Preview

Bowling For Columbine Satire

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1801 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Bowling For Columbine Satire
2002 documentary ‘Bowling for Columbine’ presents strong messages concerning the low gun control and the high murder rate in “the land of the free”. Directed by Michael Moore, the documentary shows the follies of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the US government, often in a satirical fashion. This use of humour and other techniques allowed Moore to win many awards for the documentary, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature 2003, but the largest victory ‘Bowling for Columbine’ had was the awareness regarding gun laws it created during its time as the highest grossing documentary (N.A, IMDB, N.D). The recent Orlando shootings renewed the debate regarding the heavily criticised Second Amendment to the American Constitution, …show more content…
Even looking at this murder issue through the lens mentioned earlier regarding taking the population gap and gun possession gap into consideration, the fear is a major influence in the paranoia surrounding ‘the land of opportunity’ regarding the murders, if not a factor in the gun murders themselves. The author of the ‘Culture of Fear’ says as much in the documentary when talking about his favourite statistic: “In all the research I did, discovered that the murder rate had gone down by 20%. The coverage – that is, how many murders are on the evening news – it went up by 600%.” The marketing strategy conveyed, “keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume”, was mentioned by Marilyn Manson in his interview with Moore regarding the blame media companies and experts pinned on him. During this interview, Manson says “The president was shooting bombs overseas, yet I’m a bad guy because I, well I sing some rock and roll songs, but who’s a bigger influence, the president or Marilyn Manson?”. The argument is quite difficult to argue against and makes the audience agree with Manson’s point of view. Manson also says that “in the end, I’m a poster boy for fear”, implying the media found a scapegoat in him because it best suited their interests. Moore’s discrediting of the fear tactic is effective because it shows the funny side and presents well-chosen interviews to best suit his interests. By using a news segment of Killer Bees coming to ‘the New World’, the absurdity of the media and the extent to which Americans are pumped full of fear is highlighted. Yet despite raising issues about the fear tactic used widely by the US media, ‘Bowling for Columbine’ ends its screen time without giving a solution to the mess highlighted. Moore attributes the difference between American and Canadian gun murder rates to the fear tactic used by the US media, a very compelling result at first until the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The author of The Columbine Legacy Rampage Shootings as Political Acts has stated numerous purposes within this article. The first purpose of it was to explain about the events of Columbine and attempt to show the reader how this has created a large impact resulting in more wide spread school shootings taking place. With this the author tries to convey to the reader particular characteristics that differentiate a school rampage shooting from a wide range of other school related incidents where violence was a factor. The author also attempts to show the reader types of school related shootings that have taken place before Columbine happened and even specific events which would have led to a shooting but were uncovered before it escalated that…

    • 290 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bowling For Columbine starts with archival footage of the National Rifle Association. It is included to imply that the film is endorsed by the NRA but as the footage is in black and white, compared to the rest of the film it seems that Moore has already begun positioning us. This archival footage implies that the NRA is outdated and the inclusion is therefore seen as another form of irony or social satire. A short sequence then plays with Moore narrating, showing milkmen, farmers doing their everyday rituals, children going to school and “the president bombing another country whose name we couldn't pronounce” This ironic understatement juxtaposes with the mundane routines established before and after the statement. By presenting this in such…

    • 287 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In October 1997, I heard on the radio that Luke Woodham, a sixteenyear-old, had killed two classmates and wounded seven others in a school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi. In a note, Luke declared: “I am not insane. I am angry. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day.”1 He explained that he was tired of being called a “faggot”; he was additionally enraged that his girlfriend—whom he killed in the shooting—had broken up with him. At the start of the Woodham case, I began examining school shootings. Two months after the massacre in Mississippi came a shooting in Kentucky, then one in Arkansas that same month, and then another in Arkansas three months later in March 1998. There was a shooting in Pennsylvania that April, in Tennessee…

    • 295 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On April 20th, 1999, a school shooting took place in the Columbine High School. Two students, fully armed with a variety of firearms, murdered numerous students. This catastrophe resulted in numerous disputes over the issues with gun control laws in relation to the Second Amendment of the US Bill of Rights, which gave US residents the right to bear arms. Later in 2002, Michael Moore explored the causes of the Columbine shooting and such violence in his documentary Bowling for Columbine. In this documentary, Moore uses logos, pathos, and ethos to convey the message that US social media, along with the freedom to bear guns, plays a major role…

    • 834 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Callahan, C.M. , et al., “Urban High School Youth and Handguns: A School-based Survey,” Journal of the American Medical Association, June 10, 1992, p. 3038.…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    A documentary can be defined as a film that provides a factual record or report. But how factual is a documentary, really? This presentation aims to investigate the persuasive devices used in Bowling For Columbine. This is a documentary by well known director Michael Moore, which uses a range of filming techniques to persuade the audience that the Columbine shootings were a result of so much fear, greed and consumerism in America. This is his extremely biased idea of the truth. In Michael Moore’s exposé style documentary he intentionally selects and omits footage to privilege his views and ideologies regarding the ‘truth’ but also to disparage the views of those who conflict with the ideals he puts forth. Bowling For Columbine particularly marginalises the views of the media, the NRA and Columbine’s local Kmart. He does this to expose the fact that they are the reasons America has so much fear, greed and consumerism within its society.…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this trimester, I have studied Paradigm II at Mahidol University International College, which is a core course for the social science division. This course learns about the major paradigms in social sciences during the twentieth century. In the past few months, a lecturer, Eugene Jones, opened a documentary film named Bowling for Columbine. In this film, a filmmaker, Michael Moore, try to find the reason of butchery in the United States. After I watched this film, I had learned that there are numerous reasons why Americans are so violent.…

