English Media Bowling For Columbine

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What techniques does Michael Moore use in Bowling for Columbine to persuade the viewer of his opinions?

‘Bowling For Columbine’, directed, produced and written by Michael Moore is a documentary film. The film is about the Columbine High School massacre on April 20th 1999. The film explores how and why gun crime in America is a major problem. Michael Moore explores the ways in which the Gun culture in America has led to their freedom and their devastation. Michael Moore has used a variety of directorial techniques such as visual, audio, positioning, cutting and tone to persuade the viewer of his own opinion. Here these techniques have been examined.

In the first scene, Moore presents examples of how corrupt and violent the US has been for the past 50 years. He illustrates how the US builds weapons and uses them for selfish and aggressive attacks against other counties. The scene implies that the US has, for many years, attacked innocent civilians of countries that are, supposedly, a threat to them. Moore has made the USA look like an ‘evil’ dictator by using an army font during the scene, that reflects the way in which military commands are sent to the army, ‘1953: US overthrows Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran.’ The caption at the bottom of the screen is ‘typewritten’ on screen like how military commands are sent to imply that the USA has planned a large army backed operation in doing this. This indirectly changes the viewer’s opinion because Moore has deliberately used this method to make the viewer think that America is a dictator sending out commands to its army.

The entire first scene is edited so that Moore positions the scene before in the missile making factory and then this scene based on the USA using weapons like the previous missile against other countries. Moore cleverly puts the scene before with a representative of Lockheed Martin Missile Plant in front of a missile and interviews him. The person interviewed by Moore explains, ‘we don’t just get irritated with someone and then drop a bomb on them or shoot at them.’ The way in which Moore has shrewdly positioned the man in front of a missile, right before a scene showing America dropping the same sort of missiles immediately changes the opinion of the viewer. This is because the main clearly says that ‘the USA do not drop bombs just for anything,’ but then the viewer sees Michael Moore’s edited scene explaining that the opposite of what the man said.

The scene then reviews the history of America’s violent actions against other countries. Moore has chosen specific scenes to show the viewer and in each scene has cleverly cut parts out to show the consequences of America’s wrong doings. One part has a caption that reads, ‘1980’s: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets.’ The clip that accompanies the caption, shows soldiers shooting over a hill, which is then followed by a scene showing Arabs cheering because of their victory and the reward, ‘CIA gives them $3 billion.’ The caption mentioning the reward is juxtaposed with the scene of the people cheering makes the viewer think that they are cheering at their reward of $3 billion after killing the soviets. This whole clip suggests to the viewer that training terrorists has had consequences for America and the reward they were given was for the deaths of the Soviets, however, this is only Moore’s opinion.

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Another caption in this scene reads, ‘1998: Clinton Bombs ‘weapons factory’ in Sudan…’ Moore has cleverly accompanied the caption with a scene of total destruction. Moore then cuts to a picture of a soldier crying which shocks the audience because it is then backed up with a caption that reads, ‘Factory turns out to be making aspirin.’ The use of a crying soldier makes the viewer sympathise with the man and his loss. He is clearly a strong army soldier, but to see him reduced to tears immediately makes the viewer think that America has ruined these people’s lives ...

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