13th Movie Review

📌Category: Entertainment, Movies
📌Words: 998
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 23 May 2021

The documentary, 13th, has many resounding images of death and cruelty. These images provoke thought and empathy to those within them and to those who view them. Generally, most of the images of people were of lynchings, victims of police brutality, leaders of black power movements, convicts in prison, etc. However, the images of Emmett Till and the images of public lynchings were the most notable. The photograph of Emmett Till in his casket was gut-wrenching and impactful to society and the Civil Rights Movement on the macro scale. His open-casket funeral justified the harsh realities that many African Americans endure, even children such as him. Old photographs of young men hanging from trees amplify the narrative of white supremacy and a racial hierarchy in America’s supposed “land of the free.” The despairing portrayal of the images is the white people smiling away as if meant nothing. As if a human being had not just lost their life. Most of all, the photographs were produced by them as well. It’s crucial for society to watch films/documentaries or research images such as these because it deepens the fact that this brutality is not just a statistic but a reality that still occurs to many minorities. It helps look at people in statistics on a more personal, micro-level.

The countless facts and statistics mentioned in the film justified the hypocrisy in which white people preach. For example, the historical significance that interracial rape is far more marked by white men against black women than black men against white women. It’s absurd to see newspaper articles writing convicting young men of crimes they didn’t do. Sending innocent boys to prison for 10 years until they were proven innocent. It is supported by the fact that many African American citizens are forced to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit because the possibility of going to jail for the mandatory sentences is extreme. How prisoners are treated is horrific. The health of many prisoners deteriorates for the reason that they are denied human contact, are given food which occasionally will have maggots, refused medical care; the mental health of these people, innocent or guilty, is dismantled.

Due to the Civil War, the 13th Amendment was annexed into the Constitution. The Amendment states that slavery is to be abolished, except as a punishment for crimes. Although white people were outraged, they were quick to take the latter. They rushed to maintain the racial hierarchy by arresting African Americans for petty crimes such as loitering or vagrancy. They received negative formal sanctions solely for standing around without a purpose. Essentially, it was slavery in a different form, by a different name.  As history and society progress, the racial hierarchy cultivated its name to adjust to societal standards. After convict leasing, Jim Crow laws were placed to classify African Americans as second class or below status. Through Jim Crow laws, white people maintained their dominance by refusing to allow black people to vote, going as far as demanding literacy tests, thus implementing a hierarchy. After Jim Crow laws, segregation dominated communities. More modernly, the hierarchy was etched through the war on drugs. Generally, white people were caught with large amounts of powder cocaine and were merely given “a slap on the wrist,” and minorities were caught with crack cocaine and sentenced to larger sentences in prison. This actively demonstrates the racial hierarchy embedded within the prison system and in America’s institutions.

Understanding is propagated largely through the media. It broadcasts, prints, and updates the information regularly to keep the general public informed of what is happening in the country and around the world. However, opinions, misinformation, and rumors can be widely spread throughout it. In the film 13th, it mentions the first motion picture movie where the plot consists of racial propaganda, praising the KKK for killing a black man and helping a white woman. It forces negative, false, and generalized stereotypes on particularly black men and black people. Due to these early stereotypes, throughout the 20th century, young African American men are convicted of crimes, such as rape, that they did not do. In media, they are overrepresented as criminals, called “super predators”. It’s unfortunate to hear that black communities buy into the story that they become fearful of their race. It’s disgraceful to see and hear (though we already knew) that former President Trump urged to have innocent men imprisoned and killed for a crime that they did do when he has committed felonies for which he is not jailed for! Media controls our choices, opinions, and awareness. Society subconsciously aims to depict minorities as bad guys, criminals, and rioters, and subconsciously encourages fear as a reaction to these words.

Historically, American slavery has constantly benefitted from the extreme labor that many slaves toiled to produce for free. When the 13th Amendment was passed, slavery dissipated but was still commenced through convict leasing. In convict leasing, African Americans were sentenced to jail for petty crimes and as a punishment forced to work without pay. They endured long working hours in harsh conditions. As I stated before, convict leasing was simply slavery in a modern term. Similarly, the modern American prison system also encourages the usage of cheap labor from convicts who may or may not have committed petty crimes. It’s interesting and displeasing to hear about child labor or free labor happening in different parts of the world and overseas, yet it is happening in our own backyard. The American prison system is institutionally built racist for this particular reason being white people could manipulate and imprison African Americans without doubt; the American prison system was designed to be oppressive from the start. The example of slavery set the foundation for the ugly conditions that current imprisoners experience. Most of all, the result of slavery induced the notion of mass incarceration in which we currently experience in modern prison systems.

Although I have never been affected by much of the issues of institutional or individual racism, I can help prevent it by calling out those with racist mindsets. Lifting the voices of POCs can spread the broad message and unite us as a community. Social media is the biggest and fastest way to influence a society for reform in racist institutions like the prison system. So, posting petitions and GoFundMe’s and whatnot it’s a way to be vigilant. Being active in protests and educating oneself on the issues many minorities face can help understand why America is rooted deeply in racism.

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