Bowling For Columbine Film Analysis

A total of 65 shootings were reported on school campuses in 2017. Furthermore, in 2018, over 18 school shootings have already occurred so far. These numbers show us how easy people get guns in the United States. On the 21st of April 1999, one of the worst high school shooting occurred in the U.S. history. At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, two teenagers went to on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. This high school shooting let Michael Moore, who is an American documentary filmmaker decided to make a documentary called, Bowling for Columbine, about related gun in the United State. Moore questioned why there were so many guns in the

On countless occasions, Moore evoked sadness and grief for victims who died of shootings, anger against the killers, and hope and for those who are now forced to live with the physical and mental scars of different events involving guns. The most prominent example was when showing security camera footage of the Columbine Shooting with the 911 call of the incident in the background. Aside from that there was testimony from concerned citizens from the Columbine incident and other shooting incidents, such as the Buell Elementary school shooting where a first grader shot and killed another. In another case Moore used graphic images to augment the persuasiveness of the presented facts, as shown to the right where Moore argued that America has had a history of violent government action. The another example was when Moore talked about prior school shootings, like the Columbine High School Shooting and the shooting death of a kindergarten girl, Kayla, in Flint, Michigan by a fellow classmate. These scenes made audience felt sympathy the pain of the families and the fear of the people involved directly in the violent act. Moore also played a slow sad song when showing some of the camera footage from Columbine. The effect of that gloomy ballad make it difficult to watch and leaves the audience disheartened. To add a further more powerful effect to the mood, he played the 911 call from the shooting that was very

The music was also one of the methods Moore used. At 0:26:03, while the scene which showed horrible images and dead people, “ What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong was being played. The images and music were absolutely opposite. The irony made audience pay attention this movie because audience wanted to understand what was hidden meaning of this irony. For another example, at 0:50:58 in this documentary, the scene was shooting each other. It was trying to show how many people was killed by guns and how the United State had a highly number comparing another countries. As background in this scene, mfgnifical classic song was played. This scene was supposed to be serious; however, playing this music kept this documentary stayed not too