"For Colored Girls"

Before going to see the movie, I heard the movie summed up in just a few words: "too melodramatic." I was afraid that this would affect my experience, but it was totally accurate. Sure, all of the women in the narrative had some pretty horrific things happen to them, but it just seemed to pile on. As we were talking about the movie afterward, we discussed the monologues that each character had. This tool can be very effective in theatre-- and very well could have been in the stage production of this narrative-- but in a motion picture, it just seems a bit out of place, especially when they came as randomly as they did. The one that stuck out the most to me was toward the beginning, when the teenage girl was in her dance class, talking to her classmates about her romantic encounters. I was perplexed at first, because I did not realize what she was trying to do. Was she supposed to sound like she was about to break out into song? Was she just delivering her lines poorly? Even though I finally figured things out, the monologues still seemed a bit overdone.
Another thing that really stuck out to me was the extremely poor portrayal of African-American men in the film. Only two men were "good" to their women, and one of them turned out to have been deceiving his wife by living a sort of a double life and lying about his sexual encounters with other men. Granted, it is not Tyler Perry's job to paint a sterling picture of African-American men through his films, but I think this aspect of the film is just another component of the whole overly-melodramatic tone the film has to it.

For Colored Girls

Well, what can I say that hasn't been said? I think we've covered quite a bit about this last week but still, I found this film to be pretty good, not fantastic, but pretty good at what it was trying to do.

Tyler Perry had a pretty difficult job in trying to transition this from one art to another, and from one chronological context to another. I feel as if he did a satisfactory job at this very thing, but there were still some aspects that were lost in transition. For instance, the Lady in (Khaki, Grey?)'s husband acted more like a Vietnam veteran instead of a Gulf War veteran, like we discussed. I think Perry could have tried to make more of a distinction or go into the character's mentality of why he was abusing alcohol, or if he suffered from PTSD. As a result of his actions, I felt as if the troubles the Lady in Grey dealt with throughout the film were hyperbolic (scrubbing her children's blood off the pavement.) This seemed a little problematic, coupled with the piling on of everyone else's tragedy, it leaves an audience feeling overwhelmed, and I think this can be of detriment to the film.

I do applaud Perry for making Juanita Sims (Lady in Green) a blatant vehicle for educating on contraception, and safe sex coupled with Janet Jackson's character (Lady in Red) contracting AIDS, because as I discussed in my Media and Health Class last week, AIDS is still a disease prevalent in African American Communities around the U.S. with assistance not being rendered in an immediate fashion. I understand Perry could have written this out or changed it, but he didn't, and I applaud him for this.

Nonetheless, I think this movie is an emotional roller coaster, and the movie itself is something of a roller coaster in that there are some good moments that get shadowed by some of the hyperbole and the superficial portrayals of some of the characters.

For Colored Girls...

I have only read parts of For Colored Girls, though I've never seen it performed. I imagine that Shange's poems when performed against a minimalist background on stage, on an arena that suggests but does not define a clear place, would be extremely effective. That said, I may be made of stone, but I don't think I've ever seen a movie in which a woman discovers she is HIV positive, a man drops two children from a five-story building, a woman is raped, and another woman suffers the horrors of a back-alley abortion -- note to Tyler Perry, the abortion procedure can be legally and safely administered in New York state -- that left me this cold. It wasn't laughable, but with a few extra directorial missteps, Perry may have created a Grand Guignol comedy. It was very frustrating seeing some wonderful actresses forced to butcher some lovely words while under the tutelage of a cheap, truly Oprah-fied director.

Perry strives for the sentimental and the easily redemptive, a path Shange refuses to walk. I don't know if there is some fundamentalist Christian streak in him that demands that he punish his characters for their most humane shortcomings. Bitchy career woman. Punishment: HIV. Abused woman who all too patiently suffers a psychotic boyfriend? Punishment: dead kids. You want to abort your child? Oh, Perry's got something special in store for you.

