Unstoppable Crises: Hurricane Katrina in Film and Media Representations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2022.i19.1172Keywords:
natural disasters, Hurricane Katrina, social justice film and media representationsAbstract
This paper examines how film and media representations have become a crucial tool of political response to the Katrina emergency, by framing it as emblematic of the compounded crises that so-called ‘extreme natural events’ highlight, involving the exacerbation of social injustice and second class citizenship, the questioning of the relationship between natural phenomena and man-made disaster, and the special vulnerability of coastal cities to the effects of climate change. By analyzing four visual texts emerging from the Katrina crisis—Spike Lee’s When the Levee Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006), Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s Trouble the Water (2008); HBO’s Treme (2009-2013), Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)—this paper frames eco-catastrophe as a new conceptual paradigm of modernity.References
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