Katrina Documentary Gives Voice To Survivors By Spike Lee

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In the article, “Katrina Documentary Gives Voice to Survivors,” Dennis O’Neil explains how Spike Lee documents the damage of hurricane Katrina to New Orleans not only structurally, but the emotional hurt as well. The film, ¨When the Levees Broke: A Requiem,¨ is broken into four acts which graphically depict the trauma of hurricane Katrina. O’Neil gives a brief background on Spike Lee and how he made this magnificent production. He talks about the trips to Louisiana, the hundreds of interviews and footage captured of the natural disaster. After the summary of Lee, he goes into detail of the movie which he divides into sections. He speaks of how acts one and two are set up to cover the time period of the first threats of the hurricane to five days after Katrina hit and the damage done during this time. O’Neil mentions how the city 's levee system was not built strong enough to take on a very powerful storm. Proceeding to tell how evacuees move …show more content…

He uses firsthand information from Spike Lee’s documentary, which is credible information. Breaking down the four acts paragraph by paragraph, organizes the information in chronological order. “Three months after Katrina hit, Lee and a small crew made the first of eight trips to New Orleans to shoot raw footage...Ultimately close to one hundred subjects appear in the film, all from various acts of life” (O’Neil 207), this quote shows plenty of material was captured to make a well-informed and very credible documentary, which was used to write this essay. Ethos worked very well for O’Neil because of Spike Lee’s reputation as a producer. Logos on the other hand is used to persuade the reader to feel bad for the people of New Orleans, one statement survivor Fred Johnson said is “It was absolutely horrific conditions, it was like being in the middle of a war and all you could do was stand there and feel helpless” (O’Neil 208). Pathos on the other hand, is not

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