‘learning from the West’?. International Review of Administrative Sciences. Vol. 74 (3): 351–371
[10] Finel B.I., Lord K.M. 1999. The surprising logic of transparency. International Studies Quarterly. 43: 315-339.
[11] Cotterrell R. 1999. Transparency, mass media, ideology and community. Cultural Values. 3(4): 414-426.
[12] B.I. Finel and K.M. Lord. 1999. The surprising logic of transparency. International Studies Quarterly. 43 (2) (1999), pp. 315–339.
[13] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27.
[14] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27
[15] Same as 14
[16] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27
[17] Christensen, Dong, and Painter. 2008. Administrative reform in China’s central government - how much ‘learning from the West’?. International Review of Administrative Sciences. Vol. 74 (3): 351–371
[18] Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. (2004) Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[19] Kuotsai Tom Liou. (2008). E-Government Development and China’s Administrative Reform. Intl Journal of Public Administration, 31: 76–95
[20] The Gomery Commission Report. 2006. Chapter 10. Transparency and better management
[21] Grunig, J.E. (1997). Public relations management in government and business. In J.L. Garnett, & A.Kouzmin (Eds.), Handbook of administrative communication (pp. 241). New York: Marcel Dekker
[22] Municipal government in The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0005517
[23] Grinin L. E. (2004). Democracy and Early State. Social Evolution & History. 3(2), pp. 93-149
[24] Democracy is people who rule the government directly. BBC. History of democracy
[25] obscurantism. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved December 14, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obscurantism
[26] Tania Branigan. (2008). In the rubble of a school, bodies everywhere - too many to count. The Guardian. 2008/5/16 , from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/16/chinaearthquake.china2
[27] Andrew C. Revkin. (2008). China earthquake brings faulty school design to the fore. New York Times. 2008/05/14, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/asia/14iht-schools.1.12875366.html
[28] Alex Lantier. 2008. "Rising death toll, popular anger in China quake". World Socialist Web Site. May 21, 2008. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/quak-m21.shtml.
Mar 26, 2010
Growing up under Pressure - Some of my views on Singapore film industry
Jing Ke
Oct, 2007
Course Title: Film Studies
Growing up under Pressure
Some of my perspectives on Singapore film industry
(As a Chinese born in the late 1980s and grown up in a populous mainland city, Singapore film is not a familiar word to me. Surrounded by Hollywood blockbusters and Hong Kong gangster films, I watched my first Singapore film 3 months ago after arriving here. The more Singapore films I watch, the more curious I feel about the film industry of this country, that is the reason why I choose this topic.)
Singapore film industry began in the early 1930s, it enjoyed a golden age in the 1950s and 1960s and produced nearly 400 films during that period. After its independence in 1965, the film industry of the nation was almost silent before 1990 as the government despised film making. However, since the release of Bugis Street and Mee Pok Man, the first profitable local film in 1995, film industry of Singapore has launched into its renaissance.[①] From my perspective, the renaissance of Singapore film industry is in a steady but tortuous process.
The film industry of a country is inseparable with its culture, history, politics and economy background as well as the ideology and value it believes in. Accordingly, I’d like to analyze Singapore film industry from the following aspects:
Culture:
Singapore a small and multi-raced country possessing a diversified culture, the various ethnic groups celebrate their own cultures while they intermingle with one another. This special form of culture has great influence on local film industry, since film is a cultural practice, it is born in a certain culture context and has emotional and moral impact on the audience. Film is also remarked as a “bridge” connects different cultures and represents the culture background in which it is produced. Therefore to utilize film as an instrument for cross-cultural exchange is rather important to Singapore, since culture harmony is the basic element for a steady-going society.
Take Kelvin Tong’s horror film The Maid for example, it is a horrible story happens in a Singapore Chinese family, there are many traditional Chinese elements in the film, like the Seven Ghost Month, the Chinese Opera and the sacrifice to the dead, these are all representations to the traditional Chinese way of life in the old days. It would arouse a range of different responses among audience coming from different culture background. A Chinese will probably understand the heavy and deep pathos in this movie or even have a feeling of nostalgia to the philosophic perception on life and death in traditional Chinese values, while, say, an Indian or American would probably only enjoy the horror it brings in and sigh with confusion or even misunderstanding of the “unreasonable” Chinese way of life after seeing the film. They may have a peep into the traditional Chinese culture while misunderstand it at the same time. The risk exists in any film produced from any culture background.
