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.