Final 12 months, as rumors of a secret documentary swirled on the College of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, many college students collaborating in sorority recruitment had been on excessive alert.
There was speak of a movie crew on campus. Extra dramatically, there have been unfounded whispers that some potential new sorority members — recognized, in Greek-speak, as P.N.M.s — had been carrying hid microphones to seize what went on behind closed doorways.
It turned out the rumors had been solely partly true. There was certainly a documentary being made throughout the recruitment interval, higher referred to as rush, however nobody who went by means of it was carrying a hidden system to document secret rituals.
Rush on the College of Alabama grew to become a world sensation in 2021, when TikTok movies gave individuals from world wide an inside view of the annual occasion and its hush-hush traditions.
“Bama Rush” was launched Tuesday on Max. Directed by Rachel Fleit, it follows 4 College of Alabama college students from their preparations in the summertime of 2022 to bid day, after they discover out if they’ve been invited to affix a sorority. (Warning: Mild spoilers forward.)
Working along with her workforce, Ms. Fleit, who directed the 2021 documentary “Introducing, Selma Blair,” discovered her topics by looking out social media for incoming college students who deliberate to hurry.
She stated she wrote to them and instructed them: “Pay attention, I need to make a 360-degree view on the sorority system on the College of Alabama. I actually need to heart across the experiences of what it means to be a younger girl proper now. We’re going to sort out the entire large subjects that you’re up towards.”
“That included quite a lot of the subjects that got here up within the movie,” she stated, together with “physique picture, sexual assault, feminism, evaluating and competitors between younger ladies.”
Ms. Fleit added that nobody was paid to take part within the documentary, and the movie crew didn’t document inside sorority homes. She additionally tried to verify her presence didn’t change the standard rush course of, she stated, as she sought to “make a really quiet, very trustworthy, very intimate portrait.”
The rumors of hidden microphones had been “false,” Ms. Fleit stated. She added that she “felt for” the scholars who had been caught up in them.
Marina Anderson, 19, was one of many younger ladies whose lives had been affected by campus rumors. She stated she was dismissed from rush in August after being wrongly accused of carrying a microphone. What brought about suspicion, Ms. Anderson stated, was a black hair tie she had wrapped across the again of her shirt to make it match higher.
Regardless of her repeated denials, a few of her friends refused to imagine she was not taking part within the documentary, calling her “HBO lady” for months. (These accusations got here whereas Max was nonetheless referred to as HBO Max. The platform underwent a rebranding on Tuesday.)
“It was so uncomfortable,” Ms. Anderson stated. “I had individuals recording me in public. It actually messed me up my freshman 12 months.” She added that she had come to take pleasure in her time at school and was excited to return as a sophomore within the fall.
Ms. Anderson, who was not interviewed for “Bama Rush,” watched the documentary shortly after it appeared on Max on Tuesday. Watching it was “bittersweet,” she stated. Basically, she discovered the movie “anticlimactic,” saying that in the end it “wasn’t about Alabama rush,” however slightly the private struggles of the ladies featured in it.
Ms. Anderson added that she had sometimes questioned what she might need missed out on due to the microphone paranoia. “I feel the primary factor is simply that rumors are actually harmful,” she stated.
Grant Sikes, one other pupil who rushed in 2022, echoed these sentiments. Ms. Sikes, who grew to become a well-liked determine on TikTok due to the movies she posted throughout rush, stated she felt “let down” by the movie. In contrast with the dramatic trailer — which proclaimed, “This documentary might be the tip of Greek life as we all know it” — the completed product fell quick, she stated.
“Nothing they talked about wasn’t already recognized or one thing you couldn’t Google your self,” Ms. Sikes, 20, stated. “It wasn’t a documentary about Bama Rush in any respect! It was a documentary about a few women and their life.”
“Lots of people had been actually hoping this may uncover issues so change might occur,” she continued, including that she wished “Bama Rush” had extra deeply explored themes like racism, homophobia, fatphobia and hazing.
Throughout rush, rumors circulated that Ms. Sikes was a “documentary plant,” she stated, a falsehood that she believes might have affected her rush probabilities.
“Why would a chapter need to even communicate with me in the event that they thought that I used to be the plant?” Ms. Sikes, who’s nonbinary, stated. “I used to be like, ‘Do you truthfully assume I used to be despatched right here to mix in with a bunch of blond sizzling chicks? Like, come on.’”
By the tip of the method, she was not invited to affix any sorority, having been dropped by most homes early on. Ms. Fleit reached out to Ms. Sikes in August concerning the movie, in response to DMs reviewed by The New York Occasions. The pair by no means spoke, and Ms. Sikes was not concerned within the movie.
Solely two of the individuals who seem within the movie efficiently joined a sorority. One in all them stopped taking part within the movie as soon as rush started.
On TikTok, some viewers have criticized Ms. Fleit’s inclusion of her personal expertise with alopecia and carrying a wig as a plot level within the movie. “I actually hate how the director of ‘Bama Rush’ made this about her,” one person wrote in a video.
The director defended her choice to make herself a part of the story.
“To ensure that me to specific the empathy that I had for what these younger ladies had been up towards,” Ms. Fleit stated, “I wanted to face shoulder to shoulder with them and say, ‘You already know what? Me, too. That is what I did to belong.’”
Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
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