Hoop Dreams

Having seen and enjoyed Hoop Dreams a few times in the past, I was a bit biased coming into the bell hooks piece on it. I think it's a tough choice of film to pick apart, given that it is an impressively longitudinal documentary, it's low-budget, and it's made by a man who has since done work like The Interrupters, a similarly critically acclaimed and beloved film about a group trying to stop street violence. While the trailer applauds the quest for the American Dream, it seems mostly a selling style, as most of the film is realer than that. I don't necessarily agree with hooks on who she thinks is being portrayed as "triumphant" or "defeated" at certain points in the film. And while all films shape reality in their own ways, I differ with hooks in her sensing of "suggestions" in the film. "The film suggests that it is only their potential to be exploited... that makes this dream a potential nightmare," is one line I thought saw parts of the film too simply. And I think many of the things hooks notes, such as exposure of the commodification of Black men, are necessary to see in a documentary, as that can led to further recognition of the problem and possibly change.