In August of 2005, the Southern United States suffered one of the greatest natural disasters in American history when Hurricane Katrina hit. The response from the Bush administration was appalling and inadequate, forcing many people out of their homes and livelihoods. Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin, offers commentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, following a self-sufficient community in New Orleans called ‘the Bathtub’, who refuse to assimilate and surrender their culture and way of life. His purpose with this film is to help the viewer understand the effect of Hurricane Katrina and the government’s response on the people of New Orleans. In this film, an important setting is the Bathtub. This setting also helps …show more content…
The Bathtub is an unforgiving environment where humans are made to fend for themselves, and the technological benefits of modern society are scarce. Children like Hushpuppy are made to learn to look after themselves and those that are “smaller and sweeter than you”. Towards the start of the film, Hushpuppy is unable to take care of herself. She tries to cook pet food, and ends up setting her house on fire. This shows her naïveté when it comes to taking care of herself. As the film progresses, the viewer sees Hushpuppy showing more competency in surviving and being tough on her own, with the help of her father, Wink. In doing this, she mirrors her father, particularly with Zeitlin’s use of costuming. They both wear almost identical dirty singlets and jeans, which shows Hushpuppy attempting to embody the tough, rugged persona her father possesses. Wink’s dialogue in this scene foreshadows the outcome of the film: “someday when I’m gone… you have to learn how to feed yourself”. In a following scene, the notion of being tough appears again, where Wink tells Hushpuppy to “beast it” and use her hands — not reliant on technology. Wink teaches Hushpuppy how to open a crab without the assistance of a knife. When she is successful, she stands up on the table and the viewer sees her flex her muscles and shout an almost warrior-like cry. Here, the viewer sees Hushpuppy from a low angle, representing her newfound dominance and strength. As the film ends, the viewer sees a role reversal, where Hushpuppy nurtures Wink, which was the other way around for most of the film. She flees the apparent safety and comfort of the Floating Catfish Shack, which is made this way through Zeitlin’s use of lighting, a soft, warm and comfortable tone, and music, which has a whimsical, fantastical mood heavily influenced by New Orleans traditional jazz. She says “I need to go home” and goes back to the Bathtub to
Donald Worster introduces a framework for analyzing environmental history along the three dimensions of culture, social organization, and nature, which can be used to investigate how the ‘levees only’ approach to managing the waters of the Mississippi River set the scene for the disastrous effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana (4-5). The ‘levees only’ approach grew from and promoted certain cultural, social, and natural conditions in New Orleans, and each of these elements critically interacted to contribute to the human and environmental destruction unleashed by Katrina. Cultural, social, and natural elements of Worster’s framework individually shaped the essential preconditions of the Katrina disaster. Culturally, New Orleans’s
Niman, Michael I. "KATRINA's AMERICA: Failure, Racism, And Profiteering." Humanist 65.6 (2005): 11. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
Rankine also shares the horrible tragedy of hurricane Katrina experienced by the black community, where they struggled for their survival before and post the hurricane catastrophes. She reports that the lives of black people in the disaster were of no cost for white administration and they delayed the help. She expresses this by writing, “I don’t know what the water wanted. It wanted to show you no one would come” (Rankine 94)(11).
A storm such as Katrina undoubtedly ruined homes and lives with its destructive path. Chris Rose touches upon these instances of brokenness to elicit sympathy from his audience. Throughout the novel, mental illness rears its ugly head. Tales such as “Despair” reveal heart-wrenching stories emerging from a cycle of loss. This particular article is concerned with the pull of New Orleans, its whisper in your ear when you’ve departed that drags you home. Not home as a house, because everything physical associated with home has been swept away by the storm and is now gone. Rather, it is concerned with home as a feeling, that concept that there is none other than New Orleans. Even when there is nothing reminiscent of what you once knew, a true New Orleanian will seek a fresh start atop the foundation of rubbish. This is a foreign concept for those not native to New Orleans, and a New Orleanian girl married to a man from Atlanta found her relationship split as a result of flooding waters. She was adamant about staying, and he returned to where he was from. When he came back to New Orleans for her to try and make it work, they shared grim feelings and alcohol, the result of which was the emergence of a pact reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. This couple decided they would kill themselves because they could see no light amongst the garbage and rot, and failure was draining them of any sense of optimism. She realized the fault in this agreement,
escape the wretches of poverty. Katrina’s story reflects the untold struggles of many women in
Hushpuppy lives alone, not too far away from her alcoholic, abusive, seriously ill father. As a result, Hushpuppy is left to fend for herself: to cook, clean, care for her pets, her ill father, as well as herself while living during a storm with threaten to destroy the Bathtub. In the beginning scene of the film, Hushpuppy’s teacher, Miss Bathsheba, gives Hushpuppy some advice that she begins to implement: “Cause any day now, the fabric of the universe is coming unraveled. The ice caps gonna melt, the water's gonna rise, and everything south of the levee's going under. [..] Y'all better learn how to survive” (9). Hushpuppy runs home and checks for her father. When she realizes he is not home, she starts to think about how her life will be in the future: “Kids that got no Mamma, no Daddy and nobody. They got to live in the woods, and eat grass, and steal underpants. If Daddy don't get home soon, it's gonna be time for me to start eating my pets” (11). The point of view of Hushpuppy at this exact moment is when Hushpuppy realizes her situation in terms of learning how to not only survive, but survive on her own. She learns how to cook, clean and fend for
In the late summer of 2005, a terrible tragedy occurred that changed the lives of many in the south-east region of the United States. A Category 3, named storm, named Hurricane Katrina, hit the Gulf Coast on the 29th of August and led to the death of 1,836 and millions of dollars’ worth of damage (Waple 2005). The majority of the damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana. Waple writes in her article that winds “gusted over 100 mph in New Orleans, just west of the eye” (Waple 2005). Not only was the majority of the damage due to the direct catastrophes of the storm but also city’s levees could no longer hold thus breaking and releasing great masses of water. Approximately, 80% of the city was submerged at sea level. Despite the vast amount of damage and danger all throughout the city, officials claimed that there was work being done to restore the city of New Orleans as a whole but many parts, and even the people, of the city were overlooked while areas of the city with higher economic value, and more tourist traffic, were prioritized along with those individuals.
