Netflix's Cheer tells one of the oldest and darkest stories in American sports

The Atlantic

The Netflix docuseries following the Navarro College cheerleading team in Texas has received effusive praise. Reese Witherspoon was so inspired by Coach Monica Aldama and the show that she cried "big baby tears" and cried again. NBC News hailed Aldama as the kind of decision maker America needs right now. "Fans got one thing right: Cheer’s hardworking, eager-to-please athletes are indeed transcendent," says Amanda Mull. "But Cheer doesn’t let their victories shine. Instead, the series tells one of the oldest, darkest stories in American sports—of athletes with no pay and little support breaking their bodies again and again, all for the greater glory of an authority figure they dare not question." As Mull notes, Navarro College is a junior college doing "incredible things with spare resources," which makes "Aldama’s run of championships even more impressive, but these shortfalls also make her demands more dangerous. Medical and training staff are not just a competitive advantage—they can provide a check against a coach’s power, and their expertise can help keep athletes safe when they’re asked to push past the normal capabilities of the human body." Mull also notes a fairly recent scandal that the Netflix series ignores: A male cheerleader sued the school in 2018 alleging that a volunteer cheer coach drugged and raped him. Mull adds: "Much of the praise for the version of Aldama (who, it’s important to note, is subject to the same whims of editing and narrative-creation as anyone else who participates in a documentary or reality show) viewers see in Cheer centers on the fact that she’s a woman at the top of her field who employs the same hard-driving tactics and take-no-prisoners attitude that men have long used to get ahead. It’s true that she is hardly singular in the way she interacts with her college students, but in refusing to cast a critical eye at the way this approach to power has always endangered athletes, the docuseries bows out of a crucial component of Navarro’s story, and of the story of sports in America. It also leaves audiences open to celebrate Aldama as a girl-boss hero, ignoring the way that designation has frequently been used to praise leaders who abuse their underlings and eventually fail at their jobs because of it. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me that so many people watched Cheer and judged Aldama an inspirational American leader instead of a manipulative, reckless glory-hound. America imagines sports at every level as a conduit for spreading cultural beliefs about discipline and order, which someone must enforce."

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• Cheer captures the reality of cheerleading that is missing in films like Bring It On: The Netflix docuseries, says Anne Helen Peterson, "gives viewers a front-row seat to the process of perfection. Over the course of dozens of practices, you see the team’s members, in the peak athletic condition of their life, left panting on the ground. It shows concussion after concussion — ice baths and bruised ribs and broken elbows. The athletic trainers are characters as much as the cheerleaders. You can hear the sound of every single basket toss, bone against bone, flesh against the mat. The literal impact of cheer becomes a visceral, shared experience."
• Coach Monica Aldama describes her coaching style: "I try to be very consistent so they know that when I’m serious, I’m serious, and that I do have rules and I expect them to follow them. But at the same time, I want them to know that they can come talk to me and that I am going to be empathetic. It is a friendship, but at the same time, it’s a respectful friendship, where you know that I’m still the person that’s going to be bossing you around for a minute or two at practice. You also find that they’re all different; some want you to be tough with them and then if you use that same approach on someone else, it’ll just tear them down. I really try to figure everyone out."
• Cheer and USA's Dare Me have given cheerleading is getting a much-needed image correction
• Cheer challenges cheerleading clichés as deftly as it discards tropes of masculinity and athleticism
• Cheer producers got turned down from filming at nationals, so they used smartphone video instead of obtaining the official footage that was offered