Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke

Surrounding the great disaster of Hurricane Katrina was an even greater upheaval of false accusations and untimely reports. One measly excuse for such behavior by journalists, reporters, and maybe even the government, was the severity of the hurricane and the entirely devastating effect that it rendered on the region. Still, putting all of this aside, the people that suffered the most  because of this were the residents of Louisiana. Spike Lee took his time to reveal the story and actually spoke to the victims themselves, to make “When the Levees Broke”, his documentary of Hurricame Katrina.

Spike Lee took on the job that many others, including President George Bush, mainly ignored, and he condemned the President for doing so. That is seen through the repetition of Kanye West’s comment “Bush doesn’t care about black people” three times! This negative view of the governments participation was upheld through all of Part III, when Lady Bush made allusions to her opinion, that living in the arenas had a better life there than they had in their homes. this greatly attributed to the opinion that the government does not care about the residents of Louisiana.

Lee also listens to the people and allows their opinion to be heard in his documentary. His audience feels his sympathy to the citizens of America that were wrongly called refugees in their own land. He made sure that his audience understood that the people were betrayed by their country, their government organizations like FEMA,  and their President, who was on vacation for two weeks until he responded to Hurricane Katrina.

After the events passing, people left their lives behind to find different identities. Lastly, Spike Lee portrayed Louisiana as he place where culture will not die, even though it lost a lot to the calamity that the government made of Hurricane Katrina.