For Colored Girls

The title of the film was supposed to be "For colored girls who have considered sucicide when the rainbow wasnt enuf" so I guess I should have expected the film to be full of tragic stories. Yet through the whole film I was waiting for one character to be the one who inspires the others or who has an uplifting story, but all of the characters had something negative happen in their lives. I did not hate the movie but I definitely didn't like it. I think it promotes the idea that there is nothing positive among black women wheter they are poor or not. The film also gave the idea that you can't trust black men, only two were actually kind to women and one was gay, cheating on his wife and gave her HIV so it doesn't really count. Other parts of the film were over dramatic, such has Michael Ealy's character. I was wondering how Tyler Perry made his decision to show the really graphic events and which ones not to. He didn't show the abortion, or the childrens murder but he showed the rape very dramatically. I also didn't think his transition into the poems from dialogue was very well done, I was confused and didn't understand them. Another intersting aesthetic was when Jo and her husband were talking in the bedroom they weren't facing eachother as they talked, but you'd think when you were confronting your husband about something serious like finding out he gave you HIV and he's been cheating on you you would be a little more confrontational. Over all the film was interesting to see, but not very well done.

"For Colored Girls"

I have to admit, I did not hate the film the way many of you did. I didn't love it, but it had its good moments. It also had its problems, obviously.
First of all, I feel like this movie would have had more of an impact in the 70s, when it was written, as opposed to now. Race is still a significant issue now, but the issues in the movie could have happened to women of any race. To me, the movie was more "For Girls" than for colored girls. It was about the difficulty of dealing with pregnancy, domestic abuse, rape, etc. To me, those issues transcend race. On the other hand, most movies released in mainstream theaters feature mostly white casts. In a way, the title of this movie is fitting, because it has a non-white cast, therefore black women can see women who look like them on the screen. It's their way of saying, even though movies only seem to care about white women's problems, black women have problems too.
Yet this movie really focuses on the problems--I have come to discover that I am not a fan of movies with so many plot lines, especially movies like this, where each plot line is more depressing than the last. I like the idea that they can all support each other, but the melodrama was a bit overwhelming.
Back to the title, and how the movie deals with issues that challenge all women: race is hardly mentioned in the film. When Thandie Newton's character says, "Being colored is a metaphysical dilemma that I haven't conquered yet," I didn't believe her. We're not given reason to believe that her problems are caused by race, or that she is insecure about her race. Many women who are insecure about being colored date white men to avoid their own race. Tanji dated black men. She never talks about her race. Again, maybe the movie would have been more important in the 70s.

For Colored Girls

So I finally saw a Tyler Perry movie and no I did not like it. From the several issues I had with this movie, the main question that struck me (again) was: Why do narratives about black womanhood always have to be centered around rape or another form of abuse? In this film, we had abuse thrown at us every five minutes, there was the woman who got raped, the woman who was abused by her psychotic alcoholic somehow zombie-like husband, the overly promiscuous woman who sort of abused herself by offering herself to every man available, the woman who suffered in an unhappy marriage with a closet gay husband, the woman who was betrayed and left by her lover again and again etc. The 'message' that this film and others convey, think about the abuse scene in She's Gotta Have It or the scene in Waiting To Exhale where she is left by her husband in the meanest way possible after sacrificing everything for him, is that black women's lives are just a huge pile of agony and tears and no matter what they do and how hard they try their shots at happiness are doomed to fail in the end. I haven't seen the original play and I understand that Tyler Perry was trying to make a point that women (and not only black women by the way) often suffer from abuse or get raped, but these scenes in the film were also ruined by ridiculous and exaggerated melodrama and implausible character development. Take the scene where Yasmine is raped in her apartment. This was indeed a strong scene and well acted, although it was clear after the first 5 minutes of the film that one of the characters gets raped because apparently you cannot tell a story about women without involving rape, although my bet was on Thandie Newton's character. But afterwards we see her in the hospital, just hours after she had been raped and experienced a very traumatic situation, and I am supposed to believe that her way of dealing with it is to give an essay-like speech to the policeman about the problems of rape and also society in general? That did not seem very likely to me. Generally, after suffering a terrible situation, each character was given a monologue, which to me often seemed misplaced or too far out of context. The male characters in the film were also too unbelievable to me. Take the rapist for example. He said in the beginning of the film that he had been accompanying Yasmine on her way to work for several weeks, and he took her out to dinner etc. So he has been a nice gentleman for several weeks, put a lot of effort into getting closer to her, but then when she invites him to her house after already going out with him, and it is clear that she likes him and they will soon have sex anyway, he suddenly snaps and transforms into this violent rapist? That seemed too unbelievable for me. Or the guy that Tangie (Thandie Newton) picks up at the bar and takes home, who offers her money and then leaves laughing. She is working as a bartender in a very high-class bar, so why would he assume she is a hooker? Hill Harper's character was the only one that was believable to me, and I am not saying this because he was the only nice guy, but just because his character's actions were the only ones that made any sense to me. I was also disappointed by Michael Ealy's character. Ok he was traumatized by war, without any further explanations given, but the scene in the end where he throws his children out of the window was good for melodramatic effect but again seemed too illogical to me. Did he do it out of jealousy or because she did not want to marry him? And why would he throw his kids out of the window because of that? To achieve what? Just because he is traumatized and drunk is not a good explanation. But that may be just my own perception. Overall, I thought the cast all gave strong performances, although I thought some talent was wasted on narrow character development, for example Whoopi Goldberg as the religious fanatic. One of the biggest problems was also the structure of the narrative. It was basically depicting the suffering of the woman, then let her recite a poem or let her have some other sort of monologue, and then repeat this pattern with every other character for the rest of the movie. What you then had in the end was just a compilation of endless suffering without a real consecutive narrative, and after sitting through this movie for two and a half hours, I just wanted it to end. The repetitive narrative pattern made the characters seem somewhat interchangeable, and in the end instead of several different women with individual destinies, they seemed like one big pile of miserable abused black womanhood. I think the film had way more potential than this, but the filmmakers focused too much on melodrama.

