Rush hour

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Terry Nguyen, Dirt's senior staff writer, on MAX’s Bama Rush, a Greek life documentary that fails to ask any hard questions.

When Bama Rush went viral on TikTok in August 2021, I was convinced it was a public relations psy-op. It felt so orchestrated that I didn’t put it beyond the National Panhellenic Conference, in its efforts to restore Greek life’s reputation, to instruct sororities to make silly RushToks about sisterhood.

During 2020, I reported on the Abolish Greek Life movement for Vox but came away doubting that any tangible social divestment could be made. Echoing a similar internal push during the 1960s civil rights movement, students at American, Duke, Northeastern, Tufts, Vanderbilt, and Washington University–some Greek-affiliated and some not–were calling for the abolition of the historically white system of Greek life. However, fraternities and sororities are powerful alumni networks and have extensive ties to donors. It’s not in any college’s financial interest to get rid of them. And at a school like the University of Alabama, where over 35 percent of the student body is Greek-affiliated, campus life revolves around the Greek system.

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Fraternities have long been the subject of various investigative documentaries, from BBC2’s Frat Boys (2016) to Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland’s Frat House (1998). It was only a matter of time before sororities got the documentary treatment too. But Bama Rush, directed by Rachel Fleit, fails by pegging sorority rush to its brief TikTok limelight. It limits the doc’s focus to a singular school with a notoriously secretive and paranoid Greek system, with gatekeepers who are both skeptical and avoidant of any media coverage.

Bama Rush follows four rush hopefuls, most of them incoming freshmen, in search of a “forever home” to help them grow into their college identities. Fleit and her team weren’t able to film the ins-and-outs of the recruitment process, so the doc makes a sudden pivot around the 25-minute mark. Fleit breaks the fourth wall to turn the camera on herself. “I feel like I rushed because I have alopecia and I wore a wig for 14 years,” she said.

The doc’s approach to understanding rush, then, is rooted in a sort of radical empathy for the girls; its myopic focus is on the young-adult yearning for belonging. Bama Rush hesitates to deeply interrogate the structural complexities and contradictions of the Greek system and its members: What risks come with this commodified sisterhood, when “belonging” is predicated on being a dues-paying member? How is it empowering for women to participate in a social network where they are 74% more likely to be raped than their college peers? Do members care or even know of its classist and racist history? In lieu of asking these hard questions, the doc attempts to shed light on “The Machine,” the obscure political underbelly to Greek life, but few members were willing to talk.

Meanwhile, Fleit has to contend with the unwanted attention the filming has garnered—from the university, outside press, and the internet. The easiest thing to do, it seemed, was further lean into the personal than pick a fight with the powers-that-be. The result is a compassionately bland 101-minute film that isn’t about Bama Rush, but the girls who are drawn to the spectacle of Greek sisterhood. Two ultimately become subsumed into its system. The doc concludes on pat terms of self-empowerment, dwelling in the feel-good waters of choice feminism. Perhaps that is the best a documentary greenlit on the heels of a week’s worth of viral videos can offer.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• Netflix is back on its (password crackdown) bullshit. The streamer is giving users the option to share their account for an additional $8 a month. (Bloomberg)

• TikTok partners with ReachTV, America’s largest in-airport TV network, to distribute travel and lifestyle content made by top creators. (AdAge)

• Rob Long, a screenwriter and executive producer for the show Cheers, on the demise of the television theme song. (Free Beacon)

• The Barbie album is stacked. (Pitchfork)

  • If any music industry insiders are interested in speaking to me about the evolution of movie soundtracks through streaming, email me [email protected].

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• The art critic Charlie Finch, a rent-stabilized tenant of the same apartment for 45 years, jumped out of his East Village apartment after learning that his landlords had sold the building to a private equity firm. Bridget Read on the future of the complex. (NY Mag)

• Kenneth Anger, “a queer pioneer of experimental cinema, an occultist, and lover of pop culture,” has died at 95. (ArtReview)

• Alicia Kennedy on natural wine 🍷 (Substack)

• When digital nomads come to town, ft. a cursed source quote: “If I could make one place to live, it would combine the optimism of an Asian megacity, the tech culture of Eastern Europe, and the nightlife of Latin America. And then I’d probably leave.”(Rest of World)

• SNL’s Chloe Fineman has “the most realistic” Architectural Digest house tour yet—and it’s still solidly out of my budget 🙁

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