title: Red Star Belgrade

text: In the 2006–07 UEFA Champions League qualifying rounds, Red Star was eliminated (3–1 on aggregate) by the same Milan side which ultimately won that year's competition. Furthermore, the campaign in Group F of the 2007–08 UEFA Cup was a large disappointment, especially given that the first game against Bayern Munich was a sensational last-minute loss (by a score of 2–3 in Belgrade). In those years, Red Star's teams featured the likes of Nikola Žigić, Boško Janković, Milan Biševac, Dušan Basta, Dejan Milovanović, Segundo Castillo, Ibrahima Gueye, Nenad Milijaš and Ognjen Koroman. After a six-year drought, Red Star won their 26th league title in 2013–14 season.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Despite Red Star's success on the pitch in 2013–14, the financial situation at the club has worsened, so much so that the club were banned from participating in the 2014–15 UEFA Champions League for which they qualified by winning the Serbian SuperLiga. The UEFA Club Financial Control Body found Red Star's debts to players, some of whom had not been paid for at least six months, staff and other clubs, totalled €1.86 million. The club board were also alleged to have hidden debts and falsified documents. This, on top of an earlier UEFA disciplinary measure in 2011, meant Red Star did not meet the necessary Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play criteria and, as such, should not have been granted a UEFA license by the Serbian FA. Rivals Partizan took Red Star's place in the UEFA Champions League second qualifying round.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: After ten years of waiting, Red Star qualified for the 2017–18 UEFA Europa League group stage. Red Star progressed through four qualifying rounds and reached the knockout phase of the tournament, becoming the first team in competition's history to reach the knockout phase after starting their season in the first qualifying round. Although Red Star played in the group stage of the first edition in which groups format was introduced in the European Cup, 1991–92 European Cup, the designation "Champions League" was only adopted a season later in which Yugoslav clubs were already banned from participating in. Thus, when Red Star eliminated Red Bull Salzburg in the 2018–19 UEFA Champions League play-off round, and qualified for the UEFA Champions League group stage, it meant that Red Star competed for the first time since the new format was introduced. Red Star became the first Serbian team to win a match in the UEFA Champions League when they defeated Liverpool.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: On 14 May 2019, the 1946 People's Republic of Serbia League title was officially recognized by the Serbian FA, meaning that Red Star's triumph in the 2018–19 Serbian SuperLiga was their 30th national championship. Red Star reached the UEFA Champions League group stage for the second successive season after eliminating Sūduva, HJK Helsinki, Copenhagen and Young Boys. On 5 November 2019, cable television channel Zvezda TV started airing.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: In the 2020–21 Serbian SuperLiga, Red Star set a world record for the number of points gained in a single season with 108 points.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Originally the red and white motif of Red Star was inherited from the expropriated SK Jugoslavija that wore red shirts and socks, with white shorts. Between 1945 and 1950, Red Star maintained this strip before adopting the now familiar red and white vertical striped shirts, with alternating white or red shorts and socks in 1950. The red and white stripes have become indivisible to Red Star's image, conferring the popular nickname "Crveno-beli", "the red and white's" in Serbian. The club continued to wear the initial pre-stripe kit throughout its existence, but has generally declined in usage. During the 1950s and 1960s, the club also alternated between blue trunks, a long white V-neck on a red shirt, and a red shirt with thin white horizontal lines.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Red Star have usually worn an all-white away kit, whilst also utilizing predominantly blue or red away or third kits, thereby incorporating the Serbian tricolour. The club crest is a red five-pointed star, white framed, on a red-white background. In addition, the whole crest is framed in gold. There are three golden stars on the top of the club emblem, symbolizing the 30 titles won.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Despite the club's overtly Communist name and imagery, Red Star Football Club has become a symbol in its own right. The ""petokraka"" from which the club's name derives has paradoxically become a symbol of the club itself and of Serbian nationalism, moving further away from its original association with the Partisans and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Due to Red Star's popularity and sporting success, the club and its crest have become synonymous with broader Serbian identity, and patriotism that echoes beyond the sporting landscape.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Red Star's home ground is the Rajko Mitić Stadium (since 21 December 2014), formerly known as Red Star Stadium. With a seated capacity of 53,000 it is the largest stadium in Serbia and in the former Yugoslavia. The stadium was opened in 1963, and in the course of time and due to the fact that stadium's former capacity was about 110,000, it got the unofficial moniker Marakana, after the large and famous Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Belgrade's sold-out Marakana garnered the reputation of being a very tough ground for visiting teams to play in. Some of the biggest football events have been held at this stadium, such as the European Cup final between Ajax and Juventus in 1973, UEFA European Championship final between West Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1976, and the first leg of the UEFA Cup final between Red Star and Borussia Mönchengladbach in 1979. During the mid-1990s, in order to meet UEFA demands for spectators comfort and security, standing places at the stadium were completely done away with and seats were installed on all four stands. In the years, since the stadium's capacity was gradually decreased, followed different stadium modernisations.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: In 2008, the club reconstructed the stadium's pitch, under-soil grass heaters, improved drainage systems were installed and new modern turf replaced the old surface. The training pitch, located next to the stadium, was also renovated by laying down synthetic turf and installing new lighting equipment. In 2011, the stadium received also a new modern LED scoreboard. Today, the stadium has a central lodge, named "5 Zvezdinih Zvezda" (English: 5 Stars of Red Star), which consist of five segments, each bears the name of one of Red Star's legendary players (Mitić, Šekularac, Džajić, Petrović, Stojković), two other VIP lounges and a special VIP gallery with over 450 seats. It has also a modern press box with a capacity of 344 seats including seven extra-comfortable seats, an extra media center, the Red Cafe and a restaurant. On the west stand of the stadium exist also an official Red Star shop along with a Delije shop. The playing field measures are 110 × 73 m, and is illuminated by 1,400 lux floodlights. According to the known German Web portal" "Stadionwelt"", Belgrade's ""Marakana"" is in the top 50 football stadiums in Europe. In 2012, American Bleacher Report ranked the Red Star Stadium, especially if it is sold out, as among the most intimidating stadiums in the world.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Some of the most notable home-grown players are Dragan Džajić, named the all-time Serbian best player (the choice of the Football Association of Serbia on the 50th anniversary of UEFA, known as the Golden Player), who reached third place at the election for the European Footballer of the Year in 1968, then Dragoslav Šekularac – a runner-up with Yugoslavia at 1960 European Nations' Cup, Vladimir Petrović – the fourth Star of Red Star, Vladimir Jugović – two times the European Cup winner (with Red Star and Juventus), as well as Dejan Stanković and Nemanja Vidić.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Further notable home-grown players include Vladica Popović, Ratomir Dujković, Stanislav Karasi, Slobodan Janković, Ognjen Petrović, Vladislav Bogićević, Dušan Nikolić, Zoran Filipović, Dušan Savić, Milan Janković, Boško and Milko Gjurovski, Stevan Stojanović, Vladan Lukić, Zvonko Milojević, Zoran Jovičić, Ivan Adžić, Nebojša Krupniković, Goran Drulić, Nenad Lalatović, Marko Pantelić, Ognjen Koroman, Vladimir Dišljenković, Marko Perović, Dejan Milovanović, Dragan Mrđa, Boško Janković, Dušan Basta, Vujadin Savić, Slavoljub Srnić, Filip Stojković, Marko Grujić, Luka Jović and Strahinja Eraković.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Former Red Star and Real Madrid coaching legend Miljan Miljanić was also a member of Red Star's youth school.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Red Star is the most popular football club in Serbia. The club has fans and sympathisers throughout the whole country, but also throughout the regional and global Serbian diaspora, making the club a symbol of Serbdom. Fan groups are widespread throughout Serbia and former Yugoslav republics, and the club has the highest social media following amongst former Yugoslav football teams. Traditionally, Red Star has been represented as the people's club, whilst always attracting support from all social classes, their fan base is not associated with any specific social group. Red Star ultras Delije espouse patriotic, nationalist and right-wing sentiments.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: The organized supporters of Red Star are known as Delije, roughly translated in English as the "Heroes", "Braves", "Hardman" or "Studs". The term derives from the plural of the singular form ""Delija"", in Serbian. Delije support all branches of the Red Star multi-sport society. They are one of the most famous supporter groups in the world, renowned for their passion and fanaticism.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Hardcore supporters began to emerge during the 1980s, with official inauguration taking place in 1989. Previously, Red Star fans were scattered amongst several organized fan groups within the north terrace of the Rajko Mitić Stadium, colloquially known as ""Marakana"". Their style of support is greatly influenced by Italian and English football culture of the 1980s. It includes the use of widespread choreography, flares, flags, banners, and boisterous cheering. The word Delije is displayed (in Cyrillic) on the north terrace seats of Rajko Mitić Stadium as a sign of appreciation, and fidelity between the club and supporters. Subgroups of Delije exist outside of Belgrade, along with cities across Serbia and all other ex-Yugoslav republics. Despite Red Star's broad fan base, Delije have developed an infamous reputation for hooliganism amongst some segments of its ultras, especially during Belgrade derbies.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Due to historically warm Serbo-Hellenic relations, Red Star's Delije ultras have developed a strong kinship with Olympiacos ultras Gate 7. The "Orthodox Brothers" friendship is based on mutual Eastern Orthodox faith, a strong cultural marker amongst the Serbs and Greeks. Both clubs also share the same colours, and are from the national capitals. They are also the most decorated football teams in their respective countries. The brotherhood has evolved to include Spartak Moscow ultras Fratria, owing to strong Russophilia and a shared Slavic heritage.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Red Star's fiercest and long-standing city rival is FK Partizan, football section of the other large and popular multi-sports club in Serbia. The rivalry started immediately after the creation of the two clubs in 1945. Red Star was founded with close ties to the State Security Administration and Partizan as the football section of the Yugoslav People's Army. Since then, both clubs have been dominant in domestic football. The match is particularly noted for the passion of the Red Star's supporters, called "Delije", and Partizan's supporters, the "Grobari" (English: "Gravediggers" or "Undertakers"). The stands of both teams feature fireworks, coloured confetti, flags, rolls of paper, torches, smoke, drums, giant posters and choreographies, used to create visual grandeur and apply psychological pressure on the visiting teams, hence the slogan, "Welcome to Hellgrade". Some fans also sometimes use trumpets, similar to the supporters in South America. This creates for the region a typical and distinctive Balkan Brass Band atmosphere. Both sets of supporters sing passionate songs against their rivals, and the stadiums are known to bounce with the simultaneous jumping of the fans. The duel is regarded as one of the greatest football rivalries in the world and the matches between these rivals have been labeled as the Eternal derby. Given its widespread touch on the entirety of a major city, it is dubbed one of, along with the Old Firm, the Rome derby and the Istanbul derby, the most heated rivalries in European football. The biggest attendance for a Red Star – Partizan match was about 108,000 spectators at the Rajko Mitić Stadium.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Red Star has won 4 international and 64 domestic trophies, making it the most successful football club in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Red Star is the most successful club from Serbia (and former Yugoslavia) in all European competitions, and the only club from Eastern Europe that has won both the European Cup and the Intercontinental Cup. On 27 October 2017, FIFA officially recognized all winners of the Intercontinental Cup as club world champions, in equal status to the FIFA Club World Cup. The club competed in 60 European seasons, and the most notable results are:


