The documentary then enters into a discussion about how the Black Lives Matter movement fits into the history of movements against police violence. While riots and protests centered on police brutality are shown to be nothing new, what the BLM movement has been able to capitalize on is the use of media to document it. Through images and videos spread online, the movement has been able to force a national conversation about police brutality. While police brutality and the African American incarceration rates are both connected, the civil rights lawyer and author Michelle Alexander argues that “police violence, that isn’t the problem in and of itself. It’s the reflection of a much larger brutal system of racial and social control known as mass
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The end of the documentary features a discussion of police violence. This discussion is accompanied by the raw and disturbing footage of the killings of African American males by police officers. The footage includes recent deaths such as Philando Castille, who was shot and killed by police officers after being pulled over for a busted taillight. The clip was captured by Castille’s girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat, and broadcasted the footage online to document the injustice. As difficult as it is to watch these clips, they send an important and powerful message to the audience. DuVernay includes the clips in an effort to shatter the indifference that America has shown in regards to issues of racism and police brutality. Additionally, the collage of these clips is followed by a graphic displaying a wall that contains hundreds of pieces of tape that each contains the name and brief background information of unarmed African Americans killed by police. Evocative videos and images of this sort are used in a calculated manner in an attempt to shock the audience into caring and taking …show more content…
Testimony was given by over ten individuals, who ranged from scholars and activists to politicians and lawyers. One of the notable interviewees was Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer and author of the 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander is highly qualified and well versed in the issues surrounding the U.S criminal justice system. In her research, Alexander states that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” (2). With the 13th Amendment, it is once again legal to discriminate against African Americans and to treat them as second class citizens. In the film, Alexander also addresses the extent to which individuals are impacted by a prison sentence. Alexander was among several scholars in the documentary who described how there are over 40,000 collateral consequences to being a convicted criminal, including disadvantages that impact access to welfare, life insurance, food stamps, jobs, and the ability to vote. Alexander and the other scholars featured in 13TH not only provide this sort of insight, but they act as the films narrators. Rather than detract from the documentary or the reception of its message, the pairing of the scholars’ interviews with other footage and visuals create a seamless narrative that would have been weakened had DuVernay used a traditional
The end of the documentary features a discussion of police violence. This discussion is accompanied by the raw and disturbing footage of the killings of African American males by police officers. The footage includes recent deaths such as Philando Castille, who was shot and killed by police officers after being pulled over for a busted taillight. The clip was captured by Castille’s girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat, and broadcasted the footage online to document the injustice. As difficult as it is to watch these clips, they send an important and powerful message to the audience. DuVernay includes the clips in an effort to shatter the indifference that America has shown in regards to issues of racism and police brutality. Additionally, the collage of these clips is followed by a graphic displaying a wall that contains hundreds of pieces of tape that each contains the name and brief background information of unarmed African Americans killed by police. Evocative videos and images of this sort are used in a calculated manner in an attempt to shock the audience into caring and taking …show more content…
Testimony was given by over ten individuals, who ranged from scholars and activists to politicians and lawyers. One of the notable interviewees was Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer and author of the 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander is highly qualified and well versed in the issues surrounding the U.S criminal justice system. In her research, Alexander states that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” (2). With the 13th Amendment, it is once again legal to discriminate against African Americans and to treat them as second class citizens. In the film, Alexander also addresses the extent to which individuals are impacted by a prison sentence. Alexander was among several scholars in the documentary who described how there are over 40,000 collateral consequences to being a convicted criminal, including disadvantages that impact access to welfare, life insurance, food stamps, jobs, and the ability to vote. Alexander and the other scholars featured in 13TH not only provide this sort of insight, but they act as the films narrators. Rather than detract from the documentary or the reception of its message, the pairing of the scholars’ interviews with other footage and visuals create a seamless narrative that would have been weakened had DuVernay used a traditional