Example above is one aspect of the culture issue, on a higher level, film need to represent the unique culture of Singapore to the world and promote indigenous culture at the same time. However, as 99% of the films screened in Singapore are imported while few films are exported, the indigenous culture of Singapore is under threat in the tide of globalization.
Politics & Ideology:
Acting as a part of media industry, film is under the influence of political power and ideological tendency since its appearance. Government is the leading power in control of the film industry, the administrative control can be implemented by two means, one is financing (this will be mentioned later), the other is censorship.
Film censorship is inevitably practiced in every country in different forms and different degree, according to Singapore Media Development Authority, the film censorship in Singapore aims to “protect the young from unsuitable content as well as to maintain stability and harmony in our multi-racial and multi-religious society”.[②] Besides, films are classified into 5 categories in order to provide a wider choice for audiences. As a matter of fact, either the film censorship or the classification is accepted by most of the local audience.
However, things are becoming more complex when we regard film as a way to reflect reality rather than a tool to conform the ideology. Hong Kong broadcasting magnate Run Run Shaw once called Singapore “too clean”,[③] which is a reflection on the strictness of the film censorship, and the “cleanness” is even seemed unreal.
I’d like to discuss more on Royston Tan’s film 15: The Movie, which narrates five fringe Singaporean teenagers who are abandoned by the system, the life they adopt is incompatible to the mainstream of the society. It seems more like a documentary than a film, recording the true-life story of the “bad boys” who lost themselves in the metanarrative in this postmodern world. For some acceptable reasons, this film was initially banned in Singapore and then suffered 27 cuts before being approved for release. It is reasonable for a film which reflects the dark side of a society being banned by the authority in order to maintain social stability, but sometimes to uncover and expose the wound is a better cure. The drug smuggling, suicide committing and self-abandoned adolescent gang boys can be found every place in the world and have become a social problem, film bears the responsibility to guide the audience looking into their inner world and touch their weakness behind the marble façade. It is much helpful than simply brand them “bad guy” and throw them in the corner of this “rich-and-educated-set-the-rule”[④] society. From this point of view, film censorship can be more open and flexible in some certain conditions.
On the other hand, politics is an effective power in promoting the local film industry when the government has realized the function of popular culture in facilitating economy and improving country’s image in the world. Events like the annual Singapore International Film Festival and the Film Week in Singapore Season held in London 2005 witness the government’s effort in promoting Singapore film to the world. Actually these events turned out to be great success which acquires both reputations and profits for Singapore.
Finance:
What impresses me most on Singapore film industry is that many celebrated films turned out to be very cheaply made. Eric Khoo’s film Mee Pok Man was made with a tight budget of S$100,000, and Tay Teck Lock’s Money No Enough was made for less than S$1 million but raked in S$5.8 million[⑤], making it the most commercially successful local film up to now. (Disappointedly, according to a statistic made by Singapore Film Commission, which indicates the production cost and box office receipts of all Singapore films produced from 1991 to 2007, most of the films are still at loss in business.[⑥]) Compared with some Hollywood blockbusters with tens of millions of US dollar’s budget, or even some Chinese movies produced in recent years, the financing deficiency in Singapore film industry is easy to notice and is apparently a burden on its renaissance, although the relationship between financing, quality and commercial success is not a certainty in film industry.
Accordingly, from another perspective, Singapore films concentrate on themes like social life may objectively because of the restrictions on its small budget, further financial support and more multinational cooperation is needed if Singapore wants to produce epic films like Troy or high-tech films like Star Wars.
Audience & Market:
Geographically, Singapore is an island-state with a 4.5 million small population, it is a limiting factor to the domestic film market. At the same time, due to the diversified culture background, some small budget and realistic films tend to be more successful in Singapore, like Eric Khoo’s 12 stories, Djinn Ong’s Perth and Jack Neo’s I not Stupid. Concentrating on social topics and culture interweaving landscape in Singapore, these films are capable to maintain the customer inland as well as exploit new market and find audience overseas. In recent years, more and more Singapore films appear on the stage of some well-known international film festivals (Pusan, Berlin, Moscow, Venice, etc.), they are nominated or awarded, manifesting Singapore’s marching into the international film market.
It is reasonable that due to the limited space of box income in local film market, the future of commercially successful Singapore film lies in the oversea market. In order to get a position in the international film market, domestic film productions will compete (and cooperate) with studios like Hollywood, Bollywood, and other competitors in Europe and Asia. From my perspective, a renewal in film themes and trends in Singapore film industry is necessary, filmmakers could experiment on new themes like historical or fictive, also, cooperation with other film magnates in the world is helpful to exchange ideas and acquire new techniques in film making as well as solve financial problem.
Filmmaker:
There are many capable filmmakers and directors in Singapore, they make films with their talent and passion and are trying on different styles and genres, exponents are Jack Neo, Royston Tan, Eric Khoo and Kelvin Tong. These filmmakers and their works have become the milestones in the renaissance of Singapore film industry. Besides the achievement, there is still a rough road to go. More panoramic films capable to reflect the history, society and human spirit of Singapore are in need and other challenges still occur, like to forge an indigenous as well as distinct film culture and film style of Singapore; and to produce more mature films that are both artistically and commercially successful.
To sum up, rapid development in Singapore film industry in the past decade has accumulated governors’ and filmmakers’ experience and confidence in film making as well as marketing. Both domestic and oversea markets are being cultivated, while problems and challenges still exist, the film industry of Singapore has obtained great progress and is showing its huge potential. As long as Singapore film industry can take advantage of its internationalization while maintain the indigenous color, it will harvest more achievement in future.
[①] The history of Singapore film is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Singapore
[②] http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/1001qns.aspx?sid=165&fid=77&v1=True#HtmlAnchor_Anchor
[③] http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/95/0616/cinema.html
[④] This phrase is from one of the boy’s lines in 15: The Movie
[⑤] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Singapore
[⑥] Statistic resource: http://www.sfc.org.sg/main.html
Oct, 2007
Course Title: Film Studies
Growing up under Pressure
Some of my perspectives on Singapore film industry
(As a Chinese born in the late 1980s and grown up in a populous mainland city, Singapore film is not a familiar word to me. Surrounded by Hollywood blockbusters and Hong Kong gangster films, I watched my first Singapore film 3 months ago after arriving here. The more Singapore films I watch, the more curious I feel about the film industry of this country, that is the reason why I choose this topic.)
Singapore film industry began in the early 1930s, it enjoyed a golden age in the 1950s and 1960s and produced nearly 400 films during that period. After its independence in 1965, the film industry of the nation was almost silent before 1990 as the government despised film making. However, since the release of Bugis Street and Mee Pok Man, the first profitable local film in 1995, film industry of Singapore has launched into its renaissance.[①] From my perspective, the renaissance of Singapore film industry is in a steady but tortuous process.
The film industry of a country is inseparable with its culture, history, politics and economy background as well as the ideology and value it believes in. Accordingly, I’d like to analyze Singapore film industry from the following aspects:
Culture:
Singapore a small and multi-raced country possessing a diversified culture, the various ethnic groups celebrate their own cultures while they intermingle with one another. This special form of culture has great influence on local film industry, since film is a cultural practice, it is born in a certain culture context and has emotional and moral impact on the audience. Film is also remarked as a “bridge” connects different cultures and represents the culture background in which it is produced. Therefore to utilize film as an instrument for cross-cultural exchange is rather important to Singapore, since culture harmony is the basic element for a steady-going society.
Take Kelvin Tong’s horror film The Maid for example, it is a horrible story happens in a Singapore Chinese family, there are many traditional Chinese elements in the film, like the Seven Ghost Month, the Chinese Opera and the sacrifice to the dead, these are all representations to the traditional Chinese way of life in the old days. It would arouse a range of different responses among audience coming from different culture background. A Chinese will probably understand the heavy and deep pathos in this movie or even have a feeling of nostalgia to the philosophic perception on life and death in traditional Chinese values, while, say, an Indian or American would probably only enjoy the horror it brings in and sigh with confusion or even misunderstanding of the “unreasonable” Chinese way of life after seeing the film. They may have a peep into the traditional Chinese culture while misunderstand it at the same time. The risk exists in any film produced from any culture background.
Example above is one aspect of the culture issue, on a higher level, film need to represent the unique culture of Singapore to the world and promote indigenous culture at the same time. However, as 99% of the films screened in Singapore are imported while few films are exported, the indigenous culture of Singapore is under threat in the tide of globalization.
Politics & Ideology:
Acting as a part of media industry, film is under the influence of political power and ideological tendency since its appearance. Government is the leading power in control of the film industry, the administrative control can be implemented by two means, one is financing (this will be mentioned later), the other is censorship.
Film censorship is inevitably practiced in every country in different forms and different degree, according to Singapore Media Development Authority, the film censorship in Singapore aims to “protect the young from unsuitable content as well as to maintain stability and harmony in our multi-racial and multi-religious society”.[②] Besides, films are classified into 5 categories in order to provide a wider choice for audiences. As a matter of fact, either the film censorship or the classification is accepted by most of the local audience.
However, things are becoming more complex when we regard film as a way to reflect reality rather than a tool to conform the ideology. Hong Kong broadcasting magnate Run Run Shaw once called Singapore “too clean”,[③] which is a reflection on the strictness of the film censorship, and the “cleanness” is even seemed unreal.
I’d like to discuss more on Royston Tan’s film 15: The Movie, which narrates five fringe Singaporean teenagers who are abandoned by the system, the life they adopt is incompatible to the mainstream of the society. It seems more like a documentary than a film, recording the true-life story of the “bad boys” who lost themselves in the metanarrative in this postmodern world. For some acceptable reasons, this film was initially banned in Singapore and then suffered 27 cuts before being approved for release. It is reasonable for a film which reflects the dark side of a society being banned by the authority in order to maintain social stability, but sometimes to uncover and expose the wound is a better cure. The drug smuggling, suicide committing and self-abandoned adolescent gang boys can be found every place in the world and have become a social problem, film bears the responsibility to guide the audience looking into their inner world and touch their weakness behind the marble façade. It is much helpful than simply brand them “bad guy” and throw them in the corner of this “rich-and-educated-set-the-rule”[④] society. From this point of view, film censorship can be more open and flexible in some certain conditions.
On the other hand, politics is an effective power in promoting the local film industry when the government has realized the function of popular culture in facilitating economy and improving country’s image in the world. Events like the annual Singapore International Film Festival and the Film Week in Singapore Season held in London 2005 witness the government’s effort in promoting Singapore film to the world. Actually these events turned out to be great success which acquires both reputations and profits for Singapore.
Finance:
What impresses me most on Singapore film industry is that many celebrated films turned out to be very cheaply made. Eric Khoo’s film Mee Pok Man was made with a tight budget of S$100,000, and Tay Teck Lock’s Money No Enough was made for less than S$1 million but raked in S$5.8 million[⑤], making it the most commercially successful local film up to now. (Disappointedly, according to a statistic made by Singapore Film Commission, which indicates the production cost and box office receipts of all Singapore films produced from 1991 to 2007, most of the films are still at loss in business.[⑥]) Compared with some Hollywood blockbusters with tens of millions of US dollar’s budget, or even some Chinese movies produced in recent years, the financing deficiency in Singapore film industry is easy to notice and is apparently a burden on its renaissance, although the relationship between financing, quality and commercial success is not a certainty in film industry.
Accordingly, from another perspective, Singapore films concentrate on themes like social life may objectively because of the restrictions on its small budget, further financial support and more multinational cooperation is needed if Singapore wants to produce epic films like Troy or high-tech films like Star Wars.
Audience & Market:
Geographically, Singapore is an island-state with a 4.5 million small population, it is a limiting factor to the domestic film market. At the same time, due to the diversified culture background, some small budget and realistic films tend to be more successful in Singapore, like Eric Khoo’s 12 stories, Djinn Ong’s Perth and Jack Neo’s I not Stupid. Concentrating on social topics and culture interweaving landscape in Singapore, these films are capable to maintain the customer inland as well as exploit new market and find audience overseas. In recent years, more and more Singapore films appear on the stage of some well-known international film festivals (Pusan, Berlin, Moscow, Venice, etc.), they are nominated or awarded, manifesting Singapore’s marching into the international film market.
It is reasonable that due to the limited space of box income in local film market, the future of commercially successful Singapore film lies in the oversea market. In order to get a position in the international film market, domestic film productions will compete (and cooperate) with studios like Hollywood, Bollywood, and other competitors in Europe and Asia. From my perspective, a renewal in film themes and trends in Singapore film industry is necessary, filmmakers could experiment on new themes like historical or fictive, also, cooperation with other film magnates in the world is helpful to exchange ideas and acquire new techniques in film making as well as solve financial problem.
Filmmaker:
There are many capable filmmakers and directors in Singapore, they make films with their talent and passion and are trying on different styles and genres, exponents are Jack Neo, Royston Tan, Eric Khoo and Kelvin Tong. These filmmakers and their works have become the milestones in the renaissance of Singapore film industry. Besides the achievement, there is still a rough road to go. More panoramic films capable to reflect the history, society and human spirit of Singapore are in need and other challenges still occur, like to forge an indigenous as well as distinct film culture and film style of Singapore; and to produce more mature films that are both artistically and commercially successful.