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Dragan Džajić is Red Star's record appearance holder with 389 matches. The goalscoring record holder is Bora Kostić with 230 goals. Numerous Red Star players were in the Yugoslavian national team and Branko Stanković, Rajko Mitić, Vladimir Beara, Bora Kostić, Vladimir Durković, Dragoslav Šekularac, Miroslav Pavlović, Jovan Aćimović, Dragan Džajić, Vladimir Petrović, Dragan Stojković and Dejan Savićević are among them. Dragan Džajić played 85 matches for the Yugoslavian national football team, a national record.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Red Star holds records such as to be only the second foreign team that could beat Liverpool at Anfield (after Ferencváros in the 1967–68 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup), which was also the only defeat of Liverpool at home in the European Cup history in the whole 20th century (during the 1973–74 European Cup). Red Star was also the first team that could beat Bayern Munich on the Olympiastadion in its long UEFA competition history (during the 1990–91 European Cup).


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: They are the only Serbian (and ex-Yugoslav) club, and only the second team from Eastern Europe, to have won the European Cup, having done so in 1991, which was also the 100th UEFA competition final. Red Star is among the nine clubs which have ever won the European Cup unbeaten. They are also the only team from the Balkans and Southeast Europe to have won the Intercontinental Cup, also in 1991. The Romanian football player Miodrag Belodedici was the first ever Red Star player to have won the European Cup with two different teams, Steaua București and Red Star; curiously, both of the team's names mean "Star". Later, double winners were also Dejan Savićević (Red Star and Milan) and Vladimir Jugović (Red Star and Juventus).


