The documentary, filling the viewers with statistics and history spanning nearly a century is packed with eye- opening reality and challenging questions. The director, Ava DuVernay created this documentary to showcase the harsh reality and daily discrimination faced by the African-American community for ages by the American government. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election and the Black Lives Matter movement, DuVernay uses this film to contribute to the movement against police brutality and systematic racism that has prevailed for so long. Aptly titled 13th, the documentary exposes a series of racial injustice that has snowballed in the US since the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865. The 13th Amendment states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Nevertheless, there are obvious loopholes within that clause that could be easily exploited by the government in its broad definition. That clause becomes the theme of this documentary.
Documentaries usually aim to engage viewers with surprising truths and highlight a particular issue that people in general are not well aware of. In his book Introduction to Documentary, Bill Nichols explains that documentaries are made to raise viewers’ awareness of the social surrounding (Nichols 104). By using film and facts, people are more inclined to accept the truth and create conversations around such delicate topics. The more conversations documentaries create, the more awareness could be spread and hence develop some sort of positive changes to the society. Nichols further explains the major factors that make a film effective in raising awareness; through logic for rational or philosophic inquiry, narrative and visual poetics for eliciting emotional responses, and rhetoric for building consensus on debated issues (Nichols 104). 13th fully utilised Nichols’ methods to maximise the efficacy of this movie. The director packs the documentary with scholastic interviews, impactful visuals and challenges the viewers to rethink history.
The use of storytelling in this movie is used to describe the legacies of slavery exploitation and the effect of 13th amendment in the 21st century. The movie is arranged in chronological order to simply demonstrate the evolution of slavery ever since the amendment was ratified in 1865. It starts off with scenes from “The Birth of a Nation”, where every black person is depicted as a demeaned, animal- like image with cannibalistic tendency” (Cobb, 2016). The director uses this depiction to highlight the dehumanization of black people decades after the 13th amendment was signed and how the myth links the word criminal and black person together. DuVernay focuses the topic of this myth visually by popping up the word CRIMINAL in screen- covering letterings whenever somebody mentions black criminal. The rapid cuts to the scene reminds the viewers of how the people of color are merely reduced to just that. The film takes full advantage of graphics to achieve thematic effect. For every decade the film explores, a tally would pop up to compare the current prison population to the previous period. The tally, usually followed by a graph are perfectly used to make the statement that American prisons are growing at an exponential rate. It starts off with 513,000 incarcerated individuals in the beginning of the count to over 2 million people, and 40.2% of those are African- Americans.
According to the documentary, since Richard Nixon’s presidency the war on drugs has become more malevolent and oppresing to a certain race. The film screens a short clip of Nixon calling black people “a menace to society” (Cobb, 2016). These malicious statements further fuels the underlying hatred towards the black community, which led to more presidents after Nixon to pursue the targeted racial war, coverted as the war on drugs. The basic cycle is putting longer sentences on charges related to drugs that are more commonly used in black community compared to the white community. Through this, we witness the government use prisons to control the African- American society. In turn, black people’s imprisonment has become a private venture to exploit them for basically free labour. In an interview with the National Public Radio, DuVernay explains how the loophole within the 13th amendment clause is a crucial caveat to the re- enslaving of black people (DuVernay, 2016). Under this clause, slavery is illegal except for criminals. We can see how after the downfall of the slave trade, the South had an economic crisis due to the prohibition of owning slaves. After the 13th Amendment was ratified, the prison system began to be crowded by mostly black people on petty crimes such as theft and even for crimes they didn’t commit. Under the private prison institution, the prisoners were forced to work in deplorable environments with little to no pay. Their health conditions were also ignored. With chains around their feet and exploited labour, how is this era different from the pre- amendment period? The legacies of slavery are still emminent in black communities to this day.
The storytelling method used in the documentary is also very intriguing and captivating for the viewers to connect with. 13th is a powerful tool to use as a mean of educating everyone about the past and how we can change the future. In The Power of the Documentary: Examining the Effectiveness of Ava DuVernay’s 13th, the author discusses how this documentary uses “didacticism to expose the reality of the racial oppression”. The use of didactic storytelling is to challenge the view of justice and equality of the American people. The author Sara Juarez points out multiple examples of black people being locked up and capitalized on. In one insance, the southern whites imprisoned black people in zoos while they pocket the profit and placed the black people in unhygienic and inhumane conditions (Juarez 5). The deliberate move can be seen as reducing the black race specifically as primitive and should be locked up, essentially like a criminal. Juarez highlights how the continuous atrocities commited against the African- American are accented in DuVernay’s documentary by telling a profound story of targeted racial punishment that has been masked in the name of preserving law.
What made the documentary more compelling are the many interviews that make up the bulk of the movie. The director interviews prominent people from both sides of the political spectrum, including liberals such as social activist Angela Davis, lawyer Bryan Stevenson and Republican Newt Gingrich. The diversed background of the interviewees make the film more interesting and engaging from various points of views.
Interestlingly, some of the interviews are edited to make one lengthy correspondence between one interviewee and another. During a discussion on how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) benefits from the mass imprisonment, ALEC’s representative Michael Hough makes statements in defense of the organization. The quick cuts of his interview juxtapose with the other activists’ that have polar opposite opinion on ALEC’s role in the US legal system. Hough justifies ALEC’s involvement in the prison system as a crucial mean of helping the government manage the some parts of the judicial system. The rapid cuts between the dialogues enunciate the arguments to make it seem like a convincing debate beween Hough and the other activists. The juxtaposition “adds a layer of credibilty because it does not ignore dissenting views” (Juarez 2). Juarez explains in her writing how 13th speaks for the oppressed and yet gives a chance for the opposing party to defend themselves. This builds credibility for the movie in navigating a complex issue.
DuVeray adds a series of raw clips showing police brutality towards black people over the past few years. The clips deepen the theme of 13th in highlighting the slavery legacy that lingers in the American society. The movie ends with graphic footage of black individuals such as Philando Castile and Eric Garner dying in the hands of the police followed by an exhaustive list of other victims’ names. This strong concluding end confronts the viewers with the daily struggles of being born black in the US and evokes strong emotions from the audience.
This haunting final scene of the film presses the message that something has to be done to change the current state of African- Americans. This chain of enslavement through bureaucracy needs to be broken so that neither the private prison instititution nor the government can oppress another racial group again.