Nix Bits

Much as we might want to get away from it, we simply can’t. The onslaught of documentaries and news overviews has begun. And so my wife and I sit down and watch this stuff if for no other reason than to see what the rest of the U.S. is seeing. Our hope is that with a year’s distance, some perspective will be gained and a few myths debunked and real understanding will be promoted

That is not the case with the Discovery Channel’s “Surviving Katrina“. If you’re expecting a scientific analysis of the storm’s impact from Discovery, you will be dissapointed. It is woefully bad. How bad? How about a computer graphic representation of raging gulf waters with a jumping buoy ala “The Perfect Storm” set to rock music (Green Day’s “Wake me When September Ends”). Katrina as music video. hmmm. This technique occurs throughout the show.

Equally irratating is the frequent use of re-enactments throughout. We seen snippets of an interview with Ivor van Heerden — presumably meant to lend some scientific credibility to the proceedings — then we see an actor playing van Heerden watching storm surge models and pulling at his hair.

The documentary purports to show the heroism of “regular people” but that tale is primarily told through re-enactments. Any potential emotional impact is blunted by the silliness. We get some “never-before-seen” footage from inside the dome but that’s about it for actual footage. But if you want to see a computerized rendering of the roof panels being ripped off, this is your show.

You would expect with the focus on computer animation that we would be treated to explanation of how the levees broke, perhaps something like the T-P’s brilliant flash presentation. I don’t believe the words “U.S. Army Corps of Engineers” are uttered at all in the show. That the levees broke due to human error, that Katrina’s surge into the London Avenue and 17th Street canals was far less than the Category 3 storm they were supposed to have been designed for is not mentioned at all. On the Discovery Channel’s website, they have only this to say about the levee failures

New Orleans’ levee failures were found to be primarily the result of system design flaws, combined with the lack of adequate maintenance. According to an investigation by the National Science Foundation, those responsible for the conception, design, construction and maintenance of the region’s flood-control system apparently failed to pay sufficient attention to public safety.

“Those responsible”. Wonder who that might be? Expecting an explanation of the history of flood control in New Orleans and perhaps some attention to wetlands loss on the cable channel that’s supposed to be about science? Think again. They’d rather retell sensational tales of the thuggery and violence that may or may not be accurate — complete with re-enactments of people ransacking a vending machine in the Superdome.

At one point, the narrator states that “the largest storm surge ever to hit the United States is hurtling towards New Orleans”. Well, actually, it hurtled towards lower Plaquemines and then the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but we wouldn’t want facts to get in the way of our rock music video. We don’t want any tales of areas other than New Orleans to get in the way either. Immediately after that statement, we are told that the levees are overtopped and break and the Lower 9th floods. In other words, the impression is that the storm was overwhelming. It couldn’t be helped. New Orleans was doomed, doomed, doomed.

The underlying thesis seems to be that the fault of all things is the locals and the Federal government made a few mistakes, but it couldn’t be helped. The evacuation is represented as completely botched with no recent history whatsoever of the Georges’ or Ivan evacuations presented for context. We don’t get stats explaining just how many people got out and how many stayed in the 72 hour period preceeding landfall. This documentary has little use for statistics and numbers, though. Instead we get lingering shots of the school buses as Nagin and Blanco are heard congratulating each other for the “orderly evacuation” while Michael Brown is allowed to shift blame away from his own agency’s failure to get transportation into the city.

Brownie is the only public official interviewed at all. None of his statements are rebutted or even explored critically. Poor Brownie, he asked really hard for the buses and he really really thought they were coming. He still doesn’t know why they never came. And then he got fired.

Without explicitly doing so the documentary manages to advance nearly all the common myths about Katrina. It’s an appalling bad pile of misrepresentations and the producers should be ashamed of themselves.