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: On 2 September 2022, Red Star Belgrade announced that the squad number 11 will be retired from the 2023–24 season.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Since 2014, Red Star Belgrade have not issued the squad number 26 in the Serbian SuperLiga. It was retired in memory of Goran Gogić, who died on 3 July 2015, aged 29. Gogić had also been assigned with jersey 25 for the 2014–15 season, which he had worn in Jagodina previously. Since then some of players, like Marko Marinković and Milan Jevtović used to be registered for the UEFA competitions. Jevtović also made his debut for the club with 26 jersey in summer 2018, but later chose number 33 in the domestic competition.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Red Star has almost a 50-year-long tradition of giving the title of the "Star of [Red] Star" or "The Star's star" () to the players that had a major impact on the club's history and have made the name of the club famous around the globe. So far, five players and the entire 1991 team were officially given the title. They are:


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: The general sponsor of Serbia's most popular football club has, since 2010, been Gazprom Neft, the majority shareholder in leading Serbian company Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), and the most important foreign investor in the country. The club has won seven Serbian championship titles and three Serbian Cups in that time, as well as regularly competing in European championships. This cooperation, as well as supporting Gazprom Neft's brands, also involves collaborating in youth football together with FC Zenit Saint Petersburg, with the clubs exchanging youth players and holding friendly youth matches.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: The club's name in Serbian is also the title of the 2013 Italian novel "Crvena Zvezda" by Enrico Varrecchione. Written in the alternate history genre, utilizing elements of uchronia, its story is based on the premise of what if 9 November 1988 return leg of the European Cup second round clash between Red Star and AC Milan hadn't been ordered abandoned by German referee Dieter Pauly in the 65th minute due to thick fog that night in Belgrade. Red Star were leading 1–0 after a goal by Dejan Savićević and were also a man up due to Milan striker Pietro Paolo Virdis receiving a red card. After abandonment, UEFA cancelled the match and ordered it replayed in full the next day. This time it finished 1–1 and went to penalties (the first leg in Milan also ended 1–1) where Milan won and went through to the quarter-finals, eventually winning the European Cup — thus getting the coveted trophy again after twenty years, the club's first under its recently arrived owner, ambitious businessman Silvio Berlusconi. In the novel's parallel universe, Red Star won 9 November 1988 match in Belgrade and eliminated AC Milan, which thus never won its 1989 European Cup, meaning that Berlusconi's ultimate entry into Italian politics had a much weaker background push, which adversely affected his performance at the 1994 Italian general election. The novel also follows the fate of Red Star's fictional striker, loosely based on Savićević, Jovan Eldzic who scored the famous goal in the fog and later went on to transfer to AC Milan where he achieved more accolades, eventually taking Italian citizenship, remaining living in Italy upon retiring from football before entering politics and running for mayor of a small town in Piedmont's Alessandria province.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Billy Bragg's 1991 UK top thirty hit song "Sexuality" contains the lyric ""I had an uncle who once played for Red Star Belgrade."" When interviewed many years later Bragg was asked if this was true, to which he replied that his uncle actually played for Fulham but that did not fit the rhyme with played.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: Two non-related bands, one of them from Great Yarmouth, Great Britain, and the other one from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States, shared the name "Red Star Belgrade".


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: A football club in Ecuador, in the city of Cuenca, created in 1961, is inspired in Red Star Belgrade. It is named . Estrella Roja is the translation and the way Red Star is known in Spanish speaking countries. The club crest is even the same as the one Red Star had between 1995 and 2011.


title: Red Star Belgrade

text: A junior football team called 'Lenadoon Red Star' played in West Belfast, North of Ireland from 1972–1975 during the height of The Troubles. The team wrote to Red Star Belgrade in the early 1970s, asking if they could donate any kits to the young team, but Red Star Belgrade wrote back saying they couldn't afford to send over any kits.


title: Samson

text: Samson (; , "", "man of the sun") was the last of the judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Book of Judges (chapters 13 to 16) and one of the last leaders who "judged" Israel before the institution of the monarchy. He is sometimes considered as an Israelite version of the popular Near Eastern folk hero also embodied by the Sumerian Enkidu and the Greek Heracles.


title: Samson

text: The biblical account states that Samson was a Nazirite, and that he was given immense strength to aid him against his enemies and allow him to perform superhuman feats, including slaying a lion with his bare hands and massacring an entire army of Philistines using only the jawbone of a donkey. However, if Samson's long hair were cut, then his Nazirite vow would be violated and he would lose his strength.


title: Samson

text: Samson is betrayed by his lover Delilah, who, sent by the Philistines officials to entice him, orders a servant to cut his hair while he is sleeping and turns him over to his Philistine enemies, who gouge out his eyes and force him to grind grain in a mill at Gaza. While there, his hair begins to grow again. When the Philistines take Samson into their temple of Dagon, Samson asks to rest against one of the support pillars. After being granted permission, he prays to God and miraculously recovers his strength, allowing him to bring down the columns, collapsing the temple and killing himself as well as all of the Philistines. In some Jewish traditions, Samson is believed to have been buried in Zorah in Israel overlooking the Sorek valley.


title: Samson

text: Samson has been the subject of rabbinic, Christian and Islamic commentary, with some Christians viewing him as a type of Jesus, based on similarities between their lives. Notable depictions of Samson include John Milton's closet drama "Samson Agonistes" and Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 Hollywood film "Samson and Delilah". Samson also plays a major role in Western art and traditions.


title: Samson

text: According to the account in the Book of Judges, Samson lived during a time of repeated conflict between Israel and Philistia, when God was disciplining the Israelites by giving them "into the hand of the Philistines". Manoah was an Israelite from Zorah, descended from the Danites, and his wife had been unable to conceive. The Angel of the Lord appears to Manoah's wife and proclaims that the couple would soon have a son who would begin to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines.


title: Samson

text: The Angel of the Lord states that Manoah's wife was to abstain from all alcoholic drinks, unclean foods, and her promised child was not to shave or cut his hair. He was to be a Nazirite from birth. In ancient Israel, those wanting to be especially dedicated to God for a time could take a Nazirite vow which included abstaining from wine and spirits, not cutting hair or shaving, and other requirements. Manoah's wife believes the Angel of the Lord; her husband was not present, so he prays and asks God to send the messenger once again to teach them how to raise the boy who is going to be born.


