Essay, Research Paper: Love And Basketball

Gina Prince-Blythewood directed Love & Basketball with little experience at all. Having come from UCLA, where she ran track competitively, Prince-Blythewood had all the means possible to relate to this story. Since age seven, Prince-Blythewood was competing on team sports, being the only girl on the team. It is evident why she would make such a film, she wanted to convey the importance of female athletics, along with independence of women.
The film takes place in the 80's and 90"�s, and follows Monica and Quincy in their attempt to succeed in basketball. The comparisons of male and female roles are strongly emphasized and all the rules are broken. Prince-Blythewood has a powerful enthusiasm for basketball and a coherent, calm way of illustrating the discrepancies in public attitudes towards male and female athletes. While Quincy is loved and supported by his schoolmates and family, Monica is seen as somewhat of a freak for wanting the same thing. Later on, when the two turn pro, Quincy has a place in the NBA, while Monica has to leave the country, and go to play in Europe. When men behave a certain way on the court it is accepted as part of the sport, but when a woman does the same thing it is seen as vulgar and disrespectful.
Despite some on-the-nose dialogue, there is a consistently powerful drama in a simmering state of confrontation between Monica, who fears that any concessions to traditional femininity will bar her from her calling, and her mother, who sees her daughter as condemning everything about her choice as a homemaker. The Mother and daughter struggle to understand one another's life choices, and views on femininity. Monica feels that her Mother had always devoted her life to pleasing others, and not trying to achieve her own dreams. The Mother, on the other hand, feels that Monica is giving up the chance to build a family and have some happiness in her life. Prince-Blythewood rubs this in our face, although she later makes us understand that both women's goals were important. In fact, at the end of the movie, Monica is with her husband and baby as they sit courtside watching her play. She got the best of both worlds.
It is the strong feminist themes and gender comparisons that make this movie as powerful as it is. Gina Prince-Blythewood has done a tremendous job, not only making a great movie with good characters and a coherent storyline, but in touching issues that should be dealt with more often in cinema, the inequalities of women in this modern society of ours.