After a harrowing election, Thomas running about with lively campaign manager Crashema Murray in tow, she sits among the five court electees and consults with an advisor about the coming day's crowning procedure, the results of which are still undisclosed to all five. Rolling through the details of the various wave styles and other obligatory displays of school spirit, the advisor asks each woman to raise her hand if she's unfamiliar with the words to the university's alma mater. Of the five women, four hands slug into the air, Thomas' among them. Lady left standing is animated as porcelin, frat-favored shoe-in Mabry, who gloating and self-congratulatory, smiles a mask of false civility. Despite the implicit ruthless of that smile, and disregarding the blow it deals humility, the questions spring to mind, "Is her mute arrogance unjustified? Shouldn't the Homecoming Queen know the alma mater?"

Ten minutes online research finds the following lyrics, credited for writing by Helen Vickers, 1908:

"Alabama, listen mother/ To our vows of love; To thyself and to each other, Faithful friends we'll prove.

Faithful, loyal firm and true/ Heart bound to heart will beat; Year by year the ages through until in heaven we meet.

College days are swiftly fleeting/ Soon we'll leave thy halls. Ne'er to join another meeting/ Neath thy hallowed walls.

So, farewell dear Alma Mater/ May they name, we pray/ Be revrenc'd ever, pure and stainless, As it is today."

With all her strenuous planning and community involvement, how could Thomas miss such a trivial notch on her belt? Perhaps, it begins to seem after this faux paux, her intentions to prove a point about race by winning the election were not as pure as simply the intention of representing the school to its returning alumni.

As for Goslins, the incident creates enough doubt in a audience's mind about Thomas' qualifications, or rather lack thereof, to render null and void any poignance in the film's ending. It also speaks to the gross lack of research applied to simply defining terms. Beyond a very cursory study with former Homecoming Queens, Goslins does little work to outline the narrative's specific notions about what a Homecoming Queen should represent. Where in the right hands a documentary filmmaker can convince an audience of not necessarily the validity of his claims but at least of the logic of them, Goslins fails to exploit her opportunity to very implicitly give her semantic opinion and in the process abandons her cinematic logic about the relationship between Homecoming and race almost altogether.

With that said, Goslins somewhat saves herself and the film by digging into an intriguing campus phenomenom, that of a secret society composed of fraternity and sorority members called "The Machine." As explained by writers and editors at the campus newspaper The Crimson White, the loud 2000-plus minority of the "The Machine" acts in unity to push agendas beneficial for their separate organziations. From small campus politics to larger campus concerns, "The Machine" keeps the primarily white well-off just so. Unable to galvanize support from the hoards of stringer students, minority candiates in campus elections fight tough battles, independent Homecoming Queen runner Sara Catherine Thomason even failing to get her best friend and former sorority sister to vote for her, or ostensibly against her friend's house. Interviews with Anti-Machine Pac founders Matt Dover and John Phillips are well handled, yet Goslins admits no attempt to speaking with students in "The Machine" camp, the smiling Mabry among them. It's mentioned only that "The Machine" is rarely spoken of, and then only with the greatest trepidation.

Had the film kept its notes tied to this specific, and much more universal, injustice, this lack of equality based on a 'might is right' theory, Goslins would have accomplished, even in mastery of 'Bama Girl's limited to nonexistent technical skill, a penetrating study. All that can be said, however, at this juncture is that 'Bama Girl is a noble and innocuous attempt, chronicling its time with sweet and engaging characters, to speak truth about an issue much too complex for its final product.

'Bama Girl plays 7:15 PM, Wed, Apr 16 at the Landmark Midtown. Purchase tickets.