title: Samson

text: After the Angel of the Lord returns, Manoah asks him his name, but he says, "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding." Manoah then prepares a sacrifice, but the Angel of the Lord will only allow it to be for God. He touches it with his staff, miraculously engulfing it in flames, and then ascends into the sky in the fire. This is such dramatic evidence of the nature of the Messenger that Manoah fears for his life, since it was said that no one could live after seeing God. However, his wife convinces him that, if God planned to slay them, he would never have revealed such things to them. In due time, their son Samson is born, and he is raised according to the angel's instructions.


title: Samson

text: When he is a young adult, Samson leaves the hills of his people to see the cities of Philistia. He falls in love with a Philistine woman from Timnah, whom he decides to marry, ignoring the objections of his parents over the fact that she is not an Israelite. In the development of the narrative, the intended marriage is shown to be part of God's plan to strike at the Philistines.


title: Samson

text: According to the biblical account, Samson is repeatedly seized by the "Spirit of the Lord," who blesses him with immense strength. The first instance of this is seen when Samson is on his way to ask for the Philistine woman's hand in marriage, when he is attacked by a lion. He simply grabs it and rips it apart, as the spirit of God divinely empowers him. However, Samson keeps it a secret, not even mentioning the miracle to his parents. He arrives at the Philistine's house and becomes betrothed to her. He returns home, then comes back to Timnah some time later for the wedding. On his way, Samson sees that bees have nested in the carcass of the lion and made honey. He eats a handful of the honey and gives some to his parents.


title: Samson

text: At the wedding feast, Samson tells a riddle to his thirty groomsmen (all Philistines). If they can solve it, he will give them thirty pieces of fine linen and garments, but if they cannot they must give him thirty pieces of fine linen and garments. The riddle is a veiled account of two encounters with the lion, at which only he was present:


title: Samson

text: The Philistines are infuriated by the riddle. The thirty groomsmen tell Samson's new wife that they will burn her and her father's household if she did not discover the answer to the riddle and tell it to them. At the urgent and tearful imploring of his bride, Samson gives her the solution, and she passes it on to the thirty groomsmen.


title: Samson

text: Samson then travels to Ashkelon (a distance of roughly 30 miles) where he slays thirty Philistines for their garments; he then returns and gives those garments to his thirty groomsmen. In a rage, Samson returns to his father's house. The family of his would-have-been bride instead give her to one of the groomsmen as wife. Some time later, Samson returns to Timnah to visit his wife, unaware that she is now married to one of his former groomsmen. But her father refuses to allow Samson to see her, offering to give Samson a younger sister instead.


title: Samson

text: Samson goes out, gathers 300 foxes, and ties them together in pairs by their tails. He then attaches a burning torch to each pair of foxes' tails and turns them loose in the grain fields and olive groves of the Philistines. The Philistines learn why Samson burned their crops and burn Samson's wife and father-in-law to death in retribution.


title: Samson

text: In revenge, Samson slaughters many more Philistines, saying, "I have done to them what they did to me." Samson then takes refuge in a cave in the rock of Etam. An army of Philistines go to the Tribe of Judah and demand that 3,000 men of Judah deliver them Samson. With Samson's consent, given on the condition that the Judahites would not kill him themselves, they tie him with two new ropes and are about to hand him over to the Philistines when he breaks free of the ropes. Using the jawbone of a donkey, he slays 1,000 Philistines.


title: Samson

text: Later, Samson travels to Gaza, where he sees a harlot and visits her. His enemies wait at the gate of the city to ambush him, but he tears the gate from its very hinges and frame and carries it to "the hill that is in front of Hebron".


title: Samson

text: He then falls in love with Delilah in the valley of Sorek. The Philistines approach Delilah and induce her with 1,100 silver coins to find the secret of Samson's strength so that they can capture their enemy, but Samson refuses to reveal the secret and teases her, telling her that he will lose his strength if he is bound with fresh bowstrings. She does so while he sleeps, but when he wakes up he snaps the strings. She persists, and he tells her that he can be bound with new ropes. She ties him up with new ropes while he sleeps, and he snaps them, too. She asks again, and he says that he can be bound if his locks are woven into a weaver's loom. She weaves them into a loom, but he simply destroys the entire loom and carries it off when he wakes.


title: Samson

text: Delilah, however, persists and Samson finally capitulates and tells Delilah that God supplies his power because of his consecration to God as a Nazirite, symbolized by the fact that a razor has never touched his head, and that if his hair is cut off he will lose his strength. Delilah then woos him to sleep "in her lap" and calls for a servant to cut his hair. Samson loses his strength and he is captured by the Philistines, who blind him by gouging out his eyes. They then take him to Gaza, imprison him, and put him to work turning a large millstone and grinding grain.


title: Samson

text: One day, the Philistine leaders assemble in a temple for a religious sacrifice to Dagon, one of their most important deities, for having delivered Samson into their hands. They summon Samson so that people can watch him perform for them. The temple is so crowded that people are even climbing onto the roof to watchand all the rulers of the entire government of Philistia have gathered there too, some 3,000 people in all. Samson is led into the temple, and he asks his captors to let him lean against the supporting pillars to rest. However, while in prison his hair had begun to grow again. He prays for strength and God gives him strength to break the pillars, causing the temple to collapse, killing him and the people inside.


title: Samson

text: After his death, Samson's family recovered his body from the rubble and buried him near the tomb of his father Manoah. A tomb structure which some attribute to Samson and his father stands on the top of the mountain in Tel Tzora. At the conclusion of Judges 16, it is said that Samson had "judged" Israel for twenty years.


title: Samson

text: Rabbinic literature identifies Samson with Bedan, a Judge mentioned by Samuel in his farewell address () among the Judges who delivered Israel from their enemies. However, the name "Bedan" is not found in the Book of Judges. The name "Samson" is derived from the Hebrew word "šemeš", which means "sun", so that Samson bore the name of God, who is called "a sun and shield" in ; and as God protected Israel, so did Samson watch over it in his generation, judging the people even as did God. Samson's strength was divinely derived (Talmud, Tractate Sotah 10a).


title: Samson

text: Jewish legend records that Samson's shoulders were sixty cubits broad. Many Talmudic commentaries, however, explain that this is not to be taken literally, for a person that size could not live normally in society; rather, it means that he had the ability to carry a burden 60 cubits wide (approximately 30 meters) on his shoulders. He was lame in both feet but, when the spirit of God came upon him, he could step with one stride from Zorah to Eshtaol, while the hairs of his head arose and clashed against one another so that they could be heard for a like distance. Samson was said to be so strong that he could uplift two mountains and rub them together like two clods of earth, yet his superhuman strength, like Goliath's, brought woe upon its possessor.


