I have just spent the last hour looking through videos of Hurricane Katrina on youtube. A lot of them showed similar images of horror: water, destruction, black people stranded or walking through water up to their chest, black looters, cops with guns, army people with guns, dead bodies in the water, cars underwater and so much more. My point with this is the media portrays Hurricane Katrina in a very particular way, New Orleans is destroyed and the poor black people are left to survive on their own.
I have assumed that this is because it IS a horrible tragedy and they are making sure people understand that this is something that everyone is going to need to help with. Financially they needed support from whoever can give it. Also their was going to have to be the migration of survivors and victims to all over America that people were going to need to take in, hire, and help. Another thing I noticed was the media was only talking about the looters in a negative fashion; these people are greedy, stealing, looking out only for themselves etc. but how about these people just loss their homes and have no basic necessities to live off of?
In watching a lot of videos on Hurricane Katrina I came across some patterns. Videos that were featured on television shortly after the hurricane showed "bad" people looting, people getting saved, and the sad stories of people having no where to go. Videos that were uploaded by average people talked about the dead bodies lying about, people starving to death, being stranded and in general people being left without help. Videos that are more recent to us that are from the news as well are mostly about corrupt cops admitting what they did wrong, i.e. killing, taking advantage of the chaos, and/or abandoning morals. The differences in these media outlets and time periods make all the difference in how this event was perceived. I don't know whether or not I think this is a good thing or a bad thing but what I do think it is positive that some of the negative side-affects from armed men being in control with no rules and the victims getting unequal treatment are finally coming out.
Sierra-
ReplyDeleteI love the link to the music video, I saw that when I was also looking at videos. I think this also relates back to what we discussed in class today about a social lens where the media wants us to only see how devastating Katrina was to black people. I think that all the negative videos that were shown was due to people not paying enough attention to record the good. I think it's a lot like when we do something wrong, every one remembers it, but if we do something right, no one remembers, if that makes sense.
-Miyuki
It was a great video that you added. It made me feel very angry while watching. And as they showed the colored people stealing it simply made me put myself in their place. Where they doing it for necessity or where they simply doing it as a response to the anger and helplessness they felt. i think that most of the negative videos recorded were just to show the reality, there was too little positive things to focus on.
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