Like most college students who don’t participate in Greek Life, I find the world of sorority and fraternity culture fascinating for two reasons.
One, it’s incredibly entertaining. The drama of it all – from the pettiness of pomping competitions to every stupid, high school-esque event that they hold, it’s hilarious to watch as an outsider.
Two, it’s insane. Greek Life is insane. We all know the concept of Greek Life is insane, right?
When I found out HBO was making a documentary about rush at the University of Alabama and its Greek Life, I immediately sent the trailer to my roommate and said, “We need to watch this.”
But after about 15 minutes into the documentary, I realized that HBO had let me down. The remaining hour and 25 minutes would quickly become the least entertaining, least interesting time of my life.
“Bama Rush,” directed by Rachel Fleit (a key character in this), follows the lives of four girls preparing to rush at Alabama. Or, at least, it starts to. And then it stops.
The problem with “Bama Rush” is that it tries to be something that it’s just not – a serious documentary.
The film starts with exactly what you’d expect: this is what Greek Life is, this is what #RushTok is, this is why Greek Life is so big at Alabama and here are the four girls. Normal documentary setup.
Then, things then start to go off the rails. I started feeling like the documentary was losing track when three current sorority girls at Alabama discussed how they were just normal girls and don’t understand why they receive hate when they live regular lives.
The immediate shot after this insightful revelation is of the girls heavily photoshopping a picture of the three of them, with absolutely zero context or setup for it.
Every semi-deep, meaningful message or scene in the documentary was immediately undercut by something shallow. It’s clear that there are attempts to create an overarching theme of “sorority girls are just like all of us” and “we all want to belong,” but the film fails to actually land anything that feels real and connectable.
The biggest criticism of the documentary and the absolute worst part about it? Rachel Fleit’s odd decision to self-insert her own struggles into the film.
Documentaries are typically an objective view of a topic and its subjects. “Bama Rush” throws all objectivity out the window the moment Rachel Fleit appears on screen, talking about her experience with alopecia.
Fleit then turns about half of the film into her discussing her struggles with alopecia and how it compares to rushing for a sorority.
She said that her using wigs to gain acceptance growing up was similar to how the four girls long for acceptance and “love” (yes, one of the girls said she was rushing to find people who “actually loved her for who she really is, unlike her friends and family”) from their sororities.
Fleit’s alopecia storyline takes up so much time from the documentary, it’s as if she forgot to address anything that really matters, like more information on the Divine 9, how two of the girls in the documentary were roofied while filming, the underlying sexism in Greek Life and so many other issues that were not covered in-depth.
The documentary even ends with Fleit doing various activities with the subjects of her documentary.
Now, I am no documentary director, but I don’t think it’s normal for directors to hang out with the people they filmed to create a real, objective documentary.
A lot of the documentary just feels like Fleit trying to say that we shouldn’t judge sorority girls or sororities for anything ever because they’ve never done anything terrible in their lives. But despite the attempts to rescue the reputation of sororities or the girls themselves, “Bama Rush” can’t hide the toxicity, racism and sexism that is at the core of Alabama’s culture.
Although it’s obvious that the film’s message is about how sororities are a means for self-acceptance and belonging, I think Fleit’s framing gives it the opposite of the desired effect. After watching this, I felt more than ever that sororities and rushing ruins the sense of self.
Think about it: who could ever find their true self by conforming to an organization’s rules on how to act? If you have to make yourself look a certain way or be coached by someone just to be picked by a bunch of other girls, how are you supposed to get to know the real you?
I know I’m not a member of Greek Life, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to truly understand why people want to join it. At one point in the film, one of the girls talks about how the main reason she wants to join a sorority is because they “do good for the community,” and I literally laughed.
Why pay all that money just to “do good” when you could donate that money or use it to actually contribute to your community? What, specifically, is the “good” that these Alabama sororities are supposedly doing?
I don’t want to discredit anyone who is a member of Greek Life, and I respect that people enjoy being part of it. However, I think this documentary missed the opportunity to take a hard critical look at what really is at the heart of Greek Life.
Unless you want to essentially learn nothing about sorority rushing at Alabama and everything about how it relates to alopecia, don’t give this documentary a watch.
Rating: 0/10