“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,” it is written in the The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, meant to declare the abolition of slavery. And in Ava DuVernay’s arresting new documentary, “13th”— shot somewhat in secret and announced suddenly as the opening night film of the New York Film Festival — the director takes on the fallacy of the amendment and the myth of American freedom for all, specifically zeroing in on the except clause that the United States as a whole has leveraged to uphold enduring forms of slavery ever since. “13th” considers and indicts the except loophole, examining how its exploitation has manifested into new, insidious forms of enslavement wherein racism can continue.
Intelligently told, and reflective of DuVernay herself — assured, articulate, bold — “13th” sets up its thesis from the jump and then builds a strong case for American incarceration as the modern substitute of slavery. Opening up with President Barack Obama, the film details the grievous statistics of our current imprisonment epidemic: the United States makes up 5% of the world’s entire population, but it houses 25% of the planet’s prisoners with a prison population of 2.3 million — the highest rate of incarceration in the world by a long shot.
Sprawling in size and scope, DuVernay’s doc essentially takes on the entire history of post-abolition racial inequality in the U.S. — not an easy task. Opening with these grim numbers, while “The 13th” appears to center on taking the dangerously-unchecked prison industrial complex to task, the documentary begins to quickly bloom and reckon with all the pervasive forms of institutional oppression that spread after the so-called emancipation proclamation — from segregation, lack of the vote, all the way to stop and frisk and the recent rash of police shootings (the tragic deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and more are featured as well). And there’s much, much more, including a crucial section devoted to D.W. Griffith‘s “The Birth Of A Nation” which begat many of the myths of the black male as rapacious and animalistic.
Powerful and striking, what DuVernay’s doc most trenchantly argues and exposes is the treacherously interconnected power of how dogwhistle politics, corporate interest, police militarization, criminalization targeting the poor and inner cities and mass incarceration all adjoin to make black people in America second-class citizens.
One of the most chilling moments in “13th” is the audio tapes of Richard Nixon’s former aide John Ehrlichman admitting to policies that would continue the overwhelming bias against African-Americans and advance the distortion of the African-American perception to white America and politicians. “13th” depicts, in cogent, scary fashion, the long-standing systematic war on communities of color, poverty, and war on the less desired prevalent in American politics for decades on end.
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate…blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing [them] heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman says in the doc on tape. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Featuring over 30 talking heads like political advocate and scholar Angela Davis, activist and CNN correspondent Van Jones, United States Senator Cory Booker, historian and literary critic Henry Louis Gates, former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, and flipside racism refuseniks like Newt Ginrich and spokespeople for ALEC (the nefarious politicking lobbyist group pressuring corporate interest policies), aesthetically, “13th” can seem a little conventional. Talking heads mixed in with recent B-roll and archival footage isn’t always particularly exciting.
But the doc is so engrossing, and its commanding subjects are so articulate, it’s extremely easy to get consumed in the upfront message and focus less on the form. That said, even as traditional as “13th” can be visually, there’s a striking poise to the entire affair. It’s commanding, economical and precise; there’s a lot of craft to a story that persuasively unpacks and tackles so many myriad elements of racial and economic disparity.
Dense, but never dull or bloated, “13th” also avoids the easy trap of argument-distracting anger and outrage, instead channeling a momentum of immediacy. And no stone is left unturned in the narrative of subjugation including the vilification and arrest of black thought leaders and the murder and incarceration of members of the Black Panther party — a relatively small movement, but dangerous enough to J. Edgar Hoover and the powers that be it was thought to be a threat that must be put down immediately. Essentially, post-civil rights black affirmation and dissent is systematically dismantled, and it’s easy to see some parallels in the the attempts to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement today.
The overwhelming force of “13th” is such that as the movie moves into its third act it becomes more and more heartbreaking in all its countless examples of injustice and abuse. The understanding that not much has changed and change may never come is devastating. It’s not that “13th” isn’t without hope, but its sobering examination of chronic prejudice and corporate interest only for the privileged will leave you thinking the system is fundamentally broken beyond repair. But as bleak as the doc can be — at least if you feel some empathy for those not as privileged as you are — the urgency coursing through its veins makes for a galvanizing need to remedy the inescapable harm that black America still faces on a daily basis.
Obviously, the culture isn’t blind to American racism and bias — the rash of police shootings is unfortunately helping to bring more awareness to the fore, but the way DuVernay threads all the narratives together is incredibly artful. She paints a distressing portrait of the way systemic and insidious racism continues to metastasize itself through America in many shapes and forms and could simply continue to do so on and on.
The quiet power of DuVernay’s documentary ultimately says: as the culture becomes more fed up, more woke, more empathetically inclusive, perhaps it’s only a matter of time until some kind of revolution fully awakens the country. Tacitly stated throughout, it is our moral obligation to confront these odious and institutional prejudices and somehow, through any means necessary, instill change. [A-]