Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke shows his point-of-view on the Katrina disaster. Throughout the duration of Act III, Lee dedicates most of the time to showing that the Bush administration hasn’t done enough to help New Orleans during this ordeal. The first instance of this is when Kanye West is shown saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” The reason he gave for saying this is that he thought it would be refreshing to hear, and that his main concern was putting himself in the victims’ shoes and not about the after-effects of his statement. From this, Lee went into showing victims’ opinions on what the government was doing to help New Orleans. He showed people who thought Cheney only visited New Orleans to make himself look good, and that when Bush came to make his speech, the administration made it look like New Orleans was putting itself back together, such as showing electricity in the spot where the speech was made. Then when the speech was over, things went back to how they were, with no power in any other spots of the town. This leads to the conclusion that Lee himself did not feel the government did all they could to help New Orleans.
This point-of-view is supported by the fact that Lee also decided to show the excuse the Bush administration had for waiting as long as they did to take action. They wanted to see what lawyers thought was the best move. Lee also decided to put in the fact the FEMA decided to no longer pay for the evacuee’s hotel rooms that were living in, even though many of them couldn’t afford to live on their own. This is followed by showing George Bush’s mother saying that the evacuees were better off in other places of living because it was better than how they used to live. So in a way, evacuating to other places was a good thing. From all of the above stated, it is safe to assume that Lee has a very strong viewpoint of how the government dealt with the Katrina disaster.