Bowling for Columbine: Film Analysis

I personally find this film quite illuminating about America’s gun policy. Michael Moore’s enthusiasm is quite impressive, and, the statistical information he uses in the movie makes it much more reliable. I am totally suprised to see that some people, for instance James Nichols, keep guns under their pillows, which proved that the obsession with guns has reached to extreme levels. Another shocking fact for me was seeing that even high school students own guns, and use them in arguments. It is completely insane that how minors are able to get guns quite easily and some of the students even use the recipes from a book called The Anarchist Cookbook to make explosives, particularly pipe bombs, at home. One of the things James Nichols says during his interview with Moore was truly nonsensical and confusing to me. He says ‘I use the pen, because the pen is mightier than the sword. But you must always keep a sword handy for when the pen fails.’ It is quite ironic.

The whole film is like a compilation of, gun and violence-related, shocking things about America, however, I am still very willing to visit USA. In the film, I learned that Utah has a law that requires all residents to own guns, which is an open invitation for more violence. I truly believe some of the people have extreme mental problems, because simply what they do is forcing other people to commit crime. Columbine Massacre is the perfect example that shows how painful the results of forced violence could be. As the people do not know who to blame, because they can not see things as they are, they do not blame themselves, but other people who achieved great amount of success and have an influence on the teenagers, such as Marilyn Monroe. This actually makes no sense to me, because, parents have much more influence on their children, and, they are the ones who actually let them harm others, as they do not have enough control and authority over their children.

Moreover, blaming a celebrity is overly cliché, which honestly bothered me, yet, seeing Marilyn Monroe giving a factual speech during his interview caught my attention, because now I know that Mr. Monroe is much more of an intellectual than I though he was before. Seeing Charlton Heston visiting Denver, only after 10 days after the Columbine was utterly irritating. He is the one to blame, he is one of the main factors, along with parents, that lead children to extreme violence, he is the key to violence, right along with guns. Because of his passion about guns, and influencing Americans to own firearms, America has the highest number of firearm-related deaths per year, with more than eleven thousand, while Europe has maximum 500 gun-killings. I genuinely appreciate seeing these facts that were actually well-researched, and also they make the film more reliable. One of the main points of the film was the fear that the American media created, which was very interesting to see. By creating over-exaggerated images of African-Americans, Halloween, and even bees, American media covers up the actual problems the nation has, such as gun-obsession, and violence.

Naming aggressive bees, which do not even exist, as the ‘Africanized’ bees, blaming the black men for anything bad that happens, the American media proves its racist policy once again, which was not surprising for me actually, as I personally think that racism and sexism will never come to an end. It was quite entertaining to see Michael Moore going out to check if Canadians really do not lock their doors, and we see that it is actually true. In my personal opinion, it is a bit too much to trust people that much, but, seeing that it is actually safe to leave doors unlocked, I was amazed by their trust to each other. What shocked me the most was the murder of a six-year-old girl by a six-year-old boy. It is extremely disturbing to know that even a little child could reach to gun that easily and use them. Moore’s action against K-Mart was quite impressive. And I quite liked how Moore handled the situation with Charlton Heston, by leaving a picture of Kayla Rolland at the door of Heston’s mansion. The film, overall, was great and it was very informative about the U.S with the statistical data it offered, and it was also quite shocking, too.