How Bowling for Columbine Is Bias
Bowling for Columbine: A Narrow View of a Complicated Story
The Biased viewpoint of Michael Moore tears viewers away from the actual problem, and perhaps even the film’s intended message itself…
Alexi Heazle
The idea of a documentary being an artistic or even personalised expression of a director is long gone, or so it seems in recent times. In Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Bowling for Columbine, he attempts to get across to viewers his, and essentially only his point of view, on the topic of gun laws. Although what Moore is trying to say is not necessarily wrong, he is at the same time not taking into account the other side of the argument either; all he is trying to do, essentially is hypnotise viewers into thinking his way of thinking is the only way of thinking. In his documentary, it seems that all other arguments are simply invalid.
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’.
The essential problem, when it comes down to it, is that even though his beliefs don’t really differ much from, say a common member of society, the fact that he has created the documentary to drill into viewers his, and only his values of truth, it means that there is no more room for us viewers to truly understand the issue, and make up our own minds; which is not how a documentary should be made.
The film clearly portrays guns to be ‘bad’, (or his version of the word), and has many examples of how the victims’ families and friends were affected, and also how
The Biased viewpoint of Michael Moore tears viewers away from the actual problem, and perhaps even the film’s intended message itself…
Alexi Heazle
The idea of a documentary being an artistic or even personalised expression of a director is long gone, or so it seems in recent times. In Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Bowling for Columbine, he attempts to get across to viewers his, and essentially only his point of view, on the topic of gun laws. Although what Moore is trying to say is not necessarily wrong, he is at the same time not taking into account the other side of the argument either; all he is trying to do, essentially is hypnotise viewers into thinking his way of thinking is the only way of thinking. In his documentary, it seems that all other arguments are simply invalid.
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’.
The essential problem, when it comes down to it, is that even though his beliefs don’t really differ much from, say a common member of society, the fact that he has created the documentary to drill into viewers his, and only his values of truth, it means that there is no more room for us viewers to truly understand the issue, and make up our own minds; which is not how a documentary should be made.
The film clearly portrays guns to be ‘bad’, (or his version of the word), and has many examples of how the victims’ families and friends were affected, and also how