To sum up, rapid development in Singapore film industry in the past decade has accumulated governors’ and filmmakers’ experience and confidence in film making as well as marketing. Both domestic and oversea markets are being cultivated, while problems and challenges still exist, the film industry of Singapore has obtained great progress and is showing its huge potential. As long as Singapore film industry can take advantage of its internationalization while maintain the indigenous color, it will harvest more achievement in future.
[①] The history of Singapore film is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Singapore
[②] http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/1001qns.aspx?sid=165&fid=77&v1=True#HtmlAnchor_Anchor
[③] http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/95/0616/cinema.html
[④] This phrase is from one of the boy’s lines in 15: The Movie
[⑤] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Singapore
[⑥] Statistic resource: http://www.sfc.org.sg/main.html
Bowling for Columbine, A Michael Moore's Documentary
Jing Ke & Chen Lou
Oct, 2007
Course Title: Film Studies
Bowling for Columbine and Documentary Film
About this film
In this film, Michael Moore looks into the nature of violence in the United States, focusing on guns as a symbol of both American freedom and its self-destruction in a deep interrogation and incisive exposure, which spurs us to think; while, with tendentious and aggressive point of view, this film looks more like a symbolically individual interpretation than a rational documentary film.
Documentary film
Literally, “documentary” is to document reality. Although “documentary film” originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video or made for a television series.
The term “documentary” was first used by documentarian John Grierson’s review of Robert Flaherty (1884-1951, a filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature length documentary film Nanook of the North in 1922)’s film Moana published in the New York Sun in 1926. In the 1930s, he further argued that documentary was the cinema’s potential for observing life in a new art form, which meant that the “original” actor and “original” scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials “thus taken from raw” can be more real than the acted article. Grierson generally held documentary as “creative treatment of actually” compared with the dramatic fiction as “bourgeois excess”.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices, which placed far more interpretive control in the hands of the director, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries.
However, as a matter of fact, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form.
Moore as an Auteur Director
Accurately, this film is not only directed, but also written, starring, and produced by Michael Moore. He is also the director and producer of another celebrated documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. In his documentaries he tends to present a critical look at some social problems like gun violence or international issues like globalization and the Iraq War. He is active in promoting his political views and is known for his “fiery left-wing populism.” Besides film, he is also a director of TV series and a writer of three best-selling books, and all of his works reflect a left-wing viewpoint on American political and social issues. Although some Americans see him as a betrayer of the country, he claims himself as a patriot. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.[i]
Awards
Bowling for Columbine had brought Moore international attention after its release and won numerous awards, including a 55th Anniversary Prize, Cannes Film Festival in 2002; an Academy Award for Best Documentary Features, International Documentary Association - Best Documentary of All Time and the César Award for Best Foreign Film in 2003.
Content and Focus
Bowling for Columbine is released on October 11, 2002 and explores what Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre (Occurred on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School, two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher, wounded 23 others, before committing suicide.) and other acts of violence with guns in America. Moore focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place and looks into the nature of violence in the US, he describes gun as a symbol of American freedom as well as its self-destruction at the same time.
The arrangement of materials in this documentary is, to some extent, disordered. Moore mixed and interweaved a great lot of materials, real and artificial, historical and real-time, into the film to make it more convictive and impressive.
Remarkably, this film enjoys a commercial success: with a budget of only $4,000,000, it grossed $40,000,000 worldwide, including $21,575,207 in the United States. It also broke box office records internationally, becoming the highest-grossing documentary in the U.K., Australia, and Austria.
Features of the film
1. The Use of Cartoon:
Moore tries to convey the historical connection between whites' fear of non-whites and the protection of gun ownership using an eight minute cartoon. The cartoon starts with the Mayflower (the ship), focuses on the colonists' fear of indigenous people, and only links this fear to blacks as they approach the civil rights era. This cartoon, together with some news clips, each tending to indicate the emphasis on violence and crime in news reports, and interviews illustrate the “security-minded” attitude of U.S. residents all prove that the Columbine massacre is not merely an outcome of the easy availability of guns in the U.S., but instead more connected to a “climate of fear” which is engendered by the American media. The eight minute cartoon is an artificial element in the documentary, which shows the director’s creativity and sense of humor.
