Sunday, 21 September 2025

The Katrina Doc

"Katrina: Come Hell and High Water": http://bit.ly/46L7rDM

I don't watch documentaries of events I lived through.

I'm going to need to re-evaluate that position after watching this three part documentary on Netflix.

The levees breaking, like in that Led Zeppelin song based on the Memphis Minnie original.

The flooding of the 9th Ward.

The heat and the insanity of the Superdome.

The rescue of Fats Domino from his home.

It was in the news for a week straight.

But really, we had no idea.

This is a racial story. This is a governmental story. This is a people story.

The first episode is all about the lead-up. Was the hurricane going to hit... Live in the east and it's a regular feature, hurricane warnings. Happen all the time, but how often does the storm live up to advance billing? Very rarely, but when it does...

So what do you do?

That's the question confronting not only those in the path of the hurricane, but Jews constantly after the Holocaust. Do you slowly boil in the ever-increasing temperature of the water, or do you bolt? When do you bolt?

Now prior to this doc, we watched the Christopher Reeve doc on HBO. How much interest do I have in Christopher Reeve? Almost none. I've got nothing against the man, but I lived through his career and tragic accident and thought I knew enough. However my sister Jill strongly recommended it.

Reeve's mother wanted to pull the plug. His wife didn't want him to. What would I have done in that situation?

I'd have pulled the plug. No judgment of Reeve's choice, but I don't think I could have confronted the uphill climb to...far from the mountaintop.

But what struck me vividly in the Reeve doc was how time had passed by, children had grown up, people had aged. After all, the accident was thirty years ago. And the mother of Reeve's first two children...

You could see the years gone by in her face.

Which made me think about the years gone by in my own face. You get to the point where you can't look in the mirror. It's too scary. It's not only that you look old and different, but that you ARE old and different. As for plastic surgery... At this point the only person who has defied the odds and still looks like herself is Susan Sarandon, do you really want to take that risk?

So twenty years have passed since Katrina. And everybody is twenty years older. Kids now have kids. Dark hair is now gray. Time keeps on marching on. I wonder about that, what am I not going to live to see? I can't even conjure that up. We never did get our flying cars, but the internet, the smartphone? They were unfathomable, along with a Black president and legal marijuana.

Or did we live through a great leap forward technologically, and things will be relatively static after I'm gone. Or will you be able to fly to Europe in twenty minutes. I don't know. But I do know that time keeps marching and there will come a time when it does, but not for me.

So anyway, the first episode of this Katrina doc concludes with the storm itself. Am I the only one who wonders if I'd be able to fight the winds, who wonders what it would be like to be out in the elements? It's kind of like jumping off a bridge, you're not going to do it, but what would it feel like?

And then it's calm, the sun is out, the land is dry, and then the aforementioned levees break.

And everybody is unprepared and doesn't know what to do. Not only the citizens, but the government.

And this is where it gets ugly. The suffering people. The Black people. If this people had all been white?

Or is it just that Louisiana depends on New Orleans economically, but has contempt for the city.

Or is it that D.C. is just too far away.

But Brownie was doing a hell of a job. I remember that.

But it was much worse.

And the narrative was wrong. It was all about crime when that was not much of a factor. Showing how the media gets it wrong. What else does it get wrong?

And when it's all over, where does that leave us?

With a hell of a lot fewer Black people in New Orleans.

You wonder how poor people can survive when the rich are flaunting their wealth in front of us 24/7. Well, money and accoutrements don't mean you're happy. This doc focuses on culture. People, conversation, laughs, music, dancing, fun... New Orleans was definitely not like the rest of the country. Which was fine with the residents of the city, until they and their culture were thrown aside in the rescue and rebuilding of New Orleans.

This documentary is about more than the hurricane. What's it like to be a minority in America? The racism is palpable. You're disadvantaged. Occasionally you're paid lip service, but...

This is not an episode of "Behind the Music." Life just peachy, then a tragedy and then a rebirth. The renaissance...there has not been a return to normal and there may never be. And a lot of choices were ignorant, or made without consideration of the people involved.

Everybody in America should watch this doc. It should be shown in every school.

But in truth, people don't want to see the underbelly of America. They don't want to be shown that the country doesn't always work. That you may be left out alone in the cold, that the government may not help you much.

We prefer the two-dimensional cartoon narrative. Good and bad. Your team and mine. But the people underneath...

I couldn't stop thinking of the Depeche Mode song...

"People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully"


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