Social Issues In Ken Burns's Central Park Five

1194 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay about central park 5

The main issues centered around Ken Burns’ Central Park Five documentary are malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress that the Central Park Five suspects faced and experienced. Provided in the documentary is background information, interviews, expert analysis, and associated facts related to the case and the conviction of five men. Throughout the documentary, it is insinuated that the New York police department had information that should have connected Matias Reyes, the perpetrator who ultimately confessed to the crime, to the case at the time that it happened. In the evidence given, there was DNA that distinguished him as the sole contributor of the semen obtained from the rape victim. The documentary is both political and social. It is considered political due to the intention that the director hoped to gain from the documentary. Prior to the release of the documentary, in 2003 the Central Park Five sued New York city for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress. The director, Ken Burns, stated that he hoped the documentary would persuade New York City to settle the lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled in 2014. It is considered social due to the social issues the documentary presents. One of the major social issues that the Central Park Five faced in the late 1980s was racial discrimination. In a city where race/color of an individuals’ skin categorizes crimes, it is not surprising that when a …show more content…

A few of his documentaries have been awarded Academy Award nominations and won several Emmy Awards. Ken Burns’ documentaries are well known and are highly rated. Not only was Central Park Five documentary very high rated from film critics, it was nominated and received multiple awards among the film world for Best Documentary. Using background, interviews, and new reports, Burns takes the audience back to how the case developed and what became of

Show More
Related

  • Monster By Walter Dean Myers Analysis

    528 Words  | 2 Pages

    I recently read a book called Monster by Walter Dean Myers, in which a sixteen year-old boy named Steve Harmon was arrested for being accused of shooting a drugstore owner, and watched a documentary titled Murder on a Sunday Morning about a fifteen year-old Brenton Butler being charged with murdering a woman at a motel. I found that the book and the documentary had many similarities and differences. I thought this because both cases are about a young African-American boy who is in custody for something that they did not do. Both police investigations didn't go thoroughly and just rushed through to arrest the boys immediately and are centered around a white defense attorney who tries to convince the jury that the male teen did not committed the crime by giving out evidence.

    Read More

  • Social Problems In The Movie 'Radio'

    1945 Words  | 4 Pages

    1. The movie, Radio, is based at Hanna High School in Anderson, South Carolina. It is about this young, colored, mentally disabled man that stumbles across his local town’s football teams ball. He picks up the ball, and it catches the eye of the teams coach, who later befriends him. The next day, the coach, Harold Jones, comes to find his players mistreating the man, who they had tied up and put in a school supply shed. This leads to lots of running of the team. Radio becomes a part of the team, which upsets some people, and early on, Radio isn 't treated well.

    Read More

  • The Nightmare of the West Memphis Three

    764 Words  | 2 Pages

    In his article, “The Nightmare of the West Memphis Three”, Rich explores how the people of Memphis drew horrific conclusions about people based on the lifestyle they chose to practice. The article highlights the trials and tribulations faced by the accused three young teenagers. Rich does this by citing the popular documentary series “Paradise Lost” which is an in depth analysis into the lives of the accused, the victims’ families and members of the community. This paper outlines how the belief system of that time superseded the inconclusive evidence, which ultimately led to an unfair trial. By “othering” and “marginalizing” those three teens, the society and police created a scenario that aligned with their belief system at the time. Lastly, this paper highlights the influence of the media and celebrity in changing the course for these boys.

    Read More

  • Social Issues In The Show 'That 70's Show'

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    I chose to analyze the sitcom That 70’s Show, a show that follows the lives of a group of teenage friends: Jackie, Donna, Hyde, Kelso, Eric, and Fez. The show addresses several social issues of the 1970s, including: sexism, sexual attitudes, drug use, politics, and the recession. I selected certain episodes from Season One based on their titles and descriptions; ones I thought may deal with sexism more in-depth than other episodes.

    Read More

  • Barry Scheck's Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    Authors Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld founded the innocence project at a law school in New York City, which has assisted in the exoneration of an astonishing number of innocent individuals. As legal aid lawyers, they blithely engaged in conflicts that implicated

    Read More

  • Social Existing Issues Depicted in Fruitvale Station

    1188 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...

    Read More

  • The Conflict Theory Of Crime In The Central Park Five

    1457 Words  | 3 Pages

    As said by Governor George Ryan, “Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions.” With each of these wronged convictions, the victim who should rightfully be convicted was able to walk free and possibly continue to commit crimes. Many of these wronged convictions entail parts of conflict theory with them because the dominant group will view things that they believe are socially deviant as criminal. The example in class of the 1992 Chicago gang ordinance shows how the dominant group, the police force, viewed standing on a street corner as socially deviant and thus, labeled it criminal. In The Central Park Five, the five who were convicted were in Central Park late at night, which was socially deviant. Since there was crime that was committed that night, it was easy to take the socially deviant situation of the kids being in the park late at night, them being in the same place as the crime, and them all being non-white and the victim being white and turn the crime on them. At the start of the night, there were kids who were throwing rocks at cars and assaulting homeless people to the extent of smashing one with a beer bottle. Out of all of the kids who were in the park that night, when they all took off running, it didn’t matter which five were stopped and taken to the police station, as long as there were non-white and in the park that night they could have been one of the “central park five”. “Central park five” turns into a label knowing that regardless of who the kid was and their background, the officers involved were going to manipulate they into confessing to the crime and then end up being convicted. Crime today involves conflict theory and can