I think...?

The "Big Lie" and "Happily Ever After" serve the purpose of the viewer and I don't think it stops with women, but in the case of this blog I'll focus my thoughts. "Happily Ever After" is the struggle in finding a man to be with. The search through all the awful men as dipicted by the villians in the story. The picture perfect women has to struggle through the awful, mean, rude men until she finds her "perfect" match. Here is the "Big Lie"...your perfect match is probably cheating on you with his younger version of you. You will probably not be happy ever after...40% of marriage ends in divorce and that is an improvement. Women get confused in what makes them happy(as all people are confused). They think love makes them happy, they want to marry the poor stable boy because they are in love, but in todays world she should of married the prince because he was loaded and she would of been a princess. Call me a sell out, but Im going to marry for money and be "Happily Ever After"...call me in 1o years, Ill invite you over to play on my wave runner

Hoop Dreams

I haven't seen the entire film, but hoop dreams to me seems like it is supposed to be a portrayal of how two african american boys are trying to become NBA atheltes and their battle to reach that dream. I didn't think Hoop Dreams was anything special, but it was interesting to watch. As said in class, I did compare it alot to the Lebron documentary alot and was expecting it to be more like that. I was disappointed with the ending in the fact that they did not reach the NBA and it seemed that they had failed in reaching the general stereotype that they had to become star athetles to become successful. I agree with hooks in how she said the film addresses the stereotypes but does not explore them more, like why the one boy and his father had a poor relationship. I think Hoop Dreams does its job in showing the hardships of the boys and their goals, but other than that I was not that impressed with what I saw.

Hoop Dreams

After watching the trailer for Hoop Dreams it is clear that the main theme of the film is the overcoming of harships to reach success. In the case of this film, two black males who live in poorer areas of Chicagoland and attempt to overcome their troubles associated with living there to achieve the American dream. One problem that I have with this concept, which Bell Hooks also argues is that the film reinforces the belief that kids living in these poorer areas can only achieve success if they become rappers or basketball player. No doubt, many kids have this mentality and it would be nice to see a film which shows two inner-city kids trying to become lawyers or doctors, and become successful in the end. In her essay, Hooks also analyzes possible reasons for the popularity of the film. She believes that the film is not a great documentary, but good drama and reflect the culture's obsession with real life stories. I agree with these statements however, it remains a mystery as to why documentaries on PBS and other networks which portray black families and drama are not popular. I think it is due to the fact that the two boys in the film strive to become basketball stars, which tons of kids in poorer neighborhoods and in general idealize.

