The Greek philosopher Aristotle defined tragedy as an action “that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude.”
But in the United States, there are two kinds of “tragedy,” specifically (a) those that politicians scream about on their way to election victories — see: any crime committed by a non-white described as a “migrant” on Fox News, harm to any police officers not on duty at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — and (b) the types of sad circumstances we respond to with the phrase “thoughts and prayers” and then do nothing about so as not to disrupt the income streams of the wealthy.
School shootings, for instance, have been so firmly relegated to the “thoughts and prayers” category of mishaps we supposedly can’t do anything about that a 2018 South Park episode centered on a mother who’s mocked for asking, “Why are you all acting like this is normal?” after learning her child was nearly shot to death while attending his classes.
Sadly yet predictably, just four years after that episode aired, 19 elementary school students and two adults were murdered by a teenager with an M1 military carbine capable of firing 700+ rounds per minute while the 376 responding police officers who eventually wound up on the scene spent most of the lengthy standoff safely out of harm’s way, checking their phones or screaming at, tasing, and arresting agitated parents outside the building who were demanding action or attempting to stage their own rescues of the children trapped within.
Nevertheless, one young mother named Angeli Rose Gomez did manage to get past the authorities and pull her kids to safety, an act of bravery captured via bystander videos that quickly made the spirited Hispanic farmworker a viral social media sensation — as well as a target for the Texas police state power structure she publicly embarrassed on the day of the shootings and continued to criticize thereafter.
Thus, while the massacre at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde exemplifies the classic definition of tragedy, director Anayansi Prado’s frequently infuriating, quietly powerful documentary is more of a hero’s journey as her eponymous subject’s ongoing demands for answers, change, and justice expose her to unexpected perils in the aftermath of trauma.
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Produced by: Ina Fichman, Anayansi Prado, David Goldblum
Written by Anayansi Prado, Pablo Proenza
Directed by Anayansi Prado
Featuring Angeli Rose Gomez, Arnulfo Reyes,
Tina Quintanilla, Lavonne De Leon
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