On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, the most expensive hurricane in American history, made landfall in Louisiana with winds of one hundred and twenty-seven miles per hour (“Hurricane Katrina Statistics Fast Facts”). The sheer magnitude of the amount of lives and property lost was enormous, and it was triggered simply by warm ocean waters near the Bahamas ("How Hurricane Katrina Formed"). Nature was indifferent to whether the raging winds and rain would die off in the ocean or wipe out cities; it only follows the rules of physics. A multitude of American authors has attempted to give accounts and interpretations of their encounters with the disinterested machine that is nature. Two authors, Stephen Crane and Henry David Thoreau, had rather contrasting and conflicting interpretations of their own interactions with nature. Crane’s work, “The Open Boat,” is story based on his experience as a survivor
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was one of the most destructive in the history of the United States, proving that the levee only policy was a failure and the limits of human control over the river. The beginning of the flood, from the initial crevasse, poured out “468,000 second-feet onto the Delta that triple the volume of a flooding Colorado, more than double a flooding Niagara Falls and the entire upper Mississippi ever carried” (pg 203). The flood of 1927 “shifted perceptions of the role and responsibility of the federal government… shattered the myth of a quasi-feudal bond between Delta blacks and the southern aristocracy...accelerated the great migration of blacks north. And it altered both southern and national politics....” (pg 422). America is a product of the flood of 1927 in shaping the political, social, and economic structure. With each reoccurring disaster, America, in that region, continues to face the same issues regarding social conditions and poor working conditions that failed to be addressed.
According to Hurricane Katrina At Issue Disasters, economic damages from Hurricane Katrina have been estimated at more than $200 billion… More than a million people were displaced by the storm… An estimated 120,000 homes were abandoned and will probably be destroyed in Louisiana alone (At * Issue). For this perspective, “Hurricane Katrina change the Gulf Coast landscape and face of its culture when it hit in 2005” (Rushton). A disaster like Katrina is something the victims are always going to remember, for the ones the lost everything including their love ones. Katrina became a nightmare for all the people that were surround in the contaminated waters in the city of New Orleans. People were waiting to be rescue for days,
325). Wink faced an unknown medical issue in the film, and his problems were usually handled with alcohol or remedies from Mrs. Bathsheba; therefore, leading the audience to wonder if he had adequate medical attention would he be in his condition. As the movie continues and the government enforces a mandatory evacuation of The Bathtub, Wink faces a huge dilemma as Hushpuppy witnesses her dad lash out at the doctors while they are quarantined at this government facility. Hushpuppy soon witnesses her father slip away into a state he never wanted to be in; therefore, leading the young independent girl into a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions and causing the whole group of citizens from The Bathtub to take a chance to get back home. Wink did not want to be plugged in the wall in his final days, so the others from The Bathtub took him home to his final resting place; however, the adverse reaction to the health care provided to Wink, suggests to the audience that he was not receptive to the help or it was too late to recover. According to James Kirby’s study community characteristics influence access to health care and with the citizens of The Bathtub their access to health care was limited due to their lifestyle choices. When the
News of the devastating hurricane Katrina and its economic, political, social, and humanitarian consequences dominated global headlines in an unprecedented manner when this natural catastrophe struck the region of New Orleans in mid August 2005 (Katrinacoverage.com). As a tradition, large-scale disasters like Katrina, inevitably, bring out a combination of the best and the worst news media instincts. As such, during the height of Hurricane Katrina’s rage, many journalists for once located their gag reflex and refused to swallow shallow and misleading excuses and explanations from public officials. Nevertheless, the media’s eagerness to report thinly substantiated rumors may have played a key role in bringing about cultural wreckage that may take the American society years to clean up.
The film “When the Levees Broke” of spike lee is a four part series covering the events that took place before and after the devastation of Katrina on New Orleans and its residents. In August 2005, New Orleans was struck by Hurricane Katrina. People were unprepared for the disaster. As the city was flooding, levees safeguard failed the city, which caused the city to go underwater. In the film, part 1 shows hurricane Katrina and it’s impact. The flooding, rescue efforts and people trying to survive the disaster. Part 2 shows the aftermath with people that were evacuated waiting for help to come to the city. It was a very slow response to help and everyone was just waiting. Part 3 shows how people started to recover. Many hoped to return to their
August 29, 2005 was one of the darkest days for the residents of the State of Louisiana. Katrina, a category 3 hurricane, ripped through New Orleans and the surrounding areas causing catastrophic loss of life and property. The federal government’s disaster response team, which was formed in 1978, titled the Federal Emergency Management Agency, (commonly referred to as FEMA) responded to the needs of the survivors. Unfortunately the Bush administration through FEMA showed gross ineptitude in its response to the disaster. Pre-Katrina the lack of response resulted in a largely unsuccessful evacuation. After the storm, aid to the citizens of New Orleans was slow and inadequate. When we look back at the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, it appears that Bush’s FEMA botched much of the handling of the crisis and that overall, our “administration” could have responded to the situation much better.
Fink, Sheri. "Hurricane Katrina: after the flood." The Gaurdian. N.p., 7 Feb. 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.