Homework – watch this from about 16 minutes in to 22 minutes for the Happiness is a Warm Gun montage sequence.
Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” won the Oscar for best documentary.
Reviews for the film were overwhelmingly positive but some critics say this is not a documentary. They argue that “it makes its points by deceiving and by misleading the viewer. Statements are made which are false. Moore leads the reader to draw inferences which he must have known were wrong. Indeed, even speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled in the speaker’s voice, but which were not sentences he uttered. Bowling uses deception as its primary tool of persuasion and effect.”
“Happiness is a Warm Gun” montage
About 20 minutes into the film, The Beatles song “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” plays during a montage in which footage of the following is shown:
People buying guns.
Residents of Virgin, Utah, a town that passed a law requiring all residents to own guns.
People firing rifles at carnivals and shooting ranges.
Denise Ames operating a rifle.
Carey McWilliams, a visually impaired gun enthusiast from Fargo, North Dakota.
Gary Plauche killing Jeff Doucet, who had kidnapped and molested Plauche’s son.
The suicide of Budd Dwyer.
A 1993 murder where Emilio Nuñez shot and killed his ex-wife Maritza Martin during an interview on the Telemundo program Ocurrió Asi.
The suicide of Daniel V. Jones, an AIDS/cancer patient who was protesting HMOs.
A man who takes his shirt off and is shot during a riot.
What is Michael Moore hoping to achieve with this montage? Is he pro or anti gun? Should a presenter be obviously on one side or the other? Is this film being made to inform or to make a profit? How can you tell? What is the preferred reading of the film? Who would the original target audience be? How do you know? What differential decoding would a different audience make of the film?
