Bowling For Columbine Essay

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Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore was a documentary from 2002 which explores gun violence and gun culture in the United States of America. This award winning documentary uses influential film techniques such as interviews, montages and comedy to engage the audience and influence them subconsciously. Interviews were manipulated to convince the viewer towards one side and agree with Moore’s point of view. Comedy was used to mock the views and opinions of interviewees and people in the documentary. Montages were used to convince and influence the responses made by the audience. Moore uses interviews to sway the audience towards his point of view by manipulating the interviews. The interview with Charlton Heston, president of the National …show more content…

Moore uses irony and satire very effectively to contradict interviewees and influence the audience. One example is when footage of the US government launching attacks at Kosovo is shown. The footage exclaims how many of these attacks were aimed towards residential areas. Moore then cuts to footage of the US president at the time, Bill Clinton, making a speech about the justification of the attacks, while additionally stating how they have minimised harm to civilians. This effectively mocks the president while simultaneously influencing the audience on the true honesty of those words. Another example of this is during the interviews with the Militia, a mother talks about how owning weapons allows her to protect her family. At the same time, a little girl is shown playing on the ground, in an area where there are many loaded weapons. This shows the irony behind her words whilst at the same time makes her look crazy and her words untrustworthy. A third example would when Moore explains reasons for gun violence in the US, before cutting to statistics of gun deaths in various countries. During this, Moore sarcastically mentions how the violent history behind the United States has led to gun violence before cutting to footage of act of aggression made by countries in the past. Moore makes it obvious that he is being sarcastic through the tone that he uses which prompts the audience to consider what the main cause of gun violence is. Moore uses comedy to mock people, making the audience question the authenticity of their words and giving reasons to believe Moore’s

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