Documentary Analysis: 13th

Deductive Reasoning

Example: One of the experts stated that prisoners were used as cheap labor and then the documentary presented many examples of this such as Microsoft and JCPenny using prisoners as laborers to make their product.

Effect: It provides insight to how some companies take advantage of victims of mass incarceration and essentially revert the country back to slavery.

Summary

This documentary follows the evolution and history of mass incarceration and the U.S. prison boom particularly in relation to its effect on African Americans.

Documentary Analysis:

13th Directed by Ava DuVernay

Written Text

Example: Providing the name and credentials of all the experts who spoke as they appeared.

Personal Anecdote/Narrative

Effect: By presenting their credentials, it clearly showed how knowledgeable each expert was with the specific information each of them presented.

Example: An anecdote about Kalief Browder, an innocent victim of mass incarceration who was found innocent after 3 years of being jailed without a trial. Later, it is revealed that he killed himself as a result of those years in prison.

Effect: This not evokes sympathy for Kalief but anger and frustration at the justice system as well because of its unfair treatment of arrested people even if they haven't been found guilty yet.

Logos

Pathos

Ethos

Inductive Reasoning

Audio Track

Example: The documentary provides evidence of black oppression such as the prison boom after the Civil War, the portrayal of blacks as criminals or a threat such as in Birth of a Nation, lynchings, segregation, and Jim Crow laws. Through these examples, the experts in the film conclude that blacks were forced into being second class citizens.

Audio Track

Example: A speech by the KKK reminds the audience of America's racist past.

Example: An audio clip of Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan's campaign strategist, shows him saying that the southern strategy was used to hurt black people in ambiguous ways to hide the clear discrimination.

Effect: This strengthened the idea that blacks were oppressed and made to be seen as criminals ever since they were liberated by the 13th Amendment, emphasizing the main argument of the documentary.

Effect: This audio track evokes guilt in its listeners because it reminds the viewer of where America came from and the harsh reality of race relations.

Visual Elements

Effect: The evidence gave the experts credibility of their statements that the system unfairly and disproportionately went after African Americans.

Expert Testimony

Example: A quote from John Ehrlichman, Nixon's adviser, stated that Nixon's administration only had two enemies, blacks and antiwar hippies, and that the administration did its best to put an end to these groups by criminalizing them with the specific drugs they are associated with, cocaine and marijuana.

Example: A montage of the murder of several African Americans by police officers, including Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and many more.

Effect: This revealed the shocking manipulation of the Nixon administration to suppress groups of people they disagreed with or despised, particularly blacks and antiwar hippies.

Quantitative Data

Visual Elements

Effect: Gave proof of police brutality, providing credibility to the experts' statements that police brutality is one of the many new forms of systematic oppression in America.

Example: The documentary presented its audience with the fact that 1 in 3 blacks were going to be imprisoned at one point in their lifetime and that even though black men only made up 6.5% of the U.S. population, they make up 40.2% of the prison population.

Example: The images of slavery, lynchings, the harassment of blacks, and the connection between Trump's speech about the good old days and images of what those days looked like.

Effect: These facts shocked the audience and put the disproportionate incarceration rates into numbers that most people can easily understand.

Effect: All of these images and clips evoked a feeling of guilt and sympathy for blacks throughout America's history.