    Read More

  • The Case For Reparations By Ta-Nehisi Coatess Analysis

    1274 Words  | 3 Pages

    To make matters worse, they only was able to renegotiate housing right with 106 homeowners out of the 552 who also supported the movement. For the unlucky ones, they lost everything and was forced to move. To me, the documentary that placed on article was too cheery and lenient in the fact that this movement risked the homes and hundreds of black residents in Chicago. The negative facts of this movement and the results still prevalent in the present were touch upon by words on the screen, instead of being discussed with the ones who won. What happened to the people who lost their home? Did the ones who win help them? Or did they reap of their own benefits and carried own with their lives in their newly acquired home? It would have been nice to see their prospective of losing their goal, and the idea that they did not stick together like they promised. Not all movements are picture perfect and I think it would have been a refreshing take on this issue if it focus more on the loss than the few

    Read More

  • The Power Of An Illusion The House We Live In Documentary Analysis

    771 Words  | 2 Pages

    This presentation related closely to political and economic justice; however, this documentary is certainly related to social justice too. It was evident that this documentary was educating us about the policies and laws in America that have oppressed people who are non-white. It was disheartening to learn that America has a history of making laws that segregate non-whites in our society. I was well aware that African Americans have been oppressed by the policies that were put in place; however, I was shocked to learn that other non-white people too were oppressed by these policies. The documentary talks about what it means to be white by law; I was shocked to learn that our government never

    Read More

  • The Scottsboro Trials and To Kill A Mockingbird

    1162 Words  | 3 Pages

    Several groups of white and black men rode the trains in the thirties for transportation. One night a group of white men started a fight with the black men in the train, which led to them getting kicked off. Later on in the case it is proved that the white men start the fight because both of the men have different stories and one of them admits to starting it all. After the white men were kicked off of the train it was ridden to the next stop somewhere in Alabama. Upon arriving at the station the black men and the white women were arrested for vagrancy. While talking to the police the women accused all of the black men of raping them. These women were known prostitutes of the area but their word was still taken over the black men who were accused. Twelve days later the trial took place. There were many witnesses that held bias towards the black men. One acquaintance of the women was a white lady who refused to support the lies that were coming out of the white women's mouths. One physician stated that two of the men were so badly crippled that they were incapable of committing such a crime. This wa...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The 6th Street Boys

    2003 Words  | 5 Pages

    The 6th Street Boys were the gang that Goffman spent six years in Philadelphia with, and who she wrote her book about. While Goffman mainly focuses on a handful of the 6th Street Boys, one could assume that the gang consisted of almost every young male who lived on, or near the block. Everyone who she encountered during her time living in this neighborhood was an African- American, and this includes the young men who were in the gang. This being said, however, the gang lets Goffman become a “member” and even give her a nickname. This leads us to believe that the 6th Street Boys allowed women who lived on the block, and their girlfriends who may not have lived on the block to join the gang as well, but not as on official 6th Street Boys member,

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse Five Literary Analysis

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    Baruch Spinoza once said “Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves free, simply because they are conscious of their actions and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.” He compared free-will with destiny and ended up that what we live and what we think are all results of our destiny; and the concept of the free-will as humanity know is just the awareness of the situation. Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five explores this struggle between free-will and destiny, and illustrates the idea of time in order to demonstrate that there is no free-will in war; it is just destiny. Vonnegut conveys this through irony, symbolism and satire.

    Read More

  • The Mendez Brothers Trial

    1323 Words  | 3 Pages

    On August 20th, 1989 Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents inside their Beverly Hills home with fifteen shot gun blasts after years of alleged “sexual, psychological, and corporal abuse” (Berns 25). According to the author of “Murder as Therapy”, “The defense has done a marvelous job of assisting the brothers in playing up their victim roles” (Goldman 1). Because there was so much evidence piled up against the brothers, the defense team was forced to play to the jurors’ emotions if they wanted a chance at an acquittal. Prosecutor Pamela Bozanich was forced to concede that “Jose and Kitty obviously had terrific flaws-most people do in the course of reminding jurors that the case was about murder, not child abuse” (Adler 103). Bozanich “cast the details of abuse as cool, calculated lies” (Smolowe 48)...

    Read More

  • Gender In Criminal Justice

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    African americans males where thought to be animalistic, sexually unrestrained, criminals, and rapists. These stereotypical characteristics of african american males were conveyed through the documentary “Central Park 5,” where five young men, in which four were black and one Spanish, were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman by the criminal justice system. These young men were also tried for rape, physical aggression, stealing, rioting, sexual abuse, and even attempted murder. They had to serve a time from six to 13 years in prison a serial rapist confessed to the crime. The myth of the bestial black man is used to impact the justice system on their decision towards these young men. Jeremi Duru explains, “The myth of the Bestial black man is as a myth, deeply imbedded in American culture, that black men are animalistic, sexually unrestrained, inherently criminal, and ultimately bent on rape.” Also, they were looked down upon because they were low class and they didn’t have the education and the money to get out of their situation. The criminal justice system used that to their advantage by interrogating these young men for over 24 hours without any food until they got a confession from them to use against them. They were treated like animals because of the color of their skin. Because of the color of their skin and stereotypes, they did not have justice. They served many years because

    Read More

  • The Chicago Seven Trial

    1645 Words  | 4 Pages

    I also found out how Judge Hoffman could have handled the trial. better and what he had done wrong. Secondary source Edit Copy Delete. Parenthetical Reference Citation Comments Newspaper or Newswire Web link "'Terrible Comprimise' Rapped by 'Chicago Seven' Defenders" The Daily Review 19 Feb. 1970: 5 p.m. Web. The Web.

    Read More

More about Social Issues In Ken Burns's Central Park Five

Open Document