The Mystery of Flying Kicks

         The short documentary I watched was The Mystery of Flying Kicks, which was about the different meanings behind shoes hanging on telephone poles throughout neighborhoods and cities according to different cultures. They interview and record people from all over the world to get their point of view on why the variety of shoes are hanging on the telephone wire. They spoke with many different people ranging from Australia to Spain where they discuss their cultures meaning of the shoes existence. Some explanations of what the shoes meant included, someone that lost their virginity, a way of notifying the police, a bully throwing their perpetrators shoes so they had to walk home barefoot, or a sign of accomplishment in the neighborhood. All of these are valid observations are very subtle and aren’t very serious. One part of this video really caught my eye and made me really think about the danger involved in this childish act. One man from New York stated that in his town, the shoes hanging indicated a certain gang that runs that part of town depending on the color. Likewise, in Los Angeles, shoes were taken off gang members that got shot or that were being arrested in remembrance of them. This has now been taken into matters of danger and violence when it only began as being a simple act that people caught on to for fun. There was two men we were introduced to in the video that were completely against this show throwing fetish so they started to go around their town and take the already hung shoes off of the telephone line because it simply made their neighborhood look trashy. They believed that people only do it because they see it being done so it looks fun or there’s a specific meaning behind it that someone made up. One man stated that he threw his shoes 18 years ago and it’s the simple fact that you have “proven to yourself that you exist” so we don’t completely disappear from communal memory. They compare this to graffiti, we leave something in the community to be remembered by others, to prove ourselves or just simply be known. At the end of the video, it states that its like a “black hole”, there is no real definition for the reason for these shoes hanging on telephone lines and we cant make a general assumption because the meaning of this is different for every specific person.

         According to Patricia Aufderheide, documentary films are based off of real life stories and the truth. I believe that this documentary I chose portrayed this exactly, it interviewed a variety of different people that expressed their life stories and their own personal views. In the reading, documentaries were seen as more of a serious approach to factual information that we can ultimately learn from. This documentary film acted as an educator that provided us with knowledge from many different cultures, states and age groups. This documentary sells us different idea brought about that we had the option in believing or not but it gave us the ideas that they researched to provide us with as much information as it could. I believe that The Mystery of Flying Kicks was a very good representation of a documentary film and fulfilled all of the elements it required.