Bowling For Columbine Scene Analysis

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The documentary ‘Bowling for Columbine’ was put into production shortly after the shooting at Columbine High school and in it Michael Moore explores the reasoning behind America’s violent nature. Moore’s belief as too why there are more shootings in America is due to the relaxed gun laws in place in America. To show his point of view he uses a variety of persuasive techniques such as: visuals, audio/music, use of archival footage, political agenda/bias and scenes from various other documentaries. All of which he expertly strings together to influence the facts and opinions of other people. In the first scene Michael uses graphic images ranging from corpses to facts like, the number of bombs dropped during Balkans campaign to 9/11, while these videos and images are shown it is set to the song ‘Wonderful World’ during which Moore times it so that when Noriega throws flowers out into the crowd and the words corresponding with the scene are ‘I love you’. This scene uses sarcasm and dovetailing to create a powerful and convincing argument. With The use of facts and statistics as a persuasive technique, the viewer cannot argue with the documentary e.g. ‘UN estimates …show more content…

For example; Charlton Heston’s Speech. Charlton, being head of the NRA (Nation Rifle Association), was an easy target for Michael to manipulate his speech in a way that shows the ‘worse side’ of the NRA. On the other hand, was Marilyn Manson, whose involvement in violent video games, action movies and his punk rock band, Marilyn Manson, whom the public had put into the spotlight for the blame of the Columbine High School Massacre. At this point Michael was talking with Marilyn Manson about why the public wanted to blame him and Manson responded with “Because I represent what everyone 's afraid of, because I do and say what I want.”. This technique is clearly used to mock and blame the government for what