    • 475 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The use of satire used by Michael Moore in his docudrama “Bowling for Columbine” helps the audience engage on the concept of tackling serious issues like the Columbine massacre and the influences to enlighten or mirror the feelings of how and what society has on the thoughts of a particular environment. Moore uses a variety of technique, ranging from exaggeration, irony, parody and juxtaposition to reveal various answers to questions raised by the society involving the use of guns and to represent its concerns.…

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Good morning/afternoon Teachers and peers, today I will be talking about Michael Moore’s need to persuade us into believing that America is a gun driven country. In this documentary, Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore has used many persuasive techniques to get us to believe that every person in America feels safe to have a gun somewhere in their house for protection and that there are many terrible things that happen in America. To prove that Americans feel safer with a gun in their house and how America has many tragedies I will deconstruct 2 scenes from the documentary Bowling for Columbine. First I will be talking about selection and omission of James Nickles. Second I will be talking about the juxtaposition, and gaps and silences in this documentary.…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The lives of many were to change on the day of April 20th, 1999, at Columbine High School. With the death of twelve students and one teacher, it was to be the deadliest mass murder committed on an American high school campus. The massacre, committed by senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, sparked debate over gun control laws; whether the availability of guns across the United States, especially to young people such as these, was socially acceptable. This event is what sparked Moore to create his documentary, ‘Bowling for Columbine’.…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We all know the infamous author Michael Moore for his dark sense of humor that has shed its light on America in different ways. He is great at the craft of documentaries, and in my opinion it is one of the best that I have ever seen. “Bowling for Columbine,” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In many ways this film had me uneasy, yet I feel it is one of the most compelling documentaries that I have seen. Throughout this documentary Moore enlightens us on the subject of guns in America, but in my opinion I really feel that he is depicting our countries culture of violence. He goes on the give a detailed flashbacks of his beliefs for the reasons why so many Americans in todays society are often killed with guns. Moore has a very distinct style of filming, through his compelling sense of humor and strong personality. In specific when Moore walked into the Michigan bank. They were also a licensed firearm dealer, where he got a free gun for putting money into a Certificate of Deposit. The local ad in the…

    • 711 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    11,127 is the number of Americans killed in the United States last year with a gun. 381 is the number of Germans killed with a gun, which is the closest statistic country to the U.S. Why is there so much gun violence in the U.S? What is so different in the U.S. that gun crime is so prevalent? What can we do to change it? All questions Bowling for Columbine poses in the film documentary by Michael Moore. Like the documentary, there is not one simple answer and there are no easy solutions.…

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Bowling for Columbine

    • 504 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Michael Marshall once said “you can’t stop being afraid by pretending everything that scares you is there” that evidently means that fear is not real. It is the product of thoughts you create, however danger is real, but fear is a choice. When following Michael Moore’s journey in the documentary Bowling for Columbine, it is proven that most, if not all Americans live in fear. In doing so, he learns that the conventional answers of easy availability of guns ultimately lead to America’s culture of fear, bigotry and violence in a nation of widespread gun ownership. Moore’s implementation of symbolism, satirical techniques and imagery support his criticism against the firearm regulations in America. He brings in the attention of how unstable the American gun culture is as he emphasizes the consequences to generate change in the American system.…

    • 504 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pro Gun Rights Movement

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Dr. Aaron Mason and Mr. Kirk Rogers from the Northwestern Oklahoma State Universities social science program were the key speakers during the 2014 Constitutional Day Program. An overview of gun control and the second amendment in the United States of America was presented. The program was presented by Dr. Aaron Mason and Mr. Kirk Rogers, both part of the social science education program at Northwestern Oklahoma State University.…

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    (Opposing Viewpoints: Gun Control, 2014) This statement is totally false. Thousands upon thousands of citizens in the United States of America have purchased, owned, and carried firearms of all kinds including military-grade assault weapons and have been law abiding, well behaved, and even used his or her guns to protect his or herself, their families, and other people even. The American media, however, refuses to broadcast the brave and heroic vigilantes…. CNN, CNBC, ABC, Michael Moore (director) and many other liberally biased news networks and celebrity activists try their hardest to turn the American people against one another. They exploit, politicize, and even scapegoat tragedies and push for stricter gun laws and even bans to be passed. Other networks, such as Fox News, aren’t much better, but at least they tell the truth when it comes to guns. These liberally biased networks and individuals have taken tragedies such as the Columbine High School massacre (1999), the Aurora Colorado theater shooting (2012), The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and the recent Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting (2016), all involving assault weapons (McEvers, 2016), and used them as propaganda for their liberal agendas. Take Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary film Bowling for Columbine as an example; Moore uses this tragedy to appeal to the emotional side of viewers, whilst discreetly intertwining gun control propaganda. He travels to K-Marts across America pushing them to stop selling bullets and ammunition and questions actor and activist Charlton Heston about his support of the National Rifle Association (NRA). On a lighter note, many citizens have used…

    • 1794 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays