I would say the message is the same as the “Girls Who Wanna Have Fun.”
I watched just the first video Sue posted (8 minutes, that should not be allowed), and it surprised me as one of Sue’s favorites because I didn’t see these women “doing” anything (which is what I thought was important to her), other than a maybe 15 second shot of a philanthropy event.
"I much prefer this type of video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8s_UY9faRw#t=57
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydMyleTyv94#t=129
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uQP2-MIgiU#t=11
Those are girls I’d like to see my D hanging with. "
First 2 videos are traditional and excruciatingly boring. I also like how they insist that they are diverse.
The third one is funny and creative. They do not take themselves too seriously and there is certain visual esthetic to it. They intentionally picture very different girls together.
Why you are not criticizing Stanford video for the lack of books on the screen? Where is the depiction of charity work? Are there enough black girls?
Alabama video in question has certain visual esthetics to it too. They shoot similar girls together. A lot of pretty pictures. Cinema is an art after all. Even if it is a bubbly art.
Look up Im Shmacked on Youtube if you want to see some crazy college videos…
But “Alabama” neither made nor disseminated that video! And as Hanna keeps pointing out, “Alabama” criticized the sorority for unwisely distributing it (or allowing it to be distributed beyond its intended audience).
Personally, I find the video silly and much too open to misinterpretation, but I find most Greek recruitment videos silly and tone-deaf because Greek Life, with all its implicit exclusion, holds very little appeal to me. But I still think people need to evaluate the video within the context of its intended audience, and that audience is largely conventionally attractive, affluent, and places a high priority on maintaining one’s looks. That doesn’t NECESSARILY mean that women of color aren’t welcome or that girls with ambitious career plans aren’t welcome either.
After 50+ pages, I certainly hope someone is inspired to write a doctoral dissertation on the “Marketing and Advertising of Historically White Sororities in the Southern United States”!
It’s been said before, but many or most women do not join a sorority because the women in it are particularly amazingly involved in campus life. They pick the one whose members seem likely to have the best chance of becoming their friends. The women who are super busy with a million outside activities might even be perceived as unlikely to offer the most potential for friendship. It’s a personal goal, and perhaps for some a haven from the stress of competing to be the best scholar or athlete or musician.
@MidwestDad3 The video is directed at 18 year old females to create an impression that sororities are fun. Period. And, with all the uproar about this video, it is just plain old lazy that its critics don’t bother to educate themselves about recruitment at 'Bama. This is video is one tiny piece of the 'Bama recruitment experience. Bama’s Greek Chic details ALL the facets of recruitment that include sisterhood, scholarship, philanthropy, etc. I think the video was a brilliant piece of marketing on the part of Bama Alpha Phi: every single Bama PNM – prospective new member – aka, those 18 year women were talking about Alpha Phi–and it worked. They loved it. Or, they didn’t.
@LucieTheLakie and @Hanna Neither UA or Bama Alpha Phi “allowed it to be distributed beyond its intended audience.” Do your homework. All sorority videos are posted to YouTube in addition to links to chapter-specific social media. The reason why the video went viral is because cbsports.com linked the video in its own reporting of Kenyan Drake, Albama’s star running back, who appears in the video. For you non-college football fans: Kenyan Drake sat out most of last season with an injury; in pre-season pressers with Bama coach Nick Saban, the media speculated on whether Drake was healthy enough to play this season. The reporters’ emphasized Drake’s fitness by remarking that in addition to Saban’s assurances about college football’s star, Drake indeed appeared so healthy as to appear in a sorority video. And–with that, every sports and football related website repeated the story.
@higheredmom, if you post a video on YouTube and don’t set it to “private,” then you only have yourself to blame if it ends up going viral. It’s not like somebody hacked a private account.
That’s not to say I think the girls of that chapter deserve 1/100th of the scorn and criticism that has been heaped on them in this thread. And I’ve said as much if you bothered to read any of my other posts here.
What would be the point of posting a video aimed at recruiting and making it private?