title: Samson

text: In licentiousness, he is compared with Amnon and Zimri, both of whom were punished for their sins. Samson's eyes were put out because he had "followed them" too often. It is said that, in the twenty years during which Samson judged Israel, he never required the least service from an Israelite, and he piously refrained from taking the name of God in vain. Therefore, as soon as he told Delilah that he was a Nazarite of God, she immediately knew that he had spoken the truth. When he pulled down the temple of Dagon and killed himself and the Philistines, the structure fell backward so that he was not crushed, his family being thus enabled to find his body and to bury it in the tomb of his father.


title: Samson

text: In the Talmudic period, some seem to have denied that Samson was a historical figure, regarding him instead as a purely mythological personage. This was viewed as heretical by the rabbis of the Talmud, and they attempted to refute this. They named Hazzelelponi as his mother in Numbers Rabbah Naso 10 and in Bava Batra 91a and stated that he had a sister named "Nishyan" or "Nashyan".


title: Samson

text: Samson's story has also garnered commentary from a Christian perspective; the Epistle to the Hebrews praises him for his faith. Ambrose, following the portrayal of Josephus and Pseudo-Philo, represents Delilah as a Philistine prostitute, and declares that "men should avoid marriage with those outside the faith, lest, instead of love of one's spouse, there be treachery." Caesarius of Arles interpreted Samson's death as prefiguring the crucifixion of Jesus, remarking: "Notice here an image of the cross. Samson extends his hands spread out to the two columns as to the two beams of the cross." He also equates Delilah with Satan, who tempted Christ.


title: Samson

text: Following this trend, more recent Christian commentators have viewed Samson as a type of Jesus Christ, based on similarities between Samson's story and the life of Jesus in the New Testament. Samson's and Jesus' births were both foretold by angels, who predicted that they would save their people. Samson was born to a barren woman, and Jesus was born of a virgin. Samson defeated a lion; Jesus defeated Satan, whom the First Epistle of Peter describes as a "roaring lion looking for someone to devour". Samson's betrayal by Delilah has also been compared to Jesus' betrayal by Judas Iscariot; both Delilah and Judas were paid in pieces of silver for their respective deeds. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer notes in his "A Guide to Scripture History: The Old Testament" that Samson was "blinded, insulted [and] enslaved" prior to his death, and that Jesus was "blindfolded, insulted, and treated as a slave" prior to his crucifixion. Brewer also compares Samson's death among "the wicked" with Christ being crucified between two thieves.


title: Samson

text: Academics have interpreted Samson as a demigod (such as Heracles or Enkidu) enfolded into Jewish folklore, or as an archetypical folk hero.


title: Samson

text: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some comparative mythologists interpreted Samson as a euhemerized solar deity, arguing that Samson's name is derived from , meaning "Sun", and that his long hair might represent the Sun's rays. These solar theorists also pointed out that the legend of Samson is set within the general vicinity of Beth Shemesh, a village whose name means "Temple of the Sun". They argued that the name "Delilah" may have been a wordplay with the Hebrew word for night, "layla", which "consumes" the day. Although this hypothesis is still sometimes promoted in scholarly circles, it has generally fallen out of favor due to the superficiality of supporting evidence.


title: Samson

text: An interpretation far more popular among current scholars holds that Samson is a Hebrew variant of the same international Near Eastern folk hero which inspired the earlier Mesopotamian Enkidu and the later Greek Heracles (and, by extension, his Roman Hercules adaptation). Heracles and Samson both slew a lion bare-handed (the former killed the Nemean lion). Likewise, they were both believed to have once been extremely thirsty and drunk water which poured out from a rock, and to have torn down the gates of a city. They were both betrayed by a woman (Heracles by Deianira, Samson by Delilah), who led them to their respective dooms. Both heroes, champions of their respective peoples, die by their own hands: Heracles ends his life on a pyre; whereas Samson makes the Philistine temple collapse upon himself and his enemies. In this interpretation, the annunciation of Samson's birth to his mother is a censored account of divine conception. Samson also strongly resembles Shamgar, another hero mentioned in the Book of Judges, who, in , is described as having slain 600 Philistines with an ox-goad.


title: Samson

text: These views are disputed by traditional and conservative biblical scholars who consider Samson to be a literal historical figure and thus reject any connections to mythological heroes. The concept of Samson as a "solar hero" has been described as "an artificial ingenuity". Joan Comay, co-author of "Who's Who in the Bible: The Old Testament and the Apocrypha, The New Testament", believes that the biblical story of Samson is so specific concerning time and place that Samson was undoubtedly a real person who pitted his great strength against the oppressors of Israel. In contrast, James King West considers that the hostilities between the Philistines and Hebrews appear to be of a "purely personal and local sort". He also considers that Samson stories have, in contrast to much of Judges, an "almost total lack of a religious or moral tone". Conversely, Elon Gilad of "Haaretz" writes "some biblical stories are flat-out cautions against marrying foreign women, none more than the story of Samson". Gilad notes how Samson's parents disapprove of his desire to marry a Philistine woman and how Samson's relationship with Delilah leads to his demise. He contrasts this with what he sees as a more positive portrayal of intermarriage in the Book of Ruth.


title: Samson

text: Some academic writers have interpreted Samson as a suicide terrorist portrayed in a positive light by the text, and compared him to those responsible for the September 11 attacks.


title: Samson

text: In August 2012, archaeologists from Tel Aviv University announced the discovery of a circular stone seal, approximately in diameter, which was found on the floor of a house at Beth Shemesh and appears to depict a long-haired man slaying a lion. The seal is dated to the 12th century BCE. According to "Haaretz", "excavation directors Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of Tel Aviv University say they do not suggest that the human figure on the seal is the biblical Samson. Rather, the geographical proximity to the area where Samson lived, and the time period of the seal, show that a story was being told at the time of a hero who fought a lion, and that the story eventually found its way into the biblical text and onto the seal."


title: Samson

text: As an important biblical character, Samson has been referred to in popular culture and depicted in a vast array of films, artwork, and popular literature. Preserved Smith argued that John Milton's closet drama "Samson Agonistes" is an allegory for the downfall of the Puritans and the restoration of the English monarchy in which the blinded and imprisoned Samson represents Milton himself, the "Chosen People" represent the Puritans, and the Philistines represent the English Royalists. The play combines elements of ancient Greek tragedy and biblical narrative. Samson is portrayed as a hero, whose violent actions are mitigated by the righteous cause in whose name they are enacted. The play casts Delilah as an unrepentant, but sympathetic, deceiver and speaks approvingly of the subjugation of women.


