Flood of Images : : Media, Memory, and Hurricane Katrina / / Bernie Cook.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Cook, Bernie,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (430 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction Where Y’at? -- Part One Television News -- Chapter One. There Is No Wide Shot // Television News and Collective Memory -- Chapter Two. Weather Citizens // Sunday, August 28 -- Chapter Three. These Are the First Pictures from the Air // Monday, August 29 -- Chapter Four. The Sort of Disaster Humans Cause // Tuesday, August 30 -- Chapter Five. The Walking Dead // Wednesday, August 31 -- Chapter Six. Over My Drowned Body // Thursday, September 1 -- Chapter Seven. Not Sure What Is the Truth or Rumor Anymore // Friday, September 2 -- Chapter Eight. A Big Corner Turned // Saturday, September 3 -- Chapter Nine. A Violent Day // Sunday, September 4 -- Chapter Ten. 99 Percent of It Is Bullshit // The Weeks After -- Part Two Documentary -- Chapter Eleven. Familiar from Television // Documentary as Collected Memory -- Chapter Twelve. A Requiem in Four Acts // When the Levees Broke -- Chapter Thirteen. Ain’t Nobody Got What I Got // Trouble the Water -- Chapter Fourteen. How Can Our Past Help Us to Survive This Time? // Faubourg Treme -- Chapter Fifteen. We Were Not on the Map // A Village Called Versailles -- Chapter Sixteen. Our Mayor // Race -- Chapter Seventeen. Re-Occupying New Orleans // Land of Opportunity -- Chapter Eighteen. Disappeared People // Law & Disorder -- Part Three Fiction -- Chapter Nineteen. My Fiction Seems a Bit Inconsequential to Me Now // Treme’s Truth Claim -- Chapter Twenty. In the David Simon Business // Treme’s Mode of Production -- Chapter Twenty-one. The Continuance of Culture -- Chapter Twenty-two. All These Trucks Got Bodies? // Dramatizing Injustice -- Conclusion. Desitively Katrina -- Bibliography -- Films and Media -- Index