Bowling For Columbine

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Bowling for Columbine Introduction In ‘’Bowling for Columbine’’, Michael Moore takes a look at some of the many social issues that plague America these days. For me, this documentary is an ethnographic film. It focuses on American people but also outlines their lifestyle and their customs. Moore starts his documentary by briefly talking about the Columbine High School shooting and then moves on to discuss potential causes for this act of war when two students aggressively started to randomly shoot their peers in the once protected school surrounding. In the documentary, Michael Moore claims that catalyzed fears for good or wrong reasons lead people to violence. Issues such as racism, unsustained fear and violence will be discussed in this essay. Living in fears… If there is one thing that unites Americans, it is the intense, and often deadly, fear of the other and even sometimes of each other. Michael Moore is taking a deep look into the American culture. Long after the years where they had to fight for their land and their freedom (by the way, at the expense of the American Indians), they seem to have become completely paranoid. The September 11, 2001 tragedy did not help to invert that trend. So why is that so? The answer that Michael Moore is presenting in "Bowling for Columbine” is that Americans are being controlled by fears, oh, not their own, but fears actually instilled by repetitive and diverse media coverage. According to him, the constant spreading of fears of just about anything and anyone is benefiting some large corporations as well as the authorities in place. In his view, America is controlled by fear. New waves of terrors and potential social alienation are penetrating the collective psyche, happily exacerbated by the corporate media. No wonder that Americans feel so vulnerable when they are fed daily by the media with horror

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