Black Lives Matter Spotlight: Ava DuVernay's 13th (6/7/2020)
- Heather German
- Jun 28, 2020
- 4 min read
Welcome to the first installment of my Black Lives Matter Spotlight series. In this series, I'll be taking a look at the work of different contemporary Black filmmakers in America, particularly at how they coment on contemporary racial issues.
Ava DuVerney is perhaps best known for her 2014 Martin Luther King biopic Selma and her 2018 adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's sci-fi classic A Wrinkle In Time. The former is an excellent exploration of the complexities behind the 60's civil rights movement and a demythologization of a man whose contributions to the world have been largely sterilized by white academia. I have not seen the latter, but I have heard it is rather underwhelming to say the least, however that in an of itself provides a really excellent lens through which to view DuVernay's work. She is a filmmaker less concerned with telling a story and more concerned with telling the truth.
Her 2016 Netflix documentary 13th is perhaps the most pure manifestation of this goal. The documentary style fits DuVernay's emotionally charged fact-based style like a glove, freeing her from the limitations that fiction filmmaking bring and shedding a light on a shocking modern day institution that is far more insidious than most people could ever imagine. With it, she displays an excellent grasp on a very different style of storytelling, focusing on the development of history and institutions rather than individual characters, but still tackling heavy, important themes of oppression, freedom and Black identity. The result is nothing short of an exceptional example of documentary filmmaking.
13th is a film about America's notorious prison industrial complex and its insidious relationship to Black oppression and American slavery. It frames this complex as an extension of a clause in the 13th amendment that provides an exception for the abolishment of slavery; "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." The film can be easily divided into two parts. The first half details the history of the Mass Incarceration era of American history, started by Richard Nixon and continued by presidents like Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton, and how these laws played heavily into the American government's attempts to keep Black bodies powerless and subservient. The second half focuses on how this movement, though painting itself as a crackdown on violent crime, was in actuality a way in which to get more people in prison to assist with cheap labor and shareholder profits. Both of these two stories would be horrific on their own, but they are inevitably intertwined, and their combined whole is so voracious and sinister that now over 25% of the worlds prison population is located in what is supposedly the freest country on Earth.
This is, naturally, an extremely relevant film in the context of the current movement of Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the nation. There has never been a time in history where our law enforcement divisions haven't been explicitly been playing against Black populations, and now we as a country are finally being forced to come to terms with this. Though many people - specifically white people - may feel as if this all came out of nowhere, and may not understand why so many people are sickened by the current state of our criminal justice system, from the police force to the prisons themselves, there is a long, storied history of institutional warfare going on right under our noses, and American citizens are finally rising up to say "enough is enough."
13th has the answers to a lot of the questions about current events, and it's no surprise that it's currently one of the top trending films on Netflix despite being released four years ago. While it focuses more on prisons than on policing, there is an inevitable link between the two, and it is subtextually clear that the implications of prisons are in turn an implication of the police, who are the arms and legs of this evil system. Every unjust law passed throughout American history that contributed to this problem was enforced by the police; it couldn't exist without them.
Overall, 13th is an excellent introduction to the idea of institutionalized racism and the prison industrial complex. Though those already intimately familiar with these issues may not take anything new from it, and at times it can get a little jumbled in its fact-telling, it's no less a powerful statement as a result. It shows us a demographic finally getting the chance to tell one of their darkest yet most important stories, and showcases a talented filmmaker fully embracing her commitment to the truth, no matter how messy and unpleasant it may be. It doesn't offer any easy answers to the problems it discusses, but just bringing them to light is an incredible first step towards solving the problem for good. 13th is a film I'd recommend to just about anyone, and I'd go as far as calling it essential viewing in an era where, contrary to the beliefs of many, racism doesn't die - it just changes form.
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