Themes and message

Gender discrimination 

One of the main themes of the film “Game” by Jeannie Donohoe is gender discrimination, as the film shows how AJ’s gender prevents her from joining the most prestigious and profitable basketball league. 

The first element of gender discrimination in the film is how the girls’ and boys’ teams are separated by gender, and the girls’ team clearly gets less attention than the boys’ team. This is generally the case in both school- and professional-level sports, which are typically separated into women’s and men’s leagues. Furthermore, as AJ points out (12:00-12:17), the WNBA is given much less attention and, therefore, female basketball players are not as famous or well-paid as male basketball players. 

AJ pretends to be male, which shows that she knows she will not be allowed on the team i...