Repulsed by a leak insane brotherhood emailsIn recent years, fraternity peak season has develop into a TikTok phenomenon often known as #rushtok. Fans of all ages and backgrounds are turning on and making celebrities out of aspiring sorority sisters. Even for those who’ve never deliberately looked for RushTok, you will likely recognize it singing outfit detail delivery within the “Shoes: Target, Dress: Shein, Jewelery: Kendra Scott” format, which is popular with students in a rush.
“Bama Rush is a particularly competitive recruiting season for the association on the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Max’s documentary Bama Rush (2023) was presented as a juicy, deep dive into this viral spectacle. However, the long-awaited documentary received negative reviews from fans and critics and has a surprisingly low rating Rated 1.6 on Letterboxd. So why did everyone hate Bama Rush?
The movie could have a number of interesting drama. The rush process is suffering from controversies resembling email leaks, racist official and unofficial Greek practices (in 1986, the4-5 thousand dollars per semester). The problem is that the film selected to not delve into essentially the most interesting elements of Bama Rush and as an alternative devoted a number of time to director Rachel Fleit’s lifelong battle with baldness and her personal fascination with the culture of fitting in and sorority. While her story is interesting, it isn’t Bama Rush.
Viewers were under the impression that the documentary was a bait and switch. We were promised salacious sorority content, and as an alternative we got the director’s personal story. One viewer said “Using the push of the Alabama Society as a Trojan horse to inform the story of his battle with baldness is well one of the crucial bizarre directorial selections in film history.” While the film does a fantastic job of humanizing the 4 young college students it stars in, it just lacks a voice of reason that’s critical of all the things sketchy Greek life on the whole and Bama Rush specifically. Another concise review says “It’s a recruiting ad for Alabama, a therapy session for a filmmaker with baldness, a TikTok ad. It’s not or interesting documentary.”
One of the scary elements of the documentary was its coverage of “The Machine”, a secret society linked to members of Bam’s sororities and sororities that supposedly controls all the things on campus. Director Rachel Fleit allegedly received death threats from the group. However, plainly we learn almost nothing about this extremely interesting and necessary topic. By the tip of this 100-minute film, none of essentially the most interesting topics within the documentary have been satisfactorily covered.
