Boweling For Columbine
Bowling for Columbine is a movie that takes a micro lens of deviance and stereotypes. It focuses on details of everyday life of small-scaled patterns (Lecture 1/19/04). It looks at various aspects of shootings and compares them to other parts on the world.
The people involved in the Columbine shootings or the first-grade shooting are considered to be deviants. It is believed by people of these towns that it could have been stopped or caught quickly. Social Control from parents and society is a ways to control it. Social Control are attempts by society and social actors to control thoughts and behaviors of people (Lecture 4/25/04). These kids who are murders participated in what we call crime. Crime is deviance that is encoded law and is punishable by the state (Lecture 4/25/04). These kids were punished by the state to an extent. For the first grade shooting it was considered, what does a six year old know about murder or killing someone? As we saw and learned from the movie, it does not matter what age someone was that killed with guns, they are labeled as deviant. Since they were caught, they have the first negative stigma associated with their name (Lecture 4/25/04).
Also in the movie, there was a lot of stereotyping against black people. People would put the blame on a black person, even if they did not do it. Also, guns are at easy access.
One of the leading causes for all of this is the media. The media is the most influential social agent which filters a mass amount of information for us and has a profound impact on our ideas (Lecture 3/8/04). The media loves to portray any type of crime that occurs. Bowling for Columbine show mainly violent crimes that occurs by young kids. Violent crimes are those in which violence is involved or the threat of violence is directed at another person (Lecture 4/25/04).
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