Introduction
The documentary '13th' focuses on how the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed slavery, except for those who have been convicted of a crime. To understand why this connection is not often discussed is to have a more profound understanding of both race and justice in the United States. While the 13th Amendment freed all slaves at the time, it left room for African Americans to suffer coerced labor and prejudicial circumstances. While the documentary discusses slavery, it is not solely about slavery but about how America has dealt with its race-related past and present. Innovatively told and packed with new historical and sociological information, the documentary is both a history lesson and a statement. Though the 13th Amendment freed the slaves, America has continued to have an exploitative relationship with African Americans. Slipping down the decades to reveal the racial animus that lay at the heart of the southern 'Black Codes' that have been reinstated in various forms over the next one hundred and fifty years, '13th' suggests that in some fundamental respects nothing has changed but rather the residual bigotry inherent in the system has only evolved. The United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world, and many of its prisoners are minorities. To do so, the American government has collected highly sensitive information on people not just through arrest and conviction but through the widespread use of electronic surveillance and policing. '13th' is careful, though, not to simply incite anger and impulsive calls to arms by examining both historical and contemporary issues that challenge viewers to think through their preferred solutions, chief of which is radical prison reform.
Historical Context and Themes
The tragic hate crime shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church that claimed the lives of nine African American community members had a seismic effect on the nation and the world. From the ashes of this tragedy came a spark of hope in the dismantling of the Confederate flag in South Carolina's state capitol. Clearly, the disproportionate number of African Americans in American jails and prisons reflects historical patterns of criminalizing African Americans while ignoring misbehaviors among the general citizenry. The treatment of African Americans at each step in the process — from arrest to incarceration or execution — is overtly racial.
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In 2016, activist, filmmaker, and scholar Ava DuVernay released a documentary that directly discusses the amendment ratified in 1865. It seeks to illuminate the stereotypical attitudes toward African Americans that have fueled an ethos of excessive punishment — cruel and unusual punishment — toward African Americans. The documentary contextualizes the history of systemic racism and current systems of oppression facing African Americans in America. It examines the system of mass incarceration from the perspective of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that "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." The documentary has offered a tangible example of the idea of a "vast reconstruction of history" where the past informs the present. It begins by illustrating the failed promises of emancipation to include legislation regarding voting rights and the near immediate development of convict leasing.
Impact of the Documentary
The documentary has taken American society by storm for its powerful themes and skillful storytelling. The film has sparked social change in a variety of ways, promoting conversations and discourses surrounding racially motivated injustice. In doing so, it has catalyzed a movement with a rapid response and has engaged a wide audience, including African Americans, who have been central to the struggle for racial justice. The documentary had a strong impact on Texans, Africans, and African Americans. It spurred on a new style of resistance, inspired by the film's call to act and enhanced by the portrayal of a multiracial struggle. Among the college audience, it helped galvanize a new generation of social activists particularly attuned to issues of racism. College courses and discussions used the film as a central educational tool, pushing a new generation of scholars, historians, and critical race theorists to explore the intersectionality between race and systemic violence.
Since then, the director has been asked to pursue other projects related to racial history and social justice. Her influence and knowledge have been shaped by her experience directing the film, and she has become a reputable public speaker on race and Black culture in large part because of it. When the documentary was released, many celebrities and political figures spoke in conversations hosted by or about the film. Some of these individuals included famous actors, cultural moguls, politicians, activists, and civilians. It was these informal gatherings that helped stimulate a national culture shift addressing questions of public safety, systemic racism, and alternative systems of justice. The film has helped push American society towards activism and critical mass. In the fall of 2017, impromptu film screenings and viewing parties took place in almost every state in the U.S. Interest groups and film societies continue to cite the film as a core text for examining the intersection of systemic racism and criminal justice.
Critical Analysis and Reception of '13th'
The documentary, both a historical overview of the past and a lyrical, poetic visualization of Black bodies in a narrative of systemic criminalization and incarceration, is widely celebrated. Reasons you might not like DuVernay's take on the topic include some powerful narrative strategies designed to shock viewers into radical waking, and both a wide and a narrow use of illustration techniques meant to clarify, occasion reflection, and on the other hand propagate moments of disorientation and pseudo-pessimism. While some people relish those moments of snakes eating their superimposed tails in a dining room meant to be the House of Representatives, or x-ray anatomical slices into the cavities of the postal route of a turnless available leasing speculator-turned-tow truck operator in 2000 with long dreads cut off to prove his innocence, the fact that scholars from Ivy League to unchartered western territories have been drawn to this debate is a clue. Indeed, DuVernay’s film is a focal piece in the curriculum at both UNC-CH and at Arizona State, drawn on to teach a sense of the depths of despair in a world built on free enterprise.
Future Implications
13th spurs more questions than it answers. It is urgent. It is also prescient. The film points to the fact that issues like stop-and-frisk existed well before the movie came out. For a long time after the DVD was released to colleges, viewers, and sold to parents, the issues discussed in 13th would issue inconsistent calls to action. Are those calls to action more consistent now? Obviously, police reform is not where it needs to be. That is abundantly clear. What happens after police reform? At the beginning of 13th, a call for a kind of intifada against some regimes is made. It’s a term more often employed to discuss policies and liberation movements in the Middle East than in the United States, and it raises difficult questions for many people and policymakers to whom the narrative in the film is new or seems overstated. It is registered by many as an incitement to violence. It is explained that non-violent struggle is advocated whenever possible, but that the call to arms is a deeply practical one, necessitated by the legitimacy and structure post-Civil War America has afforded so many systems that supply everyone in the US with a stake in the continued degradation of some populations.
There are calls to action elsewhere in the documentary. It is argued that the terminus of the lynching era was the beginning of an evolution of racial control and institutionalized slavery – which is to say that those times were not so long ago as we would like to think. The problem is pressing. Voters initiated that state’s constitutional amendment to restore voting rights for people with convictions in 2018. Ensuring that formerly incarcerated people have the ability to vote cannot come soon enough. This is not to mention the many other administrative bars to re-entering public and academic life.
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