Coming to Netflix today, Monday, January 11:
CRACK: COCAINE, CORRUPTION & CONSPIRACY
Director:
Stanley Nelson
World Premiere:
Netflix (January 2021)
About:
A provocative investigation of the crack epidemic of the 1980s-’90s.
America’s ill-conceived and ineffective “war on drugs” ramped up under Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush in the 1980s, largely as a response to crack. Draconian laws punished dealer and user alike, resulting in mass incarceration, disproportionately affecting people of color and laying siege to their communities and families, with the parallel militarization of the police. While crack use was hardly limited to Black people, with some estimating that as many as two-thirds of users were actually white, law enforcement and the media largely ignored the latter, instead demonizing people of color. Acclaimed documentarian Stanley Nelson revisits the origins of the crack epidemic and explores its legacy, offering astute historical and cultural context for how and why crack emerged and became central to mainstream, racist narratives of Black criminality and the expansion of the prison industrial system.
what (not) to doc 