Hoop Dreams

I watched the trailer for "Hoop Dreams" and the first 10 minutes courtesy of YouTube, it made me want to watch the entire film. The story seemed interesting, unique and I wanted to learn about these kids trying to make it big in the NBA. I watched the clips, before reading the hooks essay, so I formed my own opinion first.

I found the trailer to be inspiring. I thought it showed the lives of some struggling black families, with kids who have talent. I didn't see it as an attack on those who were unfortunate, like hook said a lot of people saw the movie. However, I haven't seen the entire film, so my opinion isn't a very good one.

However, I did find it interesting that hooks, although she felt alienated in the theaters, encourages others to see this film for its "positive aspects of black life that make survival possible." I really liked that statement she made early on in the essay.

Also, since this film is in fact a documentary, it doesn't leave any room for falsities we have seen of black inner city life films. Unlike a film like Juice or Do the Right Thing, this movie depicts the real life struggles inner city families face. It's not all about gangs and violence, but instead the fear of not making it into the NBA, not being good enough.

Hoop Dreams

The cultural work of this trailer is pretty whitewashed, not to be too glib. I mean that specifically in the sense that cultural imperfections that might threaten the rhetoric of the trailer (and thus the film) are subtly obscured. To me this is represented primarily in the disjunction between the script of the voice-over and the actual images presented in the montage. While there is reference made to scholastic, financial and cultural struggle in the words being spoken, they are presented against a backdrop of mostly positive images: boys playing on the court, struggling diligently in school and even matching hoops with Isiah Thomas. While the overt text recited frames a battle for us, we are only given visual dialectics of (seeming) success. Perhaps it is trite to repeat that 'images speak louder than words' but if you say there's going to be a fight and then you show one side winning, are people going to have ambiguous feelings about that? While clearly as a documentary it will have an open ending, it certainly seems that the viewer of this trailer is being sent a message. Even if the trailer brings up some paper tigers for our protagonists to tacitly battle, the triumphant score and the energetic and youthful enthusiasm on display would seem to set fire to them even before the opening titles. Thus as these criticisms explicate, I tend to side with Hooks' propagandic take on this documentary. Skill and money in a specific athletic arena are being presented as anathema to the black culture diaspora, and I think that the truth is much more problematic and complex than either that view or the views of nominal success we see on display in this trailer.

Hoop Dreams

It has been many many years since I've seen Hoop Dreams. At the time, to me it was just a film about two young boys pursuing their dream and I did not think much about the social circumstances surrounding them. Now viewing parts of it again, and especially the trailer, I admit that bell hooks does have a point. To some (black and white) viewers, the film might suggest that certain ethnic groups or minorities should only follow certain preexisting career paths. But I do not think that this is the film's fault or that you can criticize the filmmakers for it, it is rather the larger socio-political problem that is displayed in the film, which limits young black men's access to higher education and training if they come from an urban background.

hoop dreams

I have to agree with bell hooks, that Hoop Dreams was a popular documentary because it portrayed images that the general public was comfortable with. It did not really bring about anything that was controversial. I think that it told a story a lot of people wanted to see, that despite whatever circumstances life gives you, you can overcome them and still succeed in life. I do disagree with bell hooks' argument that the film used black bodies as a commodity, because this argument could be made about any sports movies, describing any body of any color. I think it was interesting that bell hooks brought up that fact that the mothers in the film are unlike common stereotypes of black mothers, and instead offer support and care for their sons. Despite bell hooks' arguments, I think that people just like to see a story about someone accomplishing their dreams, and it makes it even more exciting when it's a true story.

