I found Ava DuVernay's 13th documentary extremely compelling but also a little difficult to watch. It was strange because I knew the feeling I was experiencing was not empathy, as I had never experienced any discrimination towards some of the people interviewed, and yet it made me incredibly sad regardless . The full story covers years of information and legal processes, but the film primarily revolves around the idea and explanation of the 13th Amendment, which states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime the party of which will have been duly found guilty. , will exist in the United States or any place subject to its jurisdiction. »Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Right off the bat, DuVernay shocked me with the extremely alarming statistic that one in four African-American men will serve prison time at some point. . I had looked at this before learning these stats in class, so it really blew me away at this point. I didn't know the prices were so high. Immediately, this made me better understand the point that Bryan Stevenson was trying to make about the extreme racial disparity in the justice system. I just couldn't believe it. After that, I immediately did some Google research and learned that African Americans are incarcerated at a rate 5 times higher than whites. In my opinion, there is no difference in race that could explain such a big difference – only the prejudices of the people who embody them. Next comes an excerpt from President Obama, who gives yet another frightening statistic: While the United States has only 5 percent of the world's population, we have incarcerated 25 percent of the world's prisoners. This only further highlighted the fact that there is something wrong with the American justice system. As the world's first highly developed country, we should not, cannot, and (in my opinion) do not have 25% of the world's prisoners within our borders. The documentary is more or less a series of interviews conducted by DuVernay, all providing different information on this 13th Amendment and the issues surrounding it. Many of those interviewed were actually people who had been incarcerated in the American system. One thing I noticed was that all interviews were conducted in an industrial style area – never outside, never in open spaces, just in an “imprisoned” setting. All of the interviews help shape DuVernay's idea that although the 13th Amendment was supposed to "abolish" slavery, it actually never ended in the United States. She argues that biased behavior and unjust punishments meted out by those in power in the justice system have continued slavery in modern America, and I can't help but agree with her. Just reading the amendment made me do a double take: I didn't really realize the strategic wording of the amendment. Essentially, slavery is still allowed if a white man in power decides that another man should have to serve, and I find that simply wrong. If we abolished slavery, we would have to abolish it completely. DuVernay's use of simple word imagery is what made this film really "pop" for me. The stats at first were displayed by themselves: no images, no video or audio, just the “1 out of 4” statistic. Additionally, the film cuts to a screen with nothing but the word "CRIMINAL" on a black background, 43(1), 399-441.