3 - "Bowling For Columbine" and Image

"Bowling For Columbine" and Image
By Marc-Antoine, Akshay, and Justin

Introduction

Michael Moore one of the most popular documentary filmmakers has a very special way to communicate his opinion. In this blog you will learn how he does it and how makes it so strong that it persuades the audience to believe what he believes. We used two of his greatest documentaries to explain to you how did it, one being the documentary about the horrible gun culture in the USA ‘’Bowling for Columbine’’ and the other being ‘’Capitalism; A love story’’.

Bowling For Columbine

The documentary we had to watch this week was “Bowling for Columbine” it is a documentary that is purposed to inform the public on -gun laws. The director, Michael Moore, does a great job explaining to the audience what his perspective on guns is, and how his outlook on guns was created. The film shows its viewers many things that they may not have known before. For example, it is shown in the opening scenes to us just how easy it is to get ahold of a firearm.

 The documentary is dedicated to showing its audience the consequences of placing a gun in the wrong set of hands, and how we as caring citizens can approach this battle against guns. As shown in “Bowling for Columbine”, when a gun is placed in the hands of a child, it is impossible to predict what the outcome may be. Not once, but twice, it is shown that children with access to firearm(s), may lose their sense of sanity and lash out. In these cases, the result of the “lashing out’s” resulted in fatal school shootings. One, is the most notorious school shooting in the history of the USA, Columbine, the other, a shooting of a six year old, committed by a six year old. Michael Moore searches for answers to why in the United States of America there are so many fatalities as a result of guns? He blames the media, saying it has filled everybody’s mind with hate and paranoia, forcing them to take precautions, in the form of purchasing weapons. He shows the audience what they can do to help the cause of a gun-free America, and how it only takes 3 men, to have such great impact on the changes made for an entire society. One of the final scenes of the film shows Moore with two survivors of the Columbine shooting travel to the K-mart headquarters to demand the discontinuation of the bullets they sell. After days of arguing with K-mart officials, their wish is granted.

Michael Moore consistently uses real (live) footage of the events in the film, and it is this that makes the film so unique. The documentary is created to convince its viewers that our society is better without guns. By using the real footage of the events used to show the audience that guns are bad, they are able to actually see with their own eyes what exactly the consequences are to the use of guns.

In class, we discussed the three forms of rhetoric seen in the film.  
1) Ethos (Believing someone because of their social position)…Although not everything in the film is true, like the opening scene where Michael Moore walks into the bank and walks out with a gun (where if that were to happen to anyone else, it would take nearly 2 months receive the firearm), however because of Moore’s great reputation for documentary making, the audience believes everything he presents.  
2) Logos (using numbers, facts, figures)…. Used when presenting the totals for those killed by country, and 
3) Pathos (Appealing to emotions to alter the auditor/reader/viewers judgment)…. Using real footage (such as the 911 calls from Columbine) to have the audience experience a sense of fear, which in turn leads them to agree with the point Michael Moore is making throughout the entire film, that guns should be taken off the streets and the hands of civilians.

Capitalism: A Love Story

The documentary that was assigned to our group was Capitalism; A love story. A 2 hour film produced by Michael Moore, an American citizen criticizing the political and economic system of the United States. It is about the financial crisis in 2007 and Moore is trying to prove that it happened because of capitalism. Basically capitalism is the stock market. People invest in companies that make a lot of money, and every time they find out new ideas, the value of the companies goes up, therefore making people richer. But when the company’s value starts going down, their value goes down’ and people start losing money and this is what happened in 2007 with Dow Jones.  He also asks the question to the different groups of Americans, like poor families and stock holders. What is the price they have to pay for capitalism, some of them are their jobs, and some of them are their homes and some of them are none of these two, on the contrary, they get paid with capitalism.  This is what Micheal Moore explains in his documentary, that in capitalism, there are poors and rich and the rich control the poor. There is no middle class. The documentary has a bias opinion of capitalism, the director is against capitalism and he does a great job using propaganda and rhetorical factors to support his arguments, making them strong and believable. He presents his arguments with interviews and in a specific order so that the audience can understand more clearly the message he is trying to send. He does not interview someone who has strong arguments about capitalism, because then he would just defeat the purpose of this whole film. The most important sections of the film would be when he explains to us how the government is controlling the market, because then we can really understand what capitalism is about, in his opinion, a failed corrupted system controlled by greed, this is why he believes that it is problematic.

