HOOP DREAMS: The importance of Steve James’ film in the post-BLM world
NEW LINE CINEMADirected by Steve James, Hoop Dreams is often cited as one of the most important sports documentaries ever made – even one of the best films in general. At the time of its release, it was lauded for its gripping subject matter and a unique tone meshing the uplifting charm of underdog sports movies with a solemn minor key of character drama of its two protagonists, William Gates and Arthur Agee, whom James shadowed with his camera crew for nearly five years. Interestingly, even though the film’s socio-political observations regarding race and class divides in the USA have been noted at the time, they haven’t generated a sustainable discussion capable of cultivating an immediate cultural connotation. Instead, if Hoop Dreams is mentioned at all these days, it is almost always in the context of basketball. But for the most part, James’s film has all but disappeared from the public discourse over the last twenty-six years.
Arguably, this is because documentaries – generally speaking – have a much shorter life expectancy within the zeitgeist than other films and even the most popular ones – like Koyaanisqatsi, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Thin Blue Line or Grizzly Man – rather quickly evaporate from the collective cultural consciousness. One of the likely reasons why has to do with some of the key missions of any documentary film, which are to inform and educate. Naturally, not all documentaries set out with these ideals in their crosshairs, but many do. It is easy to see that Hoop Dreams definitely aspired to educate and comment on a whole host of societal issues troubling America at the time: from the economic deprivation of minorities who see career in sports as the only alternative to abject poverty to painting professional athletic endeavour as a morally ambiguous incarnation of institutionalised exploitation of youth – and many more. But contrary to narrative films, which lend themselves to multiple re-interpretations and thus may incite discussion that go on for decades, once a documentary has educated its audiences and forced them to talk about the issues it raised, the interest quickly wanes. After all, textbooks are rarely re-read and once consumed they are either pawned off to other students or relegated to the shelf.
Such was the fate of this film, despite the near unanimous acclaim and a short-lived controversy regarding the film being nearly completely overlooked at the Oscars. Even though it was hailed as a timeless masterpiece by most prominent critics of the time, Hoop Dreams isn’t given the same respect as Citizen Kane, Vertigo or Casablanca. And it should be, especially now, at a time when millions of people across the world are rising against prejudice, disenfranchisement and continued subjugation of minorities. It is because, apart from their aforementioned educational value, documentaries offer something that ‘regular’ movies do not: they are time capsules. By virtue of being made to record real events and people, they offer a unique look into the past and it just so happens that while shadowing William Gates and Arthur Agee, Steve James was filming life in America in the early 1990s. And what he captured on film was a record of systemic racial injustice, segregation and economic privation endured by untold millions of African Americans. Most importantly, however, James wasn’t really trying to make a political statement by showing numerous hardships, which were nothing more than a bleak everyday reality for many families at the time: struggling from pay check to pay check, growing up surrounded by gang violence, drugs and organised crime, often in broken families.
However, what is most unnerving about this is the fact Steve James could just as well pick up his camera now, seek out two talented teenagers growing up in a slum of any big American city and shadow them instead. And he would probably end up making the exact same film! In the case of Hoop Dreams, the unique quality of a documentary film rendering it a time capsule is what gives it even more suggestive potential now, in 2020, because – sadly – not much has changed in the nearly three decades since the film was originally released. Minorities are still disproportionately disadvantaged and often resigned to very similar opportunities William Gates and Arthur Agee were presented with many years ago. The soulless college sports machine is still operational. Even Spike Lee’s furious tirade delivered to a crowd of teenagers – the cream of the crop of high school basketball talent – where he was trying to wake them up to the fact they were being exploited like modern day gladiators still rings true and powerful today.
Therefore, it is perhaps prudent to periodically revisit acclaimed documentaries, especially ones deemed socially relevant at the time, to use their magical time-travelling powers to see if things are going the way they should or if the discussions generated by these films – charged and righteous as it may have seemed – have precipitated any tangible shifts in the problems they illuminated. Because while it is certainly commendable to shower films like Hoop Dreams with acclaim, it is important to reflect upon the problems raised by their makers and make necessary changes to the world, especially when the subject matter invites a humanist, compassionate response from its audience. It is important to remember that although following underdog characters as they are trying to pull themselves by their bootstraps and struggle against immense adversities is most definitely entertaining on a fundamental level, these underdog characters were real. Their strife was real. Their joys, disappointments, successes and defeats were real, as well.
As it turns out, Steve James’s Hoop Dreams twenty-six years later is not only a phenomenal real-life drama but a stark reminder that in today’s high-tech society, defined by its interconnectedness and an overwhelming aspiration to right the wrongs of the past, there are still millions of people out there whose ceiling of possible achievement has been preordained by the circumstances of their birth and the levels of melanin in their skin, as opposed to content of their character or tenacity of their spirit. Thus, it should be watched today and a discussion surrounding it ought to persevere until things change for good.
