Monday, August 17, 2020

The Last Dance [Media Notes 42]

This series, now available on Netflix, follows the career of Michael Jordan by placing it in the context of his final season in the NBA, 1997-1998. I should say that I have no particular interest in sports, but perhaps a smidge more interest in basketball. But I appreciate excellence wherever I see it, and Michael Jackson was certainly a superb basketball player.

Since I have not and do not follow basketball regularly, I’m not really in a very good position to judge Jordan’s abilities, am I? What I see, in this series, but elsewhere as well, is astounding, the leaps, the changes of direction (in mid-air too), the fakes, behind the back passes, all of it. For all I know this is routine. But no one says that; everyone agrees that, yes, Jordan is exceptional. I am happy to accept that judgment.

But it’s not just Jordan’s performance. It’s the other players as well, how they interacted with him, how they felt to be playing in his orbit (I’m thinking particularly of Steve Kerr in one sense, but Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman in another), how other players in the league dealt with him, and so forth. It’s all covered. I particularly enjoyed those interview scenes where Jordan would be given an iPad playing an interview where someone else was commenting about him. Sometimes he agreed, sometimes not, sometimes he smiled. Always interesting.

Always there is the pressure of being Michael Jordan, of in some sense, belonging to others as hero and role model. At one point he’s asked about his refusal to speak out on racial issues in the way that Muhammad Ali did. He simply says that while he admired Ali, that’s not what/who he wanted to be. He needed to draw a line between himself as a private individual and his public persona. He, reasonably enough, wanted to exert control over that persona rather than lending it to others for their purposes, however justifiable those purposes may have been.

A final note. The Wikipedia entry noted:
Scottie Pippen was reportedly "wounded and disappointed" by his characterization, though he did not make any public remarks during the documentary's airing. Pippen later denied any rift between himself and Jordan over the documentary.
Interesting. He certainly came through as an ambivalent figure, ambivalent about Jordan and about his treatment by the Bulls organization (holding him to a contract that effectively underpaid him). He often seemed uncomfortable while being interviewed, just barely masking a sneer.

Which is to say, we didn’t get the whole story – and just what would that be, the WHOLE story? – and the story we got was likely biased in Jordan’s favor. Of course. We’re adults. It’s a complex world. We’re not going to take everything at face value. But I’m pretty sure the action shots were real, not CGI.

Ken Burns, in particular, has noted that Jordan’s own production company was involved with the production. Well, OK. But, judging from what Burns did with his jazz series, where I know the subject better than Burns did, I don’t think he’s in a very good position to question someone else’s objectivity, even if that person had a role in telling their own story. Burns, of course, played no role whatsoever in the history of jazz, but he still managed to make a biased and sentimental hash of it.

But enough of this. It’s an engaging series. Even if you have no particular interest in basketball or sports, this series is worth dipping into.

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