Movie Poster

One out of four human beings with their hands on bars, shackled, in the world are locked up here, in the land of the free.

# Review

13th is an interesting documentary that seeks to explore the intersection of race, justice, and incarceration. To that effect, DuVernay weaves a powerful narrative from the times of slavery, to the civil rights movement, to the modern-day prison-industrial complex. Throughout the narrative DuVernay points out the various injustices inflicted upon African Americans by governmental authorities.

The movie is well done and the narrative is logical and not vitriolic, which I appreciate. There are various experts who are brought in to give their analysis on various issues. The movie presents a harrowing view of how African Americans were treated historically, such as their racist portrayal in The Birth of a Nation and the illegal lynchings of Blacks in the South. The analysis on the civil rights movement and the subversion of the traditional idea of criminality is very novel for me.

The film, as with other political films, focused on the main narrative and does not allow much rebuttal from competing narratives. While the film highlights a very pressing issue, namely the mass incarceration of Americans (who are mostly Black), I feel it falls short on diagnosing the causes of the issue. The film focuses on the narrative of Blacks being sent to prison by a racist justice system in order to fuel the racist private prison-industrial complex. While the thesis has some merit and the criminal justice system is deeply flawed, the narrative misses the full story.

For instance, many Black communities were decimated and gutted by racist municipal and state policies, leading to the rise of criminal gangs (many of which were founded in prisons) and other crimes in said communities because youths don’t have any way to escape their circumstances. While criminality and poverty are aspects of the problem, they're mostly glanced over and dismissed in favour of the film's thesis. Furthermore, while there are some conservative opinions in the documentary, they’re largely downplayed in comparison to the more liberal narrative on criminality. I would’ve liked to see more nuanced storytelling covering more facets of the extremely nuanced problem, and I would’ve also liked to hear more experts speak on some solutions to the problem.

# Conclusion

A very powerful look at racial discrimination in the past and one narrative of racial discrimination in the present.

# Overall rating: 7.6

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