Word: hoops
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...most recent column, Samuel J. Rascoff makes an excellent point about the cyclical nature of inner-city poverty and the way it is documented in the documentary "Hoop Dreams" ("Losing Life's Game," Opinion, Nov. 18, 1994). Unfortunately, I must take exception to his implications that the three film-makers, Steve James, Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert, exploited the two players, Arthur Agee and William Gates...
What is profoundly disturbing about "Hoop Dreams" is not that its two protagonists will probably fall short of NBA stardom. Rather, it is the particular kind of failure--intractable, cyclical and tragic--that makes the film pathetic...
...Hoop Dreams" is a tragedy of bad advice. Bad advice begins with bad fathers, or more aptly, absent fathers. Both Arthur Age and William Gates, the two young players whose high school careers this film traces, grow up in single-parent homes. This fact becomes central to the narrative of their lives as time and time again they are manipulated by would-be fathers--be they coaches, recruiters, or corporations...
...fathers. There is no indication that they have come to terms with the problems of their childhood and will choose to make things different in their own homes. On the contrary, it is easy to see how the sons will become the fathers in the next generation's hoop dreams. The tragic cycle of inner-city life will be repeated once again...
...Hoop Dreams" is the story of viscious "hopes" of cultural pathology and unrequited "dreams" of evanescent fame. There are moments of extraordinary grace along the way, some intimations of hope and the occasional tremendous jam. But these moments are fleeting. As long as these cycles keep on spinning and these misguided dreams are dreamt, there can be little hope for William Gates and Arthur Agee--of, for that matter...