Opposed to Bowling for Columbine, Micheal Moore uses a lot more the ethos form of rhetoric. He interviewed highly ranked people, for example a woman that is part of the congress, he also  showed the audience numbers, graphs and charts of different financial topics. For example, he went to a bank in New York, and asked a women (who is suppose to take care of the money) where the Americans people money was, and she replied “I don’t know.” The director is trying to prove that even the bank workers have no idea where there money is going, but we all know that there cash is going to the CEO of the company. He also uses a lot of Pathos. He used comedy and sadness. He does not talk about this in the film, but we can clearly notice that Michael Moore’s documentary is a roller coaster of emotions. For example, at one point he goes into a bank to make a citizen’s arrest on the CEO, which is absolutely stupid because he has no evidence that it is him who has all of the Americans money, even if we know it is them (CEO). An example of a sad part is when we see poor families kicked out of their own homes because there money was all stolen by rich people just so that they can get more money. And those people that are kicked out of their homes have no place to go.

Example of Pathos Rhetoric:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4q55Y6Q1CU

 Micheal Moore is a master at rhetoric arguments. He is a very good critical thinker, and he demonstrates that in a lot of his documentary films. But one can argue that he is a one sided person. If he believes that something is right or wrong, he will try to convince everyone to think the same way. So we can say that his documentaries are biased. For example, he uses two main propaganda techniques; card stacking, which is when the director or producer re-arranges the facts in a positive light, in this case a negative light the other technique used a lot was plain folks; this is when the producer portrays simple people as holders of the truth. In the documentary Capitalism; A love story  the ‘’holders of the truth’’ would be the poor people, because Michael Moore only shows them in is documentary as sad and poor families rejected from their homes. Never in capitalism; a love story has he talked to someone that explained what their point of view on capitalism was, and if he did show an interview, it was someone who had the same opinion as Micheal Moore. Now, don’t get us wrong, we don’t think that capitalism in a good thing, but this documentary has extremely changed our perspective on this topic and this is exactly what Micheal Moore’s goal was.

Comparison

In these two films the director, Micheal Moore, clearly pushes us to believe there is something fundamentally wrong in our society today. In these films he forces us to look at ourselves and to observe what we have become. Michael Moore always reminds his audience that he’s just like us. This is important because we see ourselves as being average and he points that out and makes us relate to him. In these documentaries we learn that we want to be the best person we can be. When you are watching these two films you are forced to make a choice of what you believe is right and what the documentary tells you is right. If by chance you disagree with these documentaries' point of view you may find it difficult to watch this film. Through these documentaries you learn where you stand and what you believe in. In some cases you may be forced to change your point of view and that in itself speaks volumes to who you are as a person. 

In both documentaries Michael Moore wastes no time and sets the tone straight away . In Capitalism: A love story he shows the credits mixed with music playing while footage of people robbing a bank is played. In Bowling for Columbine he shows the world as being normal but then says that the United States just bombed a country we couldn’t pronounce. These are two cases where he shows clearly that the world we live in is not as it seems. In a way he’s teaching us straight off the bat that there is something wrong that needs to be changed. In both film the director wants us to believe in his left-wing mentality. In Capitalism: a love story he seeks to tell us that capitalism is a broken system that needs to be changed for a more socialist system. In Bowling for Columbine he wants us to believe that America’s obsession with firearms needs to stop. Before watching these films you may think that a school shooting happens and it doesn’t affect you. Throughout the movie your vision of the world transforms to how these issues that the director points out could affect you. Before watching these films, I imagine that most people saw school shooting as being an issue that was unsolvable and that capitalism is the political system in the world that is the best for everyone. 

In a world as crazy and fast paced as ours we tend to get narcissistic. For example, when the horrible shooting happened at Dawson college I never knew school shootings were happening. I was a kid quickly exposed to how dark our society can be. Of course most people only mourned a loss that day but no one ever really thought of asking why this happened . Now I know it’s because of the easy access to firearms mixed with some crazy individuals that cause this to happen and is how Micheal Moore Pushes us to see the truth .


Conclusion

Micheal Moore is a master of propaganda, he uses the specific images, tones, people and even music to make the audience beleive in what he thinks is true. Even though, our group beleives that he is right on most of his topics, there are still poeple who are not agreeing with this director. Propaganda is Micheal Moore tool, he uses it in all of documetaries, and it has worked.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/stock/040706