Bowling for Columbine and the Xbox 360 Commercial

Sometimes the irony of life has interesting twists…

Last night I seen “Bowling For Columbine for the first time. For those who might not know it, it is a documentary directed by Michael Moore, after the shootings that occurred in columbine High School, in Littleton, on April, 20, 1999.

Bowling for Columbine (Wikipedia)

Not my point here to discuss if Michael Moore might be right or wrong, but this movie echoed with some commercial I have seen yesterday… the now all famous banned commercial for the new Xbox 360.

Banned CM

….where we can see people mimicking a “shoot ‘em all” in what looks like a big Mall, very a la cop movie. They do not carry weapons or guns. They yell “bang”, pointing a finger at their supposed victim, which then pretend to collapse. The whole thing on a funny background music, kinda like a bunch of brats playing guns.

Granted, this one has been banned for obvious reasons, certainly it is not a good example to show to kids. Maybe they might get some weird ideas, you know, begging for a pricey playstation or worse, borrowing daddy’s 9mm , and go postal at school. Sadly enough that second option has occurred more than once, so yeah, I won’t disagree on the banning issue.

But still I'd like to highlight some points that amazed me.

There is something particularly disturbing when I hear some people making a parallel with terrorism. If all the shooting scenes would lead to terrorism acts, then it is not one commercial we should ban, but the whole cinematographic and TV panel, from Theater release to documentary, Tv news of course, and cops series. All in all, it would mean banning about a third of what the visual media produce.

I do not making myself the advocate of violence. I simply would like to highlight that it sounds to me more like some hypocritical decision, rather than something accomplished for the humanity welfare.

Let’s ban the commercial, but not the games themselves.

Let’s blame Marilyn Manson ( a guy who, btw, has a more intelligent discourse than Charlton Heston promoting the NRA) and Tarantino movies , but let’s shut up on the fact that Clinton bombed a lot of innocent people (medication factories and schools: where the fuck were the terrorist in there?)

Let’s ban Harry Potter books and movies, where people obviously die in huge pain (ever read HP 6? And how Harry obliges Dumbledore to swallow the potion that is gonna kill him at last?)

Let’s have our kids get their own internet connexion in their own room (when sometimes the parents hardly know how internet works all in all…MSN? MMORPG? Communities?…)

Let’s scream against terrorism, but advocate some bombing “for the own sake of our country” (insert any country name you’d like, I think a lot of them do lead a policy of “attacking first so that we are safe”).


Let’s all declare that games are the roots of all evil, that commercial are what causes all the violence, but let’s close our eyes on the fact that people get bombed, or verbally harassed and assaulted (one of the biggest problem in the corporate world..). Let’s forget that Japan is the biggest producer of violent games…with the lowest crime rate. (Suicide being out of the point here)

Hitler or Mussolini never played with a Xbox.

For once, let’s face the fact that deranged people do not need a movie or a commercial to put their weird ideas into action.

Let’s face the fact that if the daddys or retailers hadn’t such an easy access to guns, maybe kids won’t be able to shoot people as easily….. (selling ammos in supermarket, is IMO, far more dangerous than watching a silly commercial: because this is not a second degree humourous tv spot, it is reality, real ammos you can get along with a pack of crackers or a can of juice).

Let’s face the fact that as long as society will blame the wrong culprits, you can be certain violence will still be around. And not for the supposed obvious reasons everyone is complaining about.