13th is a documentary directed and produced by Ava Duvernay. The documentary dives deep into America’s prison system and America’s history of racial inequalities. The documentary contained many forms of rhetoric, including, kairos, logos, ethos, pathos, and visual rhetoric. Using these methods of rhetoric helps director Ava Duvernay get her point across to the audience.
The 2017 documentary Whose Streets directed by Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis was a critical piece that demonstrated the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. The film depicts the 2014 Ferguson protests following the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. This film was unique of its time because it highlighted an issue that was nationally contentious while providing a voice for the members of the black community in Ferguson. Much of the media coverage during this time was biased against the protests, referring to the event as the “Ferguson riots.” The media also utilized video clips that portrayed the protests as violent, rather than a reactionary event that catapulted an important social justice movement.
Although it may be hard to watch, this is what made 13th successful: the creators wanted us to feel personally impacted by the things we were seeing to better understand the extremities of how racist deeds were implemented into American society, even before incarceration rates started to rise. By setting the background in thorough detail, 13th develops a dynamic between the comfort of the viewer and the harsh truth of racism’s impact on society, while also providing the necessary information needed to fully understand systemic
When one talks about underlying racism, if they ever talk about it, there is a consistent denial of its existence throughout American society. This ever present flaw is not a systematic issue where a person can point out the exact laws that persecute, rather, the government is a vehicle that executes the will of the people in charge of the system. Hence, I see the “13th” film as an exposition of how systematic oppression is not a system oppressing an ethnicity, but rather people using the government as a vehicle to unjustly place African-Americans in prison. Altogether I believe that this tragedy reinforces the notion that the United States will always neglect its cultural outsiders because of how devastating it is to see that “African Americans make up 6.5% of the American population but 40.2% of
On September 15, 1963, various Ku Klux Klan members bombed a church on 16th Birmingham in Alabama. This crime was committed to protest against black people fighting for their rights in America. The bombing of the church killed 4 little girls named Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins which caused an uproar all across America. The 4 little girls and their story should live on to remind people of the freedom people of color have come from tragedies such as the church bombing in Birmingham. Spike Lee’s enthralling documentary, 4 Little Girls, commemorates the death of 4 innocent little girls and how their tragic death helped spark a huge change for people of color in America, Lee’s conveys this through various
Unveiling Injustice: Analyzing "13th" and the Crisis of Mass Incarceration in America Ava DuVernay's documentary "13th" serves as a poignant exposé on the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States, particularly its disproportionate impact on African American communities. Through a critical lens, the film scrutinizes the historical context, systemic racism, and policies like the 13th Amendment, shedding light on the deep-rooted inequalities within the criminal justice system. This essay delves into the persuasive strategies employed in the documentary, the necessity of data-driven evaluation, and the scholarly discourse surrounding the issues it addresses. "13th" strategically employs emotional persuasion to evoke empathy and outrage
This summer I had the opportunity to watch the documentary 13th, on netflix, and read the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson. Both were enlightened and when finished with both you walk away sense of awareness for some of the hardships that black people have faced both past and present. The film 13th was a documentary about the racial inequality in this country. It touches on the crack epidemic, and how it led to the rise of unjust arrest and the rise of incarceration in America. Quoting from the film, the prison population rose from 474,368 in 1980 to 2,042,479 in 2001.
Both Ava DuVernay’s 13th and Frederick Douglass’s narrative draw many similar parallels between the systematic oppression of black people in modern times and in the 19th century. The scenes of police brutality in 13th especially reflects Douglass’s influence on DuVernay’s perspective. In these scenes, we see black people violently, and sometimes fatally, attacked by the police, who are meant to protect people. This random violence against the black community leads to an overwhelming sense of fear and distrust of authority. This fear mimics the fear Douglass felt when he witnessed the Captain’s cruelty during the scene of Aunt Hester’s torture in Douglass’s narrative.
The “13th” is a documentary about the American system of incarceration and the economic forces behind racism in America especially in people of color. One of the claims that the author mentioned is that today incarceration is an extension of slavery. It is also mentioned that most of the time in society we are defined by race. In the documentary, we can see how African Americans are sentenced for many years since they are too poor to pay their fines or sometimes most of these people plead guilty to get out of jail fast. However, African Americans are separated from their families and also treated inhumanly in prisons just because they are of a particular race.
13th Documentary Analysis Ava DuVernay’s documentary mentions that the United States makes up five percent of the world’s population yet is home to twenty five percent of the world’s prisoners. One out of four prisoners in the world are locked up in the U.S. The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The thirteenth amendment of the constitution makes it unconstitutional for someone to be held as a slave.
The film 13th directed by Ava DuVernay targets an intended audience of the Media and the three branches of the United States government with an emphasis that mass incarceration is an extension of slavery. It is intended to inform viewers about the criminalization of African Americans and the United States prison boom. 13th uses rhetorical devices in its claim to persuade the viewers by using exemplum in the opening seconds of the film. President Barack Obama presents statistics, saying “the United States is home to 5% of the world’s population but is home to 25% of the world’s prisoners.” Also the film uses a hyperbole in talking about the movie Birth of a Nation produced in 1915 which portrays a black man as a violent savage who will kill white women.
The movie entitled 13th amendment is about how the government took measures to cripple African American families and communities using war, drugs, three strikes you’re out, and the stand your ground laws. These laws hurt the African American community because police officers were arresting blacks for extremely minor crimes such and broke tail lights or because they looked suspicious or supposedly fit the description of a criminal. At the time that the movie was made, African Americans made up 35% of the U.S population and 12 to 13% of african Americans were in prison. incarcerating African Americans for petty crimes played in with the loop hole in the 13th amendment that everyone is free except criminals and people that acted in crime.
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
This was my third time watching the 13th Documentary, I have watched it for my Justice Theory class, Protest Justice Law and Media class, and now Immigration Education and the Family. However, with that being said, this is still an excellent documentary and each time I watch it I learn something new and different aspects pop out to me based on what particular class I have watched it for. When it comes to this class, I focused on the nuances and who was being targeted. To begin, the documentary is in reference to the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and how it had the ability to end slavery for African Americans, however, this end of slavery led to a mass incarceration of individuals, predominantly people who are African American.
The justice system that relies on twelve individuals reaching a life-or-death decision has many complications and dangers. The play Twelve Angry Men, by Reiginald Rose, illustrates the dangers of a justice system that relies on twelve people reaching a life-or-death decision because people are biased, they think of a jury system as an inconvenience, and many people aren’t as intelligent as others. The first reason why Reiginald illustrates dangers is because people can be biased or they can stereotype the defendant. The Jurors in Twelve Angry Men relate to this because a few of them were biased and several of them stereotyped the defendant for being from the slums. The defendant in this play was a 19 year old kid from the slums.
