Kaepernick & America (Hockrow and Walker, 2022)
Kaepernick & America, a documentary by Tommy Walker and Ross Hockrow, uses an ancient method of argumentation to breathe fresh life into Colin Kaepernick’s nearly decade-long crusade for racial justice in America.
The project offers logical support to justify the motives and methods that Colin Kaepernick utilized during the protests he staged during his truncated NFL career. The film is reminiscent of Plato’s The Apology. Walker and Hockrow offer a film that fervently affirms Colin Kaepernick’s philosophical credibility. They systematically defend his reasoning and eventually go as far as to indict the character of Kaepernick’s detractors just as Plato did in The Apology. The whole documentary is a brilliant example of Socratic dialogue.
Some may complain that the film is ostensibly pro-Kaepernick propaganda. There are scenes that show his hometown of Turlock, CA anointing him as a hero for reaching the NFL. A local restaurant in Turlock felt compelled to name a hotdog after him! There are scenes that not only exalt his athletic prowess but highlight his charming personality. Jim Harbaugh, Kaepernick’s first NFL coach, was so enamored with him that he risked his life by suffering through a heart ailment to watch Kaepernick play in his first NFL game. All of this makes the majority of the project feel like a Colin Kaepernick hagiography. However, all of this overt praise winds up being a clever foundation for the filmmakers’ argumentation strategy.
The filmmakers do an excellent job of making Colin Kaepernick reasonably likable despite the negative publicity that has shrouded him since 2016. Kaepernick made himself a pariah by protesting the national anthem in 2016. Opening scenes of Kaepernick & America depict Joe Six-Pack types burning Colin Kaepernick jerseys in grotesque effigy. The scenes are unsettling because of how irrationally mean some of the rituals are. Partisan zeal is an accepted part of professional sports, but Kaepernick & America reveals a dark, malicious element to that passion. Cleveland Cavalier fans burned Lebron James jerseys when he abandoned the city (the first time). However, those displays of emotion felt like the frivolous fanaticism that comes with rooting for the home team. The scenes in Kaepernick & America that show people torching Kaepernick jerseys and using them for target practice feel like pure hate.
The film shows how those visceral and overall negative responses to Kaepernick’s method of protest overshadowed his intended message. The documentary tries to work past those visceral emotions and put the focus back on what Kaepernick was trying to accomplish: to bring attention to the brutality that minorities suffer at the hands of police in America. The film tries to make it clear that whether or not you believe that Kaepernick was unpatriotic, ungrateful, or a traitorous disgrace is really irrelevant because of how important his message was. The film’s true agenda is to drive a point home that is bigger than Colin Kaepernick. Its agenda is to make logical sense out of an emotionally charged issue: How racism influences policing in America and how the conversation about it has evolved since 2016.
Walker and Hockrow systematically present a confluence of events that transformed Colin Kaepernick from a professional athlete and into a social activist that figuratively and literally set the country on fire. There was the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. There were the deaths of Philando Castile and George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There was the death of Eric Garner in New York City. There was the death of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The film makes it clear that minority American citizens needed a champion to give them a voice and Colin Kaepernick bravely answered that call. The film works to affirm his motives and commendably supports his crusade in an attempt to benefit a broad swath of American folks.
The film effectively accomplishes these goals, but it is not perfect. The cinematography is pretty bland and some of the scene transitions feel disjointed. A lot of the interviews feel quite sterile and that makes the pace of the documentary a little too deliberate. However, despite these shortcomings, Kaepernick & America is an effective exercise in apologetics.
