Abstract

My essay film Bo Jackson Says Hello recuts the television broadcast of the 1989 Baseball All Star Game. Most of its material is taken from a VHS home recording which includes the commercials, local news and a Tonight Show rerun. The voice-over assumes the tone and rhythm of the baseball broadcast. With the exception of one shot at the film’s end, all the material is found footage. The film runs through the game while ranging across black culture in the US, labor history, the US relationship to the Global South and the decline of empire, all treated with a light touch. It redeems an event once considered of general interest by arguing for a different sort of mass appeal. The languid pace of baseball is ideal for an essayistic treatment, inviting viewers to take a similar approach to other elements of American popular culture. A tragicomic tone flirts with nostalgia while the film juxtaposes past images to create new perspectives, even as the world embodied in those images slips away.