Columbine Compare And Contrast

Columbine vs. Bowling for Columbine

Do you ever wonder how one thing can be made into two completely different products. In April of 1999 two high school seniors entered their school fully armed and killed 15 people including themselves in a small town in Colorado, America. There was lots of media coverage on this tragedy one of which was a non-fiction novel and another being a documentary both in which had great success. The Non-Fiction novel Columbine by Dave Cullen and documentary Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore were both created based on the same tragedy and are both very informative yet presented in very different formats.

Although the media types of non-fiction novels and documentaries are very different they do have similarities,

they are both very informative and teach you a lot.

Columbine the book sets information straight and informs the reader of events that took place before, during and after the shooting. “The final portrait is often furthest from the truth” says Dave Cullen. When this tragedy took place in 1999 the media was all quick to cover the story of the school shooting and the two boys who killed their classmates although most of them did not have their story straight and presented false information. Dave Cullen then spent ten years studying and learning everything that happened so he could present the public with the truth about what happened that day. This shows that the novel is not only very detailed and informative but provides corrections to previously learned facts. In Bowling for Columbine you learn a lot about gun control laws and crime rate. The documentary provides statistics about deaths from guns in different

countries. Looking at and comparing statistics can teach a lot, when seeing the data about deaths caused by guns, American numbers were way higher then most which by itself informs the viewer of the awful crime rate. Visually being able to see the differences in numbers is cold hard facts for the audience, this is a effective way to provide important information. Both the non-fiction book and documentary provide lots of information to educate and inform the audience. Weather the form of media portrays the whole story like the novel or focus on a specific topic from the event as done in the documentary there is a lot to learn from each media type.

The non-fiction book and documentary although generated from the same event differ in the way they present information by providing different formats.

The nonfiction novel Columbine is very focused on providing a storyline of the event on April 20th,1999. "Eric and Dylan planned to be dead shortly after the weekend, but Friday night they had a little work to do: one last shift at Blackjack." (Chapter 4, p. 16). Through this quote you can see that the book follows directly what happened on the day of and before the massacre. The book gives you a step to step guide to everything that happened leading up to, during and after the shooting. You are given the chance to be in the shoes of someone living through this and are given a sense of what it felt like to experience such a tragedy and because of all the detail you are made to feel as if you were apart of it. Through this the novel achieves its main goal of teaching the audience about what really happen that day. Whereas the documentary is very focused on gun control problems and violence in America. “If more guns make people safer, then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It isn't. It's the opposite” says a Canadian in the documentary Bowling for Columbine. The documentary is very focused on gun control and in it they are constantly going around interviewing people on different aspects of gun control. The documentary although inspired by Columbine and named after it, only briefly talks about what

happens that day and focuses more on guns themselves. By having constant interviews and facts proven in the film the audience is informed and educated about gun control.The format of the documentary achieves the goal of the film, which is to inform the viewers of the problem of gun control. The non-fiction novel and documentary are very different and this is shown through the structure. One is structured as a story, retelling the events of the school shooting at Columbine high school which is the best format to present it’s goal of clarify the events taken place on that day. The other does not follow a story line it has less of a story structure and more educational segments, though this the message of bad gun control is achieved. With different messages to be presented different structures of media are necessary.

A documentary and a non-fiction novel can be created about an event and both give lots of information, yet that information if conveyed in different ways provide multiple messages. Both media pieces are very informative and has lots for an audience to learn from, yet the formats of the media pieces differ providing different effectiveness. Depending on the message intended to be given different media types provide success in different ways.