2. Ironic Choice of Music:
About 20 minutes in the film, the song Happiness Is a Warm Gun plays during a violent montage is shown. The footage of it mainly reflects people buying and firing guns, a town in Utah passed a law requiring all residents to own guns, a blind man who is a gun enthusiast, etc. Also, when the film cuts to a montage of a review on American foreign policy decisions from 1953, which is filled with violence and hegemony, the film is set to another song What a Wonderful World. So we can feel the director’s intention to express his criticism in gun holding and American foreign policy through the choice of music.
3. Numerous Interview and Discussion:
In this film Moore interviews various people, including the National Rifle Association's president Charlton Heston, the rock-and-roll musician Marilyn Manson, and many residents, he seeks to explain why the Columbine massacre occurred and why the United States has a higher number of violent crimes — especially crimes involving guns — and he charges that the occurrence of violent crimes in the U.S. is relatively higher than other developed nations.
The interview is a central part of the documentary; Moore conveys what he wants to tell the audiences through the interviewee’s mouth, which makes the film quite “objective” – what is expressed is not the director’s viewpoint, but the interviewee’s.
4. Starring of Director:
Unlike most documentaries in which the directors never make an appearance, Michael Moore jumps to the front of lens in Bowling for Columbine and the whole film is absolutely under his steering. He gets a free gun for opening a bank account, he takes two Columbine victims to the Kmart headquarters to claim a refund, he visits Canada to show front doors unlocked and people are much less concern over crime and security, etc. His intervention arouses furious disputation on the objectivity of the film. It makes the documentary seems like a true-man show and some critics even contend it as “deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive”.[ii]
Strengths
Put aside the argument on the standard of objectivity of documentary, which is always under impugnment, Bowling for Columbine is unquestionably successful in exploring into the thorny subject like the cause of the high murder rate and nature of violence in the US. It is thought provoking, agitative, and impressive.
Here are some reviews of the film from a website, which claims to express the opinion of “the top critics and audiences in the US”[iii], witness the popularity of this documentary:
●For anyone who cares about the future of America, it is required viewing.
●As the national media become more sedate and incurious; this country desperately needs a gadfly like Moore. Indeed, we need more like him.
●Moore has perfected the art of highly entertaining, self-important, politically motivated documentary-making, and he has got as potent a topic as ever with Bowling for Columbine.
●Anything that coaxes us into thinking about why we are the way we are, even as imperfectly as Bowling for Columbine does, is an energizing change of pace.
●A great national conversation starter.
Inquiries
The theory of Gate-keeper: In human communication, in particular, in journalism, gatekeeping is the process through which ideas and information are filtered for publication. The internal decision making process of relaying or withholding information from the media to the masses. The theory was first instituted by social psychologist Kurt Lewin in 1947 and is still one of the most important theories studied by students of mass communication and journalism. Gatekeeping occurs at all levels of the media structure - from a reporter deciding which sources are chosen to include in a story to editors deciding which stories are printed, or even covered.
When concerning to this movie, Moore, undoubtedly, did a good job as a gatekeeper, who displayed genuine information that are totally truthful. However, making a decision between what to show and what to ignore itself is a kind of gatekeeping, and as a result of this, he seems to be selling his point of view to viewers furtively and smartly in the name of documentary film.
For example:
● The title originates from the story that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two students responsible for the massacre, attended a school bowling class early that morning, at 6:00 a.m., before they committed the attacks at school starting at 11:18 a.m, which at last proved wrong because their absence of school that day (NOT SHOWN). However, Moore incorporates the concept of bowling in other ways, such as a Michigan militia uses bowling pins for their target practice, the two boys’ classmates recollections about them with the bowling class. By doing these, Moore suggests that bowling could have been just as responsible for the attacks on the school as Marilyn Manson or even Bill Clinton. In sum, all of these give spectators impression that they are persuaded into buying this kind of subjective opinion of the director himself, what is the other reality, who cares? It seems that it is the way that using reality to get superficially “objective” opinion really matters rather than the whole reality itself.
●After an interview with NRA president Charlton Heston, who walks away from the interview while the cameras are still rolling, Moore leaves a photograph of six year old school shooting victim Kayla Rolland in Heston's house when he departs (SHOWN ON PURPOSE). By doing so, Moore actually exaggerated the tendentious view of them both, and give an ostensible demagoguery for viewers on the ostensible assumption that he only himself is seeing reality and on the side of right and totally true.
What is more important, after all these provocations and dig-deep efforts, Moore actually did not add up to certain definite answer or really objective consensus. It is more like gate-keeper who let the advantageous information flow into his display rather a rational or holistic scan contributing to further insight, ironically but unbelievably by the way, the information is actually genuine and thoroughly truthful on its own.
