I found Ava DuVernay's thirteenth documentary extremely compelling but also a little difficult to watch. It was strange because I knew the feeling I felt wasn't empathy, as I had never experienced a fraction of the discrimination exerted on some of the people interviewed, and yet it made me feel incredibly sad regardless. The full story covers years of information and legal process, but the film primarily revolves around the idea and explanation of the 13th Amendment, which states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime whereof the party will have been duly convicted." , will exist in the United States or any place subject to its jurisdiction. “Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned”? Get an Original EssaySoon, DuVernay shocked me with the extremely alarming statistic that one in four African-American men will eventually end up in prison I had watched this before learning these statistics in class, so at this point it really blew me away I had no idea the rates were that high. Immediately this made me better understand the point Bryan Stevenson was trying to make about the extreme racial disparity in the justice system. I simply couldn't believe it. I immediately did some Googling and found that African Americans are incarcerated at 5 times the rate of whites. In my opinion, there is no racial difference that can explain such a huge difference – only the prejudices of the people who entrust them Below is a clip of President Obama, who provides yet another scary statistic: while the United States has only 5% of the world's population, we have. 25% of the world's prisoners are incarcerated. This only further emphasized that there is something wrong with the US justice system. As a highly developed first world country, we shouldn't, couldn't, and (in my opinion) don't have 25% of the world's prisoners within our borders. The documentary is more or less a series of interviews conducted by DuVernay, all providing different information about this 13th Amendment and the issues surrounding it. Many of the interviewees were actually people previously incarcerated in the US system. One thing I noticed was that all the interviews were conducted inside some industrial style area – never outside, never in open spaces, just in “confined” environments. All of the interviews help shape DuVernay's idea that although the 13th Amendment was intended to "abolish" slavery, it never actually ended in the United States. She argues that biased behavior and unjust punishments exhibited by those in power in the justice system have continued slavery in modern America, and I can't help but agree with her. Even just reading the amendment made me do a double take: I hadn't really realized the strategic wording of the amendment. In essence, slavery is still allowed if a white man in power decides that another man should serve, and I find this to be inherently wrong. If we abolished slavery, we would have to abolish it completely. DuVernay's use of simple verbal imagery is what made this movie really “pop” for me. The statistics were shown alone at first: no images, no video or audio, just the "1 in 4" statistic. Additionally, the film cuts several times to a screen with nothing but the word "CRIMINAL" on a black background. I think this was supposed to symbolize how easy it is to define people by, 43(1), 399-441.