Bama Rush

Bama Rush is a documentary that follows four University of Alabama students in the summer of 2022 as they prepare to rush a sorority.

Despite what I truly believe was an honest effort on the part of the filmmaker to examine the long-standing traditions of Bama Rush, both the good and the bad, but without any greater judgment, there’s just no avoiding the obvious truth underneath all the gaudy glitz, girly glamour, and giddy excitement, which is…

The Greek System, especially at the University of Alabama, is one of the main roots of "The Problem" in America. It is the fertile dirt from which a truly fetid flower blooms.

THE Problem, you ask?

Which one?

All of them. All of the social, cultural, and systemic problems that currently plague our society. Racism. Misogyny. Rape culture. Body dysmorphia. White Supremacy. Christian Nationalism. Segregation. Conformity. Nepotism. Silent complicity. Mass inequity. Privilege and the Inequality Gap. Going along to get along. Prioritizing the good of the group over doing what’s right, and all for the sake of your own comfort. And always… always… under the implied threat of violence as a means of control. It’s all nakedly on display during Rush on the University of Alabama’s Greek Row, the beating heart of a well-known party school with an exorbitantly well-funded football team, in a state that is 44th in the nation in education, and 7th for having the highest poverty rate.

None of that is the fault of the film’s subjects, of course, but they certainly benefit from it all, and very obviously in blissful ignorance. Basically, they aren’t concerned about any of it, because they don’t have to be…

Still, at times, you can’t help but feel sorry for the film’s subjects, for the myriad horrors that these young women choke back and brush off, straightening their backs, wiping their eyes, and gamely smiling for the group photo. And they endure it all for nothing more than the hope that they will be accepted, that they will finally belong to something, that they will be loved.

It’s literally all they want.

But at the same time, you also must recognize that the willing complicity of these young women now, is but their first step on a well-trod path to a future where they are the ones standing in the Sorority House doorway themselves, newly crowned arbiters of this particularly toxic culture, gleefully inflicting it upon the next generation of hopefuls, taking full advantage of the desperate need for validation, all while reveling in the power to crush spirits and dash dreams.

The filmmaker is no different either, as her true motivation for making this film is eventually revealed to actually be rooted in the same wants and desires and injuries, all inflicted by the same system. It’s a system which she honestly seems to admire too, even when it turns on her. Which it does, as soon as the Greek System Gossip Girls and their wildly over-involved and over-indulgent parents catch the first faintest and imagined whiff that this documentary might possibly intend to rock their privileged little boat, to go against their grain, to “expose” their secrets. And when that happens, they respond in the only way they know how, because it’s the only way their world has taught them… by demanding silence with the threat of violence.

And the filmmaker is sad about this. She feels rejected.

It’s a sad picture. It’s all very sad. And that this seems to be a mostly unintended message just makes it all the more sad.