“Keep people in fear… and they will consume – Marilyn Manson”
Thesis: Michael Moore showed how the news broadcasters only show the stories that are scary or may bring fear to people or ones that may make viewers paranoid.
On the evening news they showed an African American man robbing a store, or beating up a woman, or shooting or stabbing someone, which is great that they are making the people aware, however it’s making them aware of the wrong things. News reports like these do not make the viewers afraid of violence or make them want to take safety precautions. These new reports make the viewers afraid of African American people. News reporters in a way are much too racist and selfish about “what makes good tv” rather than what really matters or what really should be presented that everyone, white people included, are violent and commit the same crimes.
Another example of how the evening news frightened its viewers was by showing the footage of the shooting in Columbine high school. This was a great story that made the people aware; however, it caused schools to make unnecessary precautions. Schools later started suspending students and even expelling them for wearing certain clothes, bringing nail clippers to school, making fake guns out of food or paper or dying their hair. It is okay to be safe in your school but the news caused many schools to take this too far and it seems very unfair to the students of these other schools.
Michael Moore also shows how TV shows put fear into the thoughts of the people who watches them. TV shows like Cops that TV companies put on the air are very stupid to put on in a way. Making people aware of all the crime that goes on in the world is a good idea. However, there seems to be some sort of other message in these shows. They seem to choose many African American people or Hispanic people but in reality white people make just as much crime in the world as any other race. In Bowling for Columbine the producer of Cops says that these types of people make for better TV, they may not realize how they are making other races look but now that they know they should really make a change. The makers of Cops should be more concerned about the reputation of others over what makes “good TV.”
Another example he used was South Park. South Park is used to sort of poke fun at children or teenagers who have guns, drink alcohol, do drugs, use coarse language and misbehave in general. It’s basically showing people how silly our society is being with everything we do. However, most parents won’t let their children watch this show because of the coarse language and alcohol and drug use. Are they trying to shelter their children from this behaviour or from the truth? Odds are their children will end up being like that because most children do, at least by watching this show they can see what to be afraid of and what it can do to you and stuff like that but not in such a scary manner. South Park shows you what you need to be aware of while making it funny.
Michael Moore shows how people are blaming the wrong things or people for the Massacre in Columbine. Some people thought that because the killers listened to Marilyn Manson, that made them aggressive and caused them to act out aggressively. To any one this should seem like a stupid suggestion because many teenagers all over the world and probably in Columbine school listen to Marilyn Manson and it does not result in a killing or aggressive behaviour to most people its just music. It’s quite ridiculous to blame a singer for the behaviour of teenagers, this would have happened with, or without Marilyn Manson in the picture.
The second thing the people blamed this behaviour on was bowling which perhaps is just as ridiculous if not more. Bowling is not a violent or aggressive sport so in no way should it influence teenagers to do something stupid and just because it was the last thing the killers did before the shooting does NOT have anything to do with what made them act out in this way. People are just so shocked and confused about why this would happen to their city that they need something to blame it on to make an excuse for any residents of their city having a behaviour like this.
So in this twisted world we live in the media seems to be manipulating people to make them scared of things they really shouldn’t be afraid of in an attempt to make them watch their tv shows, news reports and to buy things they think will “protect them.”
We should be afraid of things like Government Military who decide to bomb other countries and pollution in the air because in reality these things have a higher chance of hurting you than what the media has conditioned us to be fear.
