The Bama Rush Documentary Missed The Mark. Here's Why.

what happened to the original plot of the movie?

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“Bama Rush” was released Tuesday on Max. Directed by Rachel Fleit, it follows four University of Alabama students from their preparations in the summer of 2022 to bid day, when they find out if they have been invited to join a sorority.

[bad_bau]

they could've gotten a juicery scoop by just interviewing non-Greek life students and people that rushed and either didn't make it or dropped. someone from my high school friend group went to the University of Alabama and I learned more about the dark side of Greek life there by catching up with him over winter break than the entire doc revealed, and he didn't even rush.

[bad_bau]

"a racist secret society" baby that's not a secret society, it's the school board

[bluefood]

I was SHOOK by how much of the movie was about the director and her hair. I thought that was the most self aggrandizing documentary I’ve ever seen

[robertmartin]

The perfect 1-sentence review of this terribly underwhelming doc hits at 10:45: "I don't think centering in on a narrative about [the director's personal struggles] is complementary to what the overall main subject of this movie was supposed to be - those two things are sort of working against each other." Very well said.

[SuKatAnimation]

I'm pretty sure the doc fell apart when the University of Alabama blocked the production from filming on campus. I think they very well intended to follow the girls through rush. But didn't secure the filming locations (ie: consent from school and some sororities to film) and the whole Alopecia angle was a last-ditch effort to create a thru line narrative. The Alopecia narrative felt like a rushed attempt to finish and deliver a doc that fell apart. I don't think the production team is very experienced because there was a lack of pre-production planning. Release forms HAVE to be signed by anyone featured in a film like this. My guess is that they pitched the doc to HBO and HBO created the bumpers (ads) separate from the production team. Then they delivered the doc to HBO and they got something half about rush/half about the director's struggle because they messed up their access to Rush.

[blusclues-]

i would argue ashley norton’s video delivered more in under a hour than this doc did in nearly 2 hours

[tori]

i graduated from bama in 2020, didn't rush but had friends/roommates who did! i remember it was a huge deal while i attended because the machine for the first time ever endorsed a black person for student body president and he was (i think) like the first candidate who openly admitted that he had the backing of the machine. there was a huge controversy on him admitting to having their backing and everyone wanted him to drop out but he won and was student body president until he got arrested for a DUI the year after.
personally i think what people also ignore about the machine is that the fraternity/coalition (it started as just 1 chapter of a frat but now is a whole group) is their influence on actual local politics. in 2013 they influenced a district school board vote by illegally registering voters and bribed people to vote for the candidates (former members of the machine). it's genuinely just this massive open secret that everyone who went there knows about and it's insane. this documentary could have been massive as people have been calling for them to be exposed for YEARS but they dropped the ball so hard

[lisam]

Classism, racism, homophobia etc. Greek life has always put a really sour taste in my mouth

[Sdbyvdaghk]

The Machine goes so deep. It controls the entire city of Tuscaloosa, not just UA. There have been all kinds of stories about their involvement in local politics and all kinds of stuff. I was hoping for a lot more for this documentary because I grew up in Alabama but I also went to a small liberal arts college, but it definitely didn’t deliver. Thanks for the analysis!

[tatumtatum]

exactly!!! i saw this tweet from @hannahyasharoff yesterday and it sums it up so well:

There’s a time and a place for a woman to talk about the pain of feeling othered growing up with Alopecia, but that place is not using it as a metaphor for young Black women facing hardships in a Greek system that’s only been integrated for a decade

[clairedavis]

My older sister was part of a sorority at Bama and she graduated last year. We both watched the documentary and were very disappointed about it. She was originally worried that they would blow things out of proportion and give bama an even worse rep than it already had, but obviously it was kind of the opposite. For the most part she enjoyed her time there, so I'm glad they sort of acknowledged some of the good things about Greek Life too. But at the same time, she knows that there are tons of issues that need to be addressed, and she was upset about the way the documentary skimmed over or barely mentioned anything that was actually important. Especially because she knows firsthand about a lot of the crazy stuff that goes on behind the scenes (the machine, hazing, the crisis with people getting roofied, racism, controversial decision making in the sororities, etc.).

The heart of these issues is really less about the sorority recruitment process and more about what goes on in the sororities afterwards. I know their main goal was to observe Bama Rush, and I do think the things they were discussing were important (like body image), but I don't think they went about it very well? I think the marketing was so misleading, so many people thought they were going to address the more ingrained issues of Greek Life there, but they didn't spend much time talking about it. It felt as though it never drew a conclusion I guess?

They did try to include some other aspects about the issues with Greek life, but if they wanted to properly address them, I think they should've spent more time discussing them. I think they should've spent the first third of the doc talking about Bama Rush and the recruitment process and everything that goes into it. But then, I think that they should've spent the rest of the doc talking about the darker side of Greek Life, and discuss things like the machine and the history of Greek Life. And they totally could've done so by talking to people who were in sororities and dropped or non-Greek life students (because I know, my sister at least, had to sign a document to not speak about certain things). I'm sure a lot of the students who aren't in greek life have heard things from friends about what goes on in the sororities and could give a lot more information than someone who is legally not allowed to talk about certain things. I just think they went about it the wrong way is all, and I wish they took a different route with it :(

[TheBizzle]

The Greek system is very bizarre to me as a Canadian. I genuinely don't get the point, and the people involved are always giving huge "peaked in high school" vibes. I think one of the big points of college and uni is to go off and figure out who you are independent of your past and where you came from, so, joining a group that basically dictates your behavior, in a very similar manner to high school cliques, seems counter-intuitive to me.

[blusclues-]

plus, divine nine organizations should have had more of a spotlight. the akas especially because of the burning cross incident.

[aliflanagan]

I feel like they could have made a really good film about these girls' struggles and longing for community, what it's like to be a young woman in society today.

[taliajade]

Thank you for this video. The documentary was the biggest let down of 2023 (I know, dramatic but true!). The director making it about herself when she wasn’t even ever in a sorority was batshit. I was not tuning in to hear about some random woman with alopecia, I was looking to hear some juicy drama and gossip about Alabama greek life. They had the chance to make something super great and controversial but it fell flat and was completely ineffective.

[emilyk]

I was moved by the girls who spoke about how they wanted to belong and expected to find life-long friends at their sorority. I would've liked to have dug deeper there. Like why can't they just find friends by talking to people? What is it about the sorority that makes it feel more legitimate? Why do they feel the need to pay coaches and stuff to make friends?

This doc didn't have an end. They went swimming in a lake and I was like, "... ???" It raised a lot of questions but gave no answers.

[domciuniuszek]

I think we all wanted something like Netflix's Cheer, but about Bama Rush. At least that's what I wanted.

[urbanlove]

It’s just so surface level and like they didn’t even try. They would’ve easily found ex-Bama sorority members who would’ve spilled all the beans.

[balsamic_vinegar_elmo]

As a person who was actually pictured in the documentary (during the marching band parts lol im not in a Panhellenic sorority) i wish they would have dug into the machine more. Im not knowledgeable at all about student politics on campus but with the things ive seen i wouldnt be surprised at all that it would be real. I got stories on stories about the awful parts greek life here (not all of it is awful but there are changes that should be made!) as well as the professional academic sorority im in and it sucks that the director didnt focus her energy on that but rather on her alopecia

[aba]

The one thing i was disappointed by was how little they discussed the divine 9, they interviewed a woman who was there in the 80s, but it would be interesting to hear from a girl who chose to rush(?) the divine 9