title: Samson

text: In 1735, George Frideric Handel wrote the oratorio "Samson", with a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton, based on "Samson Agonistes". The oratorio is almost entirely set inside Samson's prison and Delilah only briefly appears in Part II. In 1877, Camille Saint-Saëns composed the opera "Samson and Delilah" with a libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire in which the entire story of Samson and Delilah is retold. In the libretto, Delilah is portrayed as a seductive "femme fatale", but the music played during her parts invokes sympathy for her.


title: Samson

text: The 1949 biblical drama "Samson and Delilah", directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in the titular roles, was widely praised by critics for its cinematography, lead performances, costumes, sets, and innovative special effects. It became the highest-grossing film of 1950, and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two. According to "Variety", the film portrays Samson as a stereotypical "handsome but dumb hulk of muscle".


title: Samson

text: Samson has been especially honored in Russian artwork because the Russians defeated the Swedes in the Battle of Poltava on the feast day of St. Sampson, whose name is homophonous with Samson's. The lion slain by Samson was interpreted to represent Sweden, as a result of the lion's placement on the Swedish coat of arms. In 1735, C. B. Rastrelli's bronze statue of Samson slaying the lion was placed in the center of the great cascade of the fountain at Peterhof Palace in Saint Petersburg.


title: Samson

text: Samson is the emblem of Lungau, Salzburg and parades in his honor are held annually in ten villages of the Lungau and two villages in the north-west Styria (Austria). During the parade, a young bachelor from the community carries a massive figure made of wood or aluminum said to represent Samson. The tradition, which was first documented in 1635, was entered into the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Austria in 2010. Samson is one of the giant figures at the "Ducasse" festivities, which take place at Ath, Belgium.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary, and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the nonstandard accent. Despite being widespread throughout the United States, AAVE should not be assumed to be the native dialect of all African Americans.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: As with most African-American English, African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the rural dialects of the Southern United States, and especially older Southern American English, due to historical connections of African Americans to the region.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Mainstream linguists maintain that the parallels between AAVE, West African languages, and English-based creole languages are real but minor, with African-American Vernacular English genealogically still falling under the English language, demonstrably tracing back to the diverse nonstandard dialects of early English settlers in the Southern United States. However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with African creole languages spoken around the world that it could have originated as its own English-based creole or semi-creole language, distinct from the English language, before undergoing a process of decreolization.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) may be considered a dialect, ethnolect or sociolect. While it is clear that there is a strong historical relationship between AAVE and earlier Southern U.S. dialects, the origins of AAVE are still a matter of debate.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: The presiding theory among linguists is that AAVE has always been a dialect of English, meaning that it originated from earlier English dialects rather than from English-based creole languages that "decreolized" back into English. In the early 2000s, Shana Poplack provided corpus-based evidence—evidence from a body of writing—from isolated enclaves in Samaná and Nova Scotia peopled by descendants of migrations of early AAVE-speaking groups (see Samaná English) that suggests that the grammar of early AAVE was closer to that of contemporary British dialects than modern urban AAVE is to other current American dialects, suggesting that the modern language is a result of divergence from mainstream varieties, rather than the result of decreolization from a widespread American creole.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Linguist John McWhorter maintains that the contribution of West African languages to AAVE is minimal. In an interview on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation", McWhorter characterized AAVE as a "hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects..." According to McWhorter, virtually all linguists who have carefully studied the origins of AAVE "agree that the West African connection is quite minor."


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: However, a creole theory, less accepted among linguists, posits that AAVE arose from one or more creole languages used by African captives of the Atlantic slave trade, due to the captives speaking many different native languages and therefore needing a new way to communicate among themselves and with their captors. According to this theory, these captives first developed what are called pidgins: simplified mixtures of languages. Since pidgins form from close contact between speakers of different languages, the slave trade would have been exactly such a situation. Creolist John Dillard quotes, for example, slave ship captain William Smith describing the sheer diversity of mutually unintelligible languages just in The Gambia. By 1715, an African pidgin was reproduced in novels by Daniel Defoe, in particular, "The Life of Colonel Jacque". In 1721, Cotton Mather conducted the first attempt at recording the speech of slaves in his interviews regarding the practice of smallpox inoculation. By the time of the American Revolution, varieties among slave creoles were not quite mutually intelligible. Dillard quotes a recollection of "slave language" toward the latter part of the 18th century: "Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into da canoe, here he be, massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad; den me sit very still, until another great fish jump into de canoe; but me fall asleep, massa, and no wake 'til you come..." Not until the time of the American Civil War did the language of the slaves become familiar to a large number of educated Whites. The abolitionist papers before the war form a rich corpus of examples of plantation creole. In "Army Life in a Black Regiment" (1870), Thomas Wentworth Higginson detailed many features of his Black soldiers' language. Opponents of the creole theory suggest that such pidgins or creoles existed but simply died out without directly contributing to modern AAVE.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Many pronunciation features distinctly set AAVE apart from other forms of American English (particularly, General American). McWhorter argues that what truly unites all AAVE accents is a uniquely wide-ranging intonation pattern or "melody", which characterizes even the most "neutral" or light African-American accent. A handful of multisyllabic words in AAVE differ from General American in their stress placement so that, for example, "police", "guitar", and "Detroit" are pronounced with initial stress instead of ultimate stress. The following are phonological differences in AAVE vowel and consonant sounds.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: McWhorter discusses an accent continuum from "a 'deep' Black English through a 'light' Black English to standard English," saying the sounds on this continuum may vary from one African American speaker to the next or even in a single speaker from one situational context to the next. McWhorter regards the following as rarer features, characteristic only of a deep Black English but which speakers of light Black English may occasionally "dip into for humorous or emotive effect":


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Although AAVE does not necessarily have the simple past-tense marker of other English varieties (that is, the "-ed" of "work"ed""), it does have an optional tense system with at least four aspects of the past tense and two aspects of the future tense. The term "TMA marker" is used for forms that are an integral part of the AAL predicate phrase. The markers "gon", "done", "be", and "been" were defined as markers of future tense, completive aspect, habitual aspect, and durative aspect.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Syntactically, "I bought it" is grammatical, but "done" (always unstressed, pronounced as /dən/) is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: As phase auxiliary verbs, "been" and "done" must occur as the first auxiliary; when they occur as the second, they carry additional aspects:


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: The latter example shows one of the most distinctive features of AAVE: the use of "be" to indicate that performance of the verb is of a habitual nature. In most other American English dialects, this can only be expressed unambiguously by using adverbs such as "usually".