I thought Hoop Dreams was really inspiring when I saw it. But that was a while ago, and I playing basketball at the time. Like the characters, I wanted to be really good. But now that my interest in basketball as a profession has faded, I can see the film's problems. Hoop Dreams works to instill a limited sense of professionalism or extracurricular pursuit. I'm not entirely sure if the film includes any instance of the characters pursuing their academic responsibility, which is problematic because athletes must usually maintain a specific grade average. I agree with bell hooks. The film works to suggest and legitimize a specific skill set that a specific ethnic group should pursue. I imagine the target audience is incredibly diverse, but the workings of the film function as trappings specifically to ethnic/marginalized groups that are mostly "of color". It perpetuates stereotypical interests of African American males while gesturing at ideologies rooted in a colonial era. However, it's difficult to criticize the film for just this reason. I think a more viable critique would be of class, labor and "accessible identity" that function cyclically, maintaining and resisting these cultural notions. The film is not transgressive, but it is "spicy". While almost everyone can identify with some type of struggle or confrontation with adversity, the relationship between the narrative resonates differently and more concretely to an audience member who sees himself on the screen. It's difficult to argue about the film's transgressive or lack of transgressive intent from a truly "transgressive" stance. Both the film and its commentary must be compromised in order to make a point.

Hoop Dreams

I have only seen about 40 minutes of Hoop Dreams and its theatrical trailer, both on YouTube. From what I have gathered from the footage, the directors aimed to paint a picture of two young men in a dire setting and their quest for success. Instead of taking this route, I think they should have framed the story as one which points out the hardships and difficulties young athletes face-- especially those who come from low-income environments. I think this would be more effective because it is the formula a huge percentage of professional athletes (especially basketball players) have followed and it is interesting to see just what goes into that formula.
I think hooks is a little harsh on the film. In particular, I did not like the part about the "auction block mentality" regarding the try-outs for high school basketball. She has a decent argument in that one side (the coaches) has a distinct advantage over the other (the potential players), and that the players' bodies are indeed "expendable" in comparison to those of the coaches, but I think she is reading a bit too much into the whole concept of an athletic try-out. Plain and simple, if a player is not good enough, regardless of color, height, shape, age, etc., he is told that his services are no longer needed. It is not like he is exiled, whipped, publicly humililiated, told he is good for absolutely nothing else except his sport, or killed, like slaves would have been; he is told (maybe not always in the most polite way) that he is not needed on the team.
One thing I liked about both hooks' piece and the film itself is that it points out the harsh reality every athlete with high aspirations faces: the opportunistic, "ruthless" (as hooks writes) agendas of the patriarchy. Everyone wants a piece of the hot player, whether it is Arthur Agee, William Gates, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, or John Wall. William said that once he gained some local fame, "everybody wants to be my coach," meaning that everybody he comes into contact with has something to say. There is so much to gain for the third-parties, it makes the fortunes made by the gifted individual seem miniscule.

Hoop Dreams

Hoop Dreams is a fairly popular documentary. For documentary film to resonate with a mainstream audience, it often makes narrative concessions that cater to audience expectations. bell hooks seems to make this introspection as well, it is a film about winning and losing. Growing up in America, competition for commodity is hard to escape. In this film, we see all characters struggling with competition for resources. The coaches want the top prospects, the kids want the cool clothes, the parents must make money to send their kids to school. I do think Hoop Dreams can be appreciated though, just for other purposes. It can provide a sense of nostalgia from the footage of the late 80s and early 90s and it can also provide a more realistic type of drama. Though it may fulfill a stereotype, the scene where the Agee family must use a payment plan for Arthur's failed time at St. Mary's is heart-wrenching and their joy with the outcome would be offensive if fictionally contrived.

Failed Dreams

Hoop Dreams to me is frame as a story about to young men coming up from nothing in the Chicago area using basketball as a means of bettering themselves and leaving their community. This feeling is intensified because when I saw the film it was when the popular Lebron James was coming out of high school with huge fame and success. Seeing what I knew was hugely popular movie about African American basketball players out of high school I assumed they would have similar success. I was dissapointed by the ending that only one of the boys had success and even then it wasn't the success that I had built up for him. I think Hooks may of had the same feeling about the film. While it is a good film, I don't think it accomplished a lot in the area of advancement of the African American community. Hooks spend some time on the topic but doesn't (I feel) dive too deep into the topic, because on the surface the film is framed as a success story, but if do dive into it it can be seen as a failure for the boys and the African American community.

As I have eluded to several times through out this class I think any exposure to the urban African communities is positive as the majority of the population needs to be educated to hopefully enhance the betterment of people like the boys from hoop dreams so they don't have to struggle to make it with basketball.

