Overview

Anyone who was not in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of the city experienced the disaster as a media event, a flood of images pouring across television and computer screens. The twenty-four-hour news cycle created a surplus of representation that overwhelmed viewers and complicated understandings of the storm, the flood, and the aftermath. As time passed, documentary and fictional filmmakers took up the challenge of explaining what had happened in New Orleans, reaching beyond news reports to portray the lived experiences of survivors of Katrina. But while these narratives presented alternative understandings and more opportunities for empathy than TV news, Katrina remained a mediated experience. In Flood of Images, Bernie Cook offers the most in-depth, wide-ranging, and carefully argued analysis of the mediation and meanings of Katrina. He engages in innovative, close, and comparative visual readings of news coverage on CNN, Fox News, and NBC; documentaries including Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke and If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Trouble the Water, and Dawn Logsdon and Lolis Elie's Faubourg Treme; and the HBO drama Treme. Cook examines the production practices that shaped Katrina-as-media-event, exploring how those choices structured the possible memories and meanings of Katrina and how the media's memory-making has been contested. In Flood of Images, Cook intervenes in the ongoing process of remembering and understanding Katrina.

Full Product Details

Author:   Bernie Cook
Publisher:   University of Texas Press
Imprint:   University of Texas Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.594kg
ISBN:  

9781477302439

ISBN 10:   1477302433
Pages:   430
Publication Date:   01 April 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction. Where Y'at? Part 1. Television News Chapter 1. There Is No Wide Shot. Television News and Collective Memory Chapter 2. Weather Citizens. Sunday, August 28 Chapter 3. These Are the First Pictures from the Air. Monday, August 29 Chapter 4. The Sort of Disaster Humans Cause. Tuesday, August 30 Chapter 5. The Walking Dead. Wednesday, August 31 Chapter 6. Over My Drowned Body. Thursday, September 1 Chapter 7. Not Sure What Is the Truth or Rumor Anymore. Friday, September 2 Chapter 8. A Big Corner Turned. Saturday, September 3 Chapter 9. A Violent Day. Sunday, September 4 Chapter 10. 99 Percent of It Is Bullshit. The Weeks After Part 2. Documentary Chapter 11. Familiar from Television. Documentary as Collected Memory Chapter 12. A Requiem in Four Acts. When the Levees Broke Chapter 13. Ain't Nobody Got What I Got. Trouble the Water Chapter 14. How Can Our Past Help Us to Survive This Time? Faubourg Treme Chapter 15. We Were Not on the Map. A Village Called Versailles Chapter 16. Our Mayor. Race Chapter 17. Re-Occupying New Orleans. Land of Opportunity Chapter 18. Disappeared People. Law & Disorder Part 3. Fiction Chapter 19. My Truth Seems a Bit Inconsequential to Me Now. Treme's Truth Claim Chapter 20. In the David Simon Business. Treme's Mode of Production Chapter 21. The Continuance of Culture Chapter 22. All These Trucks Got Bodies? Dramatizing Injustice Conclusion. Desitively Katrina Bibliography Films and Media Index

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Author Information

A native of New Orleans, Bernie Cook is Associate Dean of Georgetown College, Georgetown University, and founding director of the Film and Media Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is the editor of Thelma & Louise Live! The Cultural Afterlife of an American Film and has produced short documentary films focused on social justice.

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