To you, “Atlantic”:
NAACP and whites: did you forget the Seattle controversy at the NAACP. A white woman was passing herself off as black and the NAACP went ballistic:
"Rachel Dolezal resigned as president of the NAACP’s Spokane chapter Monday just days after her parents said she is a white woman posing as black — a dizzyingly swift fall for an activist credited with injecting remarkable new energy into the civil rights organization.
The furor touched off fierce debate around the country over racial identity and divided the NAACP itself."
Why the “furor” if whites couldn’t equally be heads of NAACP chapters? Guess they can’t, on the basis of this evidence.
To the point about the girls in the video “objectifying” themselves. I just saw in the video a bunch of girls frolicking around and showing “sisterhood.” I guess they should have all worn hijabs. The minute a woman puts on a bikini, some people immediately assert that they therefore have “objectified” themselves. Sometimes, as the saying goes, “a bikini is just . . . a bikini.” College campuses are now so rigidly in the taut grip of the feminist thought police that neither man or women can breathe, act, or ad lib freely. We’re all soooooo “objectified,” “marginalized,” “victimized,”“dis-respected,” puleese!!!
@makennacompton you’re wrong about that. The NAACP totally backed Rachel Dolezal.
Still does, even after she resigned.
http://www.naacp.org/press/entry/naacp-statement-on-the-resignation-of-rachel-dolezal1
this is what they said when it first happened:
I think it is you who have forgotten, or rather created something where it never existed.
@LucieTheLakie Again, it’s a recruitment aka marketing video! What is the point of setting it to private. Clearly, you need a primer on sorority recruitment. It is intended to be seen!
I am just quoting directly from the Seattle paper: “the NAACP went ballistic:”
Not my words. Fault the reporting, not me.
You didn’t provide a link to whatever you read. And IMO it’s generally best to go to the source when making such assertions.
@higheredmom, I don’t need a primer on sorority recruitment, thank you very much.
And I get it that Alpha Phi set that video to ‘public’ so it would be seen as widely as possible by all those PNMs, but once you set something to public, you lose complete control over who views it (or appropriates it for their own devices), and you are left to live with the consequences, including official censure from the administration of your very own university.
Public relations in this digital age is not for the faint of heart. UA actually has a very highly-regarded public relations major. I wonder if any of those Alphia Phi members are PR majors? Adding Kenyan Drake to the video (was this the filmmaker’s idea or the sorority’s?) was no doubt intended to bump its exposure. I guess they had no idea how well it would work. Or maybe they just subscribe to the old adage … Any publicity is good publicity.
The sorority more than filled their quota. Since the objective of the video was to make Alabama’s Alpha Phi chapter attractive to PNMs, it successfully achieved its goal. All the huffing and puffing (and perving by those whose minds are in the gutter) are ultimately meaningless. Just another opportunity to try to control and diminish attractive young women who aren’t conforming to a standard which is never applied to attractive young men.
What standard is that, out of curiosity?
FWIW, Spokane is nearly 300 miles from Seattle. James Bible, head of NAACP in Seattle, is not questioned about his racial identity.
I took some time to watch the sorority recruitment videos for my kids’ college. They were almost the same as Bama’s video, dancing, blowing bubbles and glitter, smiling and laughing. The differences were less makeup, more body diversity, and, when walking away, the image is centered on heads and shoulders instead of behinds.Nope, not a book in sight.
@LucieTheLakie - @Joblue is correct. The objective of the video was met and including the star running back in Bryant Denny and Bama’s beloved school mascot, too, made great marketing sense, and of course it was intended to bump exposure since Drake is a college football star in the #1 college football program in America. It was a coup – Alabama-wideand football-world wise – to include Drake. And, with over 330 members, I am sure Alpha Phi has PR majors. The fact is: this video was very appealing to the targeted demographic of young women who it was intended for: the over 2,300 PNMS who went through Bama recruitment. It may not appeal to you, but I suspect you weren’t someone it was intended for. It hasn’t hurt Alpha Phi one bit. Because anyone with one drop of common sense knows that a recruitment video is not intended to be all things to all people.