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: This aspect-marking form of "been" or BIN is stressed and semantically distinct from the unstressed form: "She BIN running" ('She has been running for a long time') and "She been running" ('She has been running'). This aspect has been given several names, including "perfect phase", "remote past", and "remote phase" (this article uses the third). As shown above, "been" places action in the distant past. However, when "been" is used with stative verbs or gerund forms, "been" shows that the action began in the distant past and that it is continuing now. suggests that a better translation when used with stative verbs is "for a long time". For instance, in response to "I like your new dress", one might hear "Oh, I been had this dress", meaning that the speaker has had the dress for a long time and that it isn't new.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: To see the difference between the simple past and the gerund when used with "been", consider the following expressions:


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: In addition to these, "come" (which may or may not be an auxiliary) may be used to indicate speaker indignation, such as in "Don't come acting like you don't know what happened and you started the whole thing" ('Don't try to act as if you don't know what happened, because you started the whole thing').


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: While AAVE shares these with Creole languages, use data from early recordings of African Nova Scotian English, Samaná English, and the recordings of former slaves to demonstrate that negation was inherited from nonstandard colonial English.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: AAVE shares most of its lexicon with other varieties of English, particularly that of informal and Southern dialects; for example, the relatively recent use of "y'all". As statistically shown by Algeo (1991: 3-14), the main sources for new words are combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating. However, it has also been suggested that some of the vocabulary unique to AAVE has its origin in West African languages, but etymology is often difficult to trace, and without a trail of recorded usage, the suggestions below cannot be considered proven. Early AAVE and Gullah contributed a number of words of African origin to the American English mainstream, including "gumbo", "goober", "yam", and "banjo".


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Compounding in AAVE is a very common method in creating new vocabulary. The most common type of compounding is the noun-noun combination. There is also the adjective-noun combination which is the second most occurring combination found in AAE slang. AAE also combines adjectives with other adjectives, which are not as common, but are more common than in standard American English.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: AAVE has also contributed slang expressions such as "cool" and "hip". In many cases, the postulated etymologies are not recognized by linguists or the Oxford English Dictionary, such as "to dig", "jazz", "tote", and "bad-mouth", a calque from Mandinka. African American slang is formed by words and phrases that are regarded as informal. It involves combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating new words. African American slang possess all of the same lexical qualities and linguistic mechanisms as any other language. AAVE slang is more common in speech and vocabulary than it is in writing.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: AAVE also has words that either are not part of most other American English dialects or have strikingly different meanings. For example, there are several words in AAVE referring to White people that are not part of mainstream American English; these include "gray" as an adjective for Whites (as in "gray dude"), possibly from the color of Confederate uniforms; and "paddy", an extension of the slang use for "Irish". "Red bone" is another example of this, usually referring to light skinned African Americans.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: "Ofay," which is pejorative, is another general term for a White person; it might derive from the Ibibio word "afia", which means "light-colored", from the Yoruba word "ofe", spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger. However, most dictionaries simply say its etymology is unknown.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: "Kitchen" refers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the nape of the neck, and "siditty" or "seddity" means "snobbish" or "bourgeois".


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: AAVE has also contributed many words and phrases to other varieties of English, including "chill out", "main squeeze", "soul", "funky", and "threads".


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Distinct phrases are widely used in African American slang. Reasons for it is its tendency for emotive expression and exaggeration. Phrases are very effective in translating the most complex meanings into visual images. Another reason for phrases is their rhythmic qualities, which are highly valued in African American slang. The most productive phrase patterns AAE slang is a combination of verbs and other parts of speech, including nouns which are accompanied by prepositions. This combination function is the result of "extended verb".


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: African-American Vernacular English has influenced the development of other dialects of English. The AAVE accent, New York accent, and Spanish-language accents have together yielded the sound of New York Latino English, some of whose speakers use an accent indistinguishable from an AAVE one. AAVE has also influenced certain Chicano accents and Liberian Settler English, directly derived from the AAVE of the original 16,000 African Americans who migrated to Liberia in the 1800s. In the United States, urban youth participating in hip-hop culture or marginalized as ethnic minorities are also well-studied in adopting African-American Vernacular English, or prominent elements of it: for example, Southeast-Asian Americans embracing hip-hop identities.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: The first studies on the African American English (AAE) took place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, to name a few. These studies concluded that the African American Language (AAL) was homogeneous, which means that AAE was spoken the same way everywhere around the country. Later, sociolinguists would realize that these cities lacked the influence of the rural south; the early studies had not considered the representation of the south of America, which caused the AAE studies to change. To make those changes, the newer studies used the diversity of the country and took into consideration the rural south.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: African-American Vernacular English began as mostly rural and Southern, yet today is mostly urban and nationally widespread, and its more recent urban features are now even diffusing into rural areas. Urban AAVE alone is intensifying with the grammatical features exemplified in these sentences: "He be the best" (intensified equative "be"), "She be done had her baby" (resultative "be done"), and "They come hollerin" (indignant "come"). On the other hand, rural AAVE alone shows certain features too, such as: "I was a-huntin" ("a"-prefixing); "It riz above us" (different irregular forms); and "I want for to eat it" ("for to" complement). Using the word "bees" even in place of "be" to mean "is" or "are" in standard English, as in the sentence "That's the way it bees" is also one of the rarest of all deep AAVE features today, and most middle-class AAVE speakers would recognize the verb "bees" as part of only a deep "Southern" or "country" speaker's vocabulary.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: There are at least 10 distinct regional accents in AAVE, and regional patterns of pronunciation and word choice appear on Twitter and other social media.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Regional variation in AAVE does not pattern with other regional variation in North American English, which broadly follows East-to-West migration patterns, but instead patterns with the population movements during the Great Migration, resulting in a broadly South-to-North pattern, albeit with founder effects in cities that already had existing African American populations at the beginning of the Great Migration.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: There is no vowel for which the geographic variation in AAVE patterns with that of White American English.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: New York City AAVE incorporates some local features of the New York accent, including its high vowel; meanwhile, conversely, Pittsburgh AAVE may merge this same vowel with the vowel, matching the cot-caught merger of White Pittsburgh accents, though AAVE accents traditionally do not have the cot-caught merger. Memphis, Atlanta, and Research Triangle AAVE incorporates the vowel raising and vowel lowering associated with White Southern accents. Memphis and St. Louis AAVE are developing, since the mid-twentieth century, an iconic merger of the vowels in and, making "there" sound like "thurr".