Hoop Dreams

I first saw this movie on the last week it ran in theaters in a majority black and hispanic Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. There were about three people in the audience, and having walked in drinking the kool-aid that I was about to watch a movie that told me that all things were possible in America, I found the movie a terrible let-down. One subject of this film, William Gates, is mentioned in the first 30 minutes by a local sportscaster as a name to remember in the coming years, possibly as a future NBA draft pick. It becomes clear by the end of the film that that dream is a bit elusive. If anything, unlike hooks, I felt the sad undercurrent message of the film was that Gates and Agee had slightly better chances of success only because of their basketball prowess. The twisted Chicago private school system seemed to favor their athletic potential over that of their (unseen) more academically talented neighbors. There seemed to clearly be something wrong with that picture, and I don't believe the filmmakers did anything to encourage it. That the private school in the film seems to exploit Gates and Agee is relatively clear. I don't see any glorification of that school with its relatively maniacal coach and mostly ethnically homogenous student body.

I suppose the ethical questions that I've considered about the film through the years concern the differences between what the filmmakers and the subjects themselves would consider to be their greater hardships and humiliations. There is a long sequence which depicts a mother methodically removing lightbulbs after the electricity has gone out in the apartment. It seems a relatively common occurence, and one that she doesn't seem to mind, but the camera lingers in a certain way to capture the "horror" of her poverty. At the same time, Gates's new baby appears without showing us a long drawn-out pregnancy. Documentarians make choices, just like every other artist. But I wonder if the dissonance here was one more of class than of race between the filmmaker and subject. The filmmakers could understand living in an apartment with a new mouth to feed. But they could not understand the terror of an apartment without electricity. And so that is where they placed the emphasis.

"Hoop Dreams"

One thing that struck me about hooks's essay about Hoop Dreams was its brevity. Usually she goes much more in-depth about the films, but I felt unsatisfied about her argument.
After watching the trailer on YouTube, I agree that the cultural aspect of the piece seems to be missing from the film. The trailer definitely presents it as an entertaining movie/spectacle, rather than an emotional examination of humanity. I liked how the trailer didn't mention race, though. It wasn't like "The struggle of young African Americans to overcome obstacles..." hooks may disagree, but I like that they portrayed them as Americans, regardless of race. This may detract from the cultural importance, but to me it says they were marketing it as a story about people, not just people of a certain race. They probably did this to attract more white viewers.
After watching the trailer, I looked up the film on Wikipedia. I read about the two boys around which the film centers. Though he struggled with his grades, William Gates played basketball in college, and even trained with Michael Jordan, but was injured. His brother, who was in the film, was murdered in 2001. The other boy, Arthur Agee, also played for his college team. He is currently a motivational speaker, and his father was murdered in 2004.
These facts tell me a few things--that the documentary exploited these boys' dreams, and made a lot of money off of their dreams, but didn't give much back. They still struggled with school, never achieved their dreams, and their families weren't able to move out of the dangerous neighborhoods. Although they seem relatively successful in other careers, their stories are still sad, and the trailer to the movie suggests a happy ending. It seems like the film makers turned their stories into a Hollywood movie, complete with a false happy ending, thus tricking white audiences into believing it.

Hoop Dreams

After reading Bell Hooks' argument, and watching about 2o minutes of the film, I feel as if this film is lost in translation. The film is set up as a documentary of sorts, but it is being passed off in trailers as a film with an established storyline conveniently laced with drama for white audiences.

I agree this movie doesn't necessarily do anything spectacular or groundbreaking for either white or black audiences. However, as a journalist going into broadcast, I don't find Bell Hooks' suggestions for what the documentary film makers should have done to be well advised. She expresses a wish for the film makers to be more critically interrogative about some of the aspects raised throughout the film. On one hand, she is correct, and if this documentary wants to break new ground and shed light on things, they should ask more provocative questions, but to be overly critical when doing so is not there job, provided you are viewing this as a documentary rather than just a film.

I also noticed in one of the short tv trailers that there was product placement at the very end for both Nike and Sports Illustrated. I thought this was sort of strange and out of place for any sort of product endorsement for a documentary/film. I doubt Nike and Sports Illustrated were giving money to these urban communities for renewal projects, and better schools.