Spike Lee’s heartrending and powerful documentary, When the Levees Broke, illustrates the result of an epic natural disaster and the Katrina victims that were left to fend for themselves.The scene that really stayed with me was the one when CNN reporter, Soledad O’Brien, was walking around and reporting on the conditions of the convention center. She describes the awful smell of dead bodies, urine, and sewage that filled the building. This description really helped me understand how horrific the living situation was. It was shocking and infuriating to know that human beings had to live like animals.
This scene just proved what the whole documentary was illustrating. How in the face of this huge disaster, relief wasn’t given fast enough to all those who were suffering so much. Human life, any and every human life should be valued and given every effort to save. Former mayor of New Orleans Clarence Ray Nagin stated that they got 75-80 percent of people evacuated and out of the city so they were doing a good job. But was it a job well done when so many others had no choice but to stay and fight to survive?
As an audience member you can feel the pain Lee shows
throughout the film and empathize with those who suffered from a result of Mother
Nature and being wronged by the government. The majority of the victims were
made up of lower class African Americans who hadn’t had the money or resources
to evacuate the city. While ranking officials denied that race and social
status wasn’t a factor, the lack of help given shown in the film proves
otherwise.
In times of need history has shown that America (or the American
government) has had the ability to pull together and support fellow Americans
in need, 9/11 for instance. When so many people were in need of help, it was
there. This documentary uncovers just how little government relief was given to
these poorer American citizens and how real survivors felt when their own
country abandoned them. It exposes how the government not only dropped the
ball, they set the court on fire. Then when the fire spread they ran off with
the extinguishers. Lee emphasizes on the fact that race was and influence and unfortunately
gives the idea that if it were thousands of white Americans stranded without
food and water a lot more support would have given.
I think you make a great point, which I failed to do in my post, regarding the pain Lee shows in the film. It is so necessary that Lee gets this suffering across to the audience, so that they can really try to get a grasp on what the people who actually went through this disaster felt. I would even argue that this is on of Lee's goals witht his piece. Aside from shedding light on the lack of a response by our government, I think he makes it a point to try and let his audience really feel and understand what the people of New Orleans really went through during and after this event.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, this scene was particularly hard hitting. I thought it was interesting how Lee compared the situation to other national disasters and incorporated the obvious racial inequalities without explicitly stating it, i.e. through the use of real interviews and news extracts, lending the film an authentic edge which automatically enlightens the audience to the severity and reality of the event.
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