Conclusion
Moore played a great role in his documentary film and succeed in spurring viewers to think more about the nature of violence of American; but as a gate-keeper with tendentious and aggressive approach in his documentary film, all the communication that he did seemed symbolic and some sort of individual heroic, hardly add up to a rational approach or real answer to the issue.
[i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine
[ii]http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html
[iii]http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bowling_for_columbine/?beg=0&int=136&creamcrop_limit=30&page=all
Oct, 2007
Course Title: Film Studies
Bowling for Columbine and Documentary Film
About this film
In this film, Michael Moore looks into the nature of violence in the United States, focusing on guns as a symbol of both American freedom and its self-destruction in a deep interrogation and incisive exposure, which spurs us to think; while, with tendentious and aggressive point of view, this film looks more like a symbolically individual interpretation than a rational documentary film.
Documentary film
Literally, “documentary” is to document reality. Although “documentary film” originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video or made for a television series.
The term “documentary” was first used by documentarian John Grierson’s review of Robert Flaherty (1884-1951, a filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature length documentary film Nanook of the North in 1922)’s film Moana published in the New York Sun in 1926. In the 1930s, he further argued that documentary was the cinema’s potential for observing life in a new art form, which meant that the “original” actor and “original” scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials “thus taken from raw” can be more real than the acted article. Grierson generally held documentary as “creative treatment of actually” compared with the dramatic fiction as “bourgeois excess”.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices, which placed far more interpretive control in the hands of the director, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries.
However, as a matter of fact, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form.
Moore as an Auteur Director
Accurately, this film is not only directed, but also written, starring, and produced by Michael Moore. He is also the director and producer of another celebrated documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. In his documentaries he tends to present a critical look at some social problems like gun violence or international issues like globalization and the Iraq War. He is active in promoting his political views and is known for his “fiery left-wing populism.” Besides film, he is also a director of TV series and a writer of three best-selling books, and all of his works reflect a left-wing viewpoint on American political and social issues. Although some Americans see him as a betrayer of the country, he claims himself as a patriot. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.[i]
Awards
Bowling for Columbine had brought Moore international attention after its release and won numerous awards, including a 55th Anniversary Prize, Cannes Film Festival in 2002; an Academy Award for Best Documentary Features, International Documentary Association - Best Documentary of All Time and the César Award for Best Foreign Film in 2003.
Content and Focus
Bowling for Columbine is released on October 11, 2002 and explores what Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre (Occurred on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School, two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher, wounded 23 others, before committing suicide.) and other acts of violence with guns in America. Moore focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place and looks into the nature of violence in the US, he describes gun as a symbol of American freedom as well as its self-destruction at the same time.
The arrangement of materials in this documentary is, to some extent, disordered. Moore mixed and interweaved a great lot of materials, real and artificial, historical and real-time, into the film to make it more convictive and impressive.
Remarkably, this film enjoys a commercial success: with a budget of only $4,000,000, it grossed $40,000,000 worldwide, including $21,575,207 in the United States. It also broke box office records internationally, becoming the highest-grossing documentary in the U.K., Australia, and Austria.
Features of the film
1. The Use of Cartoon:
Moore tries to convey the historical connection between whites' fear of non-whites and the protection of gun ownership using an eight minute cartoon. The cartoon starts with the Mayflower (the ship), focuses on the colonists' fear of indigenous people, and only links this fear to blacks as they approach the civil rights era. This cartoon, together with some news clips, each tending to indicate the emphasis on violence and crime in news reports, and interviews illustrate the “security-minded” attitude of U.S. residents all prove that the Columbine massacre is not merely an outcome of the easy availability of guns in the U.S., but instead more connected to a “climate of fear” which is engendered by the American media. The eight minute cartoon is an artificial element in the documentary, which shows the director’s creativity and sense of humor.
2. Ironic Choice of Music:
About 20 minutes in the film, the song Happiness Is a Warm Gun plays during a violent montage is shown. The footage of it mainly reflects people buying and firing guns, a town in Utah passed a law requiring all residents to own guns, a blind man who is a gun enthusiast, etc. Also, when the film cuts to a montage of a review on American foreign policy decisions from 1953, which is filled with violence and hegemony, the film is set to another song What a Wonderful World. So we can feel the director’s intention to express his criticism in gun holding and American foreign policy through the choice of music.
