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How Bowling for Columbine Is Bias Essay

Decent Essays

Bowling for Columbine: A Narrow View of a Complicated Story

The Biased viewpoint of Michael Moore tears viewers away from the actual problem, and perhaps even the film’s intended message itself…

Alexi Heazle

The idea of a documentary being an artistic or even personalised expression of a director is long gone, or so it seems in recent times. In Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Bowling for Columbine, he attempts to get across to viewers his, and essentially only his point of view, on the topic of gun laws. Although what Moore is trying to say is not necessarily wrong, he is at the same time not taking into account the other side of the argument either; all he is trying to do, essentially is hypnotise viewers into thinking …show more content…

Many examples of Moore using incorrect information can be seen throughout the film. When he puts emphasis on the arrogance of the gun rally which was held eleven days after the shootings, to the ‘naked’ eye, it may seem that the act, was indeed ignorant and immoral, but this portrayal is not actually factual. The truth is that: The Denver event was not an act related to Columbine, but an yearly gathering, whose date and place had been set years in advance. At Denver, the NRA called off all events (normally several days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and assemblies) save the annual members' voting meeting - that could not be cancelled as the state law governing non-profits made it mandatory that it be held. (There was no way to change the place, since under NY law you must give 10 days' advance notice of that to the members, there were more than 4,000,000 members - and Columbine occurred 11 days prior to the scheduled meeting).

This is just one of the numerous misconceptions portrayed. When this film won the Oscar for best documentary, it was not actually supposed to have been able to win – in general terms, a documentary is a non-fiction movie. Although it met the criteria of being a movie, it was most certainly not non-fiction. Another example is when Heston's "cold dead hands" speech, which leads off Moore's idea of the Denver meeting, did not

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