Critical Analysis of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine Documentary

This report provides a detailed analysis of Michael Moore's documentary 'Bowling for Columbine,' focusing on the film's subject matter, which centers on gun violence and the Columbine High School Massacre. It explores the background of the story, examining the events leading up to the tragedy and Moore's investigation into the causes. The report delves into the documentary style, highlighting its use of various cinematic techniques such as framing, camera angles, and diegetic/non-diegetic sounds to reinforce its message and construct meaning. The structure of the documentary is analyzed to understand how it reinforces the central themes. The report also addresses how the documentary maker positions the audience and the overall response to the film's narrative. References to relevant books and journals are also included, supporting the analysis with scholarly sources.

RESPONDING TO
LITERATURE -
ANALYTICAL

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................2
Subject matter..................................................................................................................................1
Background to the story...................................................................................................................1
Documentary style...........................................................................................................................1
Structure of documentary to reinforce its message..........................................................................2
Way in which documentary makers has used cinematic techniques and code to reinforce and
construct meaning............................................................................................................................2
Overall response to the way in which audience has been positioned by the documentary maker. .3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

Subject matter
Bowling for columbine is an American documentary film released in 2002 and produced,
directed and narrated by Michael Moore. This movie mainly focuses on act of violence with guns
and primary causes for Columbine High School Massacre (Cavender and Jurik, 2016). This
movie also focuses on the environment and the background in which massacre took place,
assumptions about the related issue and common public opinions. This film also looks into
nature of violence in United States. This documentary also proceeds further to understand
America’s gun culture. This movie had also interviewed various kinds of prominent figures who
were partially blamed for this massacre from gun toting to gun rocker. One of the main argument
that this movie focuses on is that even though Canada and US both have same rate of gun
ownership, crime rate in Canada is remarkably lower as compared to US.
Background to the story
Michael Moore explores the reason because of which massacre of one teacher and 12
students at Columbine High School happened on 20th April, 1999. This movie also explains the
way in which two students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold easily acquires Four pieces of firearms
even though they had a history of juvenile detention, arrests, drugs dependencies and counselling
sessions. Michael has also documented the way in which US has turned up as a country with
highest number of gun related killing. An Interview that was held with the former president of
national rifle association, Michael explains how easy it is to acquire guns and munitions. Moore
also links involvement of US with terrorist such as Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein for its
own gains which further resulted in death of millions of civilians from 1953 to 2001. It can be
said that the main theme of the movie or documentary is presented early in the film and helps in
creating viewers first impression.
Documentary style
Bowling for columbine is a new generation documentary which consist of fusing flashy
news reports, ironic twists, bizarre situations, tense interview and south park style animation
(Ramsey., 2015). Michael Moore takes a look to the streets of Canada and US in order to explore
why America is such a violent country especially when there is involvement of guns. It can be
said that it is an off-beat documentary style. Moore also visits in a bank of Michigan where a
rifle is given to everyone who opens up an account in their bank. This movie consists of common
elements to which the audience can relate and identify by presenting the idea of reality to the
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audience members (Topal and Ozsoyoglu, 2016). Michael Moore’s average appearance and
strong point of view makes his idea presentable to the general audience. Moore also focus on
purposely changing the perception of ordinary public.
Structure of documentary to reinforce its message
Structure of the documentary is:
 Bowling: title originates from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who attended a school bowling
class at 6:00 AM before committing the massacre where 12 students and one teacher was
killed.
 Then comes the information about the bank in Michigan where free gun is provided to the
people who open up a bank account in the bank.
 “Happiness is a Warm Gun”- This is one of the main Beatles song which was played while
the montage shows people buying guns or when people fire guns or rifles at carnivals and
many more.
 Weapons of mass destruction: Michael Moore links the violent behaviour of shooters to the
presence of a large defence establishment which manufactures rocket technology in Littleton.
 Michael also tries to link fear climate with attitude which is prevailing in Canada where gun
ownership was quite similar to US. Moore found that in Canada, front doors are unlocked
and much less crime and security concern.
Way in which documentary makers has used cinematic techniques and code to
reinforce and construct meaning
Documentary makers had used many cinematic techniques such as framing, camera
angles, diegetic sounds, non-diegetic sounds etc:
Framing: Close up is mostly used when character’s reaction is being captured during an
interview. Medium shots show relationship between people or the way they interact. View point
shoot, occurs when camera is walking through floors of Columbine High School. This is mainly
done to signify the isolation which was felt by the Columbine community after the incident due
to emptiness of classrooms and corridors.
Camera Angles: This documentary includes many interview footages: straight camera
angle is one of the most important camera angle that has been used for portraying interviews as
significant and cannot be described as insufficient and small (high camera angle), and superior
and powerful (low angles) can be avoided.
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Diegetic Sounds such as: It includes many sounds such as sounds within the world of the
film, literal sounds, people within the movie can hear, genuine and accuracy and to establish the
reality of the scene.
Non-Diegetic sounds includes: added music, voice overs and sound effects. Non diegetic
sounds are added so that mood of the scene can be added. These sounds are either added after
filming or during editing process at later stages.
Overall response to the way in which audience has been positioned by the
documentary maker
All the bank employees in an interview said that they were misled and made to work with
those terms and conditions. Moore said that he was making a movie on unique business across
America i.e. rifles are not normally present at the banks. Moore simply ignores the role of
municipal governance in security and crime and focused on unusual events of columbine, instead
of referring to the declining murders in many states over the last few decades.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Cavender, G. and Jurik, N.C., 2016. Film review: Adam McKay The Big Short.
Ramsey, J.G., 2015. Does America have a “gun problem” or a white supremacy capitalist empire
problem? Reflections on Bowling for Columbine (2002) in the Wake of the Charleston
Massacre. Socialism and Democracy. 29(3). pp.179-192.
Topal, K. and Ozsoyoglu, G., 2016, August. Movie review analysis: Emotion analysis of IMDb
movie reviews. In Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on
Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (pp. 1170-1176). IEEE Press.
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