3. Numerous Interview and Discussion:
In this film Moore interviews various people, including the National Rifle Association's president Charlton Heston, the rock-and-roll musician Marilyn Manson, and many residents, he seeks to explain why the Columbine massacre occurred and why the United States has a higher number of violent crimes — especially crimes involving guns — and he charges that the occurrence of violent crimes in the U.S. is relatively higher than other developed nations.
The interview is a central part of the documentary; Moore conveys what he wants to tell the audiences through the interviewee’s mouth, which makes the film quite “objective” – what is expressed is not the director’s viewpoint, but the interviewee’s.
4. Starring of Director:
Unlike most documentaries in which the directors never make an appearance, Michael Moore jumps to the front of lens in Bowling for Columbine and the whole film is absolutely under his steering. He gets a free gun for opening a bank account, he takes two Columbine victims to the Kmart headquarters to claim a refund, he visits Canada to show front doors unlocked and people are much less concern over crime and security, etc. His intervention arouses furious disputation on the objectivity of the film. It makes the documentary seems like a true-man show and some critics even contend it as “deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive”.[ii]
Strengths
Put aside the argument on the standard of objectivity of documentary, which is always under impugnment, Bowling for Columbine is unquestionably successful in exploring into the thorny subject like the cause of the high murder rate and nature of violence in the US. It is thought provoking, agitative, and impressive.
Here are some reviews of the film from a website, which claims to express the opinion of “the top critics and audiences in the US”[iii], witness the popularity of this documentary:
●For anyone who cares about the future of America, it is required viewing.
●As the national media become more sedate and incurious; this country desperately needs a gadfly like Moore. Indeed, we need more like him.
●Moore has perfected the art of highly entertaining, self-important, politically motivated documentary-making, and he has got as potent a topic as ever with Bowling for Columbine.
●Anything that coaxes us into thinking about why we are the way we are, even as imperfectly as Bowling for Columbine does, is an energizing change of pace.
●A great national conversation starter.
Inquiries
The theory of Gate-keeper: In human communication, in particular, in journalism, gatekeeping is the process through which ideas and information are filtered for publication. The internal decision making process of relaying or withholding information from the media to the masses. The theory was first instituted by social psychologist Kurt Lewin in 1947 and is still one of the most important theories studied by students of mass communication and journalism. Gatekeeping occurs at all levels of the media structure - from a reporter deciding which sources are chosen to include in a story to editors deciding which stories are printed, or even covered.
When concerning to this movie, Moore, undoubtedly, did a good job as a gatekeeper, who displayed genuine information that are totally truthful. However, making a decision between what to show and what to ignore itself is a kind of gatekeeping, and as a result of this, he seems to be selling his point of view to viewers furtively and smartly in the name of documentary film.
For example:
● The title originates from the story that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two students responsible for the massacre, attended a school bowling class early that morning, at 6:00 a.m., before they committed the attacks at school starting at 11:18 a.m, which at last proved wrong because their absence of school that day (NOT SHOWN). However, Moore incorporates the concept of bowling in other ways, such as a Michigan militia uses bowling pins for their target practice, the two boys’ classmates recollections about them with the bowling class. By doing these, Moore suggests that bowling could have been just as responsible for the attacks on the school as Marilyn Manson or even Bill Clinton. In sum, all of these give spectators impression that they are persuaded into buying this kind of subjective opinion of the director himself, what is the other reality, who cares? It seems that it is the way that using reality to get superficially “objective” opinion really matters rather than the whole reality itself.
●After an interview with NRA president Charlton Heston, who walks away from the interview while the cameras are still rolling, Moore leaves a photograph of six year old school shooting victim Kayla Rolland in Heston's house when he departs (SHOWN ON PURPOSE). By doing so, Moore actually exaggerated the tendentious view of them both, and give an ostensible demagoguery for viewers on the ostensible assumption that he only himself is seeing reality and on the side of right and totally true.
What is more important, after all these provocations and dig-deep efforts, Moore actually did not add up to certain definite answer or really objective consensus. It is more like gate-keeper who let the advantageous information flow into his display rather a rational or holistic scan contributing to further insight, ironically but unbelievably by the way, the information is actually genuine and thoroughly truthful on its own.
Conclusion
Moore played a great role in his documentary film and succeed in spurring viewers to think more about the nature of violence of American; but as a gate-keeper with tendentious and aggressive approach in his documentary film, all the communication that he did seemed symbolic and some sort of individual heroic, hardly add up to a rational approach or real answer to the issue.
[i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine
[ii]http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html
[iii]http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bowling_for_columbine/?beg=0&int=136&creamcrop_limit=30&page=all
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