UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Vogan, Travis
Dept./Program:
English
Year:
2006
Degree:
MA
Abstract:
As a consequence of deindustrialization and the resultant economic shifts in American inner-cities during the 20' century's latter half, basketball became much more than a recreational activity. It is often seen as a vehicle for upward mobility that enables players (the majority African American men) to gain status and economic selfsufficiency; a "hoop dream" that disproportionately affects inner-city black youths with little else to pursue. Despite basketball's place as a potential vehicle for success, it is far more likely for urban African Americans to become about anything other than a professional athlete. The hoop dream is therefore most often a dream deferred that offers a miniscule percentage of players million dollar contracts and worldwide fame while denying that success to the multitudes of others who strive for basketball greatness.
In 1994, Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert examined basketball's precarious role in the inner-city with their documentary film, Hoop Dreams. While Hoop Dreams provides a poignant portrait of two Chicago boys-Arthur Agee and William Gates-navigating their way through the often exploitative high school basketball institution in hopes of earning college scholarships and eventually reaching the National Basketball Association, it also elicits many questions concerning the potentialities and dangers of documentary media as a form of historiography. This essay examines Hoop Dreams as an example of what I call documentary's deferential historiography; the production of a historical text that defers its potentially counterhegemonic message to the dominant ideology.
After introducing my subject and the primary text, I examine the filmmakers' unobtrusive, vérité approach in light of the historical context from which the film emerges. While the filmmakers use their editing to examine the subject matter critically, their lack of explicit commentary throughout the film can be viewed as dehistoricizing and depoliticizing their subjects from matters that would aid the filmmakers interrogation of the basketball institution and its effects on urban youth. From this critical trajectory, I locate Hoop Dreams as complicit the logic of Reaganomics and the ideology that gave rise to the Rodney King verdict-both of which occurred in simultaneity with the film's production. Further, this lack of commentary and context does not suggest intervention in the conditions that create the Hoop Dream or the racist and classist stereotypes that enabled the King verdict.
Last, these issues give rise to how the documentary subject-and therefore historical subject-is constituted in time and space. I argue that contemporary poststructuralist theory provides a means of producing, and examining, historical texts without allowing their subject to be incorporated by the dominant order.
In 1994, Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert examined basketball's precarious role in the inner-city with their documentary film, Hoop Dreams. While Hoop Dreams provides a poignant portrait of two Chicago boys-Arthur Agee and William Gates-navigating their way through the often exploitative high school basketball institution in hopes of earning college scholarships and eventually reaching the National Basketball Association, it also elicits many questions concerning the potentialities and dangers of documentary media as a form of historiography. This essay examines Hoop Dreams as an example of what I call documentary's deferential historiography; the production of a historical text that defers its potentially counterhegemonic message to the dominant ideology.
After introducing my subject and the primary text, I examine the filmmakers' unobtrusive, vérité approach in light of the historical context from which the film emerges. While the filmmakers use their editing to examine the subject matter critically, their lack of explicit commentary throughout the film can be viewed as dehistoricizing and depoliticizing their subjects from matters that would aid the filmmakers interrogation of the basketball institution and its effects on urban youth. From this critical trajectory, I locate Hoop Dreams as complicit the logic of Reaganomics and the ideology that gave rise to the Rodney King verdict-both of which occurred in simultaneity with the film's production. Further, this lack of commentary and context does not suggest intervention in the conditions that create the Hoop Dream or the racist and classist stereotypes that enabled the King verdict.
Last, these issues give rise to how the documentary subject-and therefore historical subject-is constituted in time and space. I argue that contemporary poststructuralist theory provides a means of producing, and examining, historical texts without allowing their subject to be incorporated by the dominant order.