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Although the distinction between AAVE and General American dialects is clear to most English speakers, some characteristics, notably double negatives and the omission of certain auxiliaries (see below) such as the "has" in "has been" are also characteristic of many colloquial dialects of American English. There is near-uniformity of AAVE grammar, despite its vast geographic spread across the whole country. This may be due in part to relatively recent migrations of African Americans out of the American South (see Great Migration and Second Great Migration) as well as to long-term racial segregation that kept Black people living together in largely homogeneous communities.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Misconceptions about AAVE are, and have long been, common, and have stigmatized its use. One myth is that AAVE is grammatically "simple" or "sloppy". However, like all dialects, AAVE shows consistent internal logic and grammatical complexity, and is used naturally by a group of people to express thoughts and ideas. Prescriptively, attitudes about AAVE are often less positive; since AAVE deviates from the standard, its use is commonly misinterpreted as a sign of ignorance, laziness, or both. Perhaps because of this attitude (as well as similar attitudes among other Americans), most speakers of AAVE are bidialectal, being able to speak with more standard English features, and perhaps even a General American accent, as well as AAVE. Such linguistic adaptation in different environments is called code-switching—though argues that the situation is actually one of diglossia: each dialect, or code, is applied in different settings. Generally speaking, the degree of exclusive use of AAVE decreases with increasing socioeconomic status (although AAVE is still used by even well-educated African Americans).


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Another misconception is that AAVE is the native dialect (or even more inaccurately, a linguistic fad) employed by all African Americans. Wheeler (1999) warns that "AAVE should not be thought of as the language of Black people in America. Many African Americans neither speak it nor know much about it".


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Before the substantial research of the 1960s and 1970s—including William Labov's groundbreakingly thorough grammatical study, "Language in the Inner City"—there was doubt that the speech of African Americans had any exclusive features not found in varieties spoken by other groups; noted that distinctive features of African American speech were present in the speech of Southerners and argued that there were really no substantial vocabulary or grammatical differences between the speech of Black people and other English dialects.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: The United States courts are divided over how to admit statements of ambiguous tense made in AAVE under evidence. In "United States v. Arnold", the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that "he finna shoot me" was a statement made in the present tense, so it was admissible hearsay under the excited utterance exception; however, the dissent held that past or present tense could not be determined by the statement, so the statement should not have been admitted into evidence. Similarly, in "Louisiana v. Demesme", the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the defendant's statement "why don’t you give me a lawyer, dog" was too ambiguous to be considered a "Miranda" request for a lawyer.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: In US courts, an interpreter is only routinely available for speakers of "a language other than English". argue that a lack of familiarity with AAVE (and other minority dialects of English) on the part of jurors, stenographers, and others can lead to misunderstandings in court. They especially focus on the Trayvon Martin case and how the testimony of Rachel Jeantel was perceived as incomprehensible and not credible by the jury due to her dialect.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: A 2019 experimental study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, and Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity, found that court stenographers in Philadelphia regularly fail to transcribe AAVE accurately, with about 40 percent of sentences being inaccurate, and only 83% accuracy at the word level, despite court stenographers being certified at or above 95% accuracy. Their study suggests that there is evidence that court reporters may potentially introduce incorrect transcriptions into the official court record, with ramifications in cross-examination, jury deliberations, and appeals. A 2016 qualitative study by researchers at Stanford University also suggests that testimony in AAE — and other nonstandard varieties — is not necessarily always understood in a judicial setting.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Spirituals, blues, jazz, R&B, and most recently, hip-hop are all genres associated with African American music; as such, AAVE usually appears, through singing, speaking, or rapping, in these musical forms. Examples of morphosyntactic features of AAVE in genres other than hip-hop are given below:


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: More recently, AAVE has been used heavily in hip-hop to show "street cred". Examples of morphosyntactic AAVE features used by Black hip-hop artists are given below:


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Because hip-hop is so intimately related to the African American oral tradition, non-Black hip-hop artists also use certain features of AAVE; for example, in an MC battle, Eyedea said, "What that mean, yo?" displaying a lack of subject-verb inversion and also the "auxiliary "do"". However, they tend to avoid the term "nigga", even as a marker of solidarity. White hip-hop artists such as Eyedea can choose to accentuate their whiteness by hyper-articulating postvocalic "r" sounds (i.e. the retroflex approximant).


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: AAVE is also used by non-Black artists in genres other than hip-hop, if less frequently. For instance, in "Tonight, Tonight", Hot Chelle Rae uses the term "dime" to mean "an attractive woman". Jewel's "Sometimes It Be That Way" employs habitual "be" in the title to indicate habitual aspect. If they do not employ similar features of AAVE in their speech, then it can be argued that they are modeling their musical performance to evoke aspects of particular musical genres such as R&B or the blues (as British pop musicians of the 1960s and beyond did to evoke rock, pop, and the blues). Some research suggests that non-African American young adults learn AAVE vocabulary by listening to hip-hop music.


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: On Twitter, AAVE is used as a framework from which sentences and words are constructed, in order to accurately express oneself. Grammatical features and word pronunciations stemming from AAVE are preserved. Spellings based on AAVE have become increasingly common, to the point where it has become a normalized practice. Some examples include, "you" (you're), "they" (their/they're), "gon/gone" (going to), and "yo" (your).


title: African-American Vernacular English

text: Educators traditionally have attempted to eliminate AAVE usage through the public education system, perceiving the dialect as grammatically defective. In 1974, the teacher-led Conference on College Composition and Communication issued a position statement affirming students' rights to their own dialects and the validity of all dialects. Mainstream linguistics has long agreed with this view about dialects. In 1979, a judge ordered the Ann Arbor School District to find a way to identify AAVE speakers in the schools and to "use that knowledge in teaching such students how to read standard English." In 1996, Oakland Unified School District made a controversial resolution for AAVE, which was later called "Ebonics." The Oakland School board approved that Ebonics be recognized as a language independent from English (though this particular view is not endorsed by linguists), that teachers would participate in recognizing this language, and that it would be used in theory to support the transition from Ebonics to Standard American English in schools. This program lasted three years and then died off.


title: Sofia Hublitz

text: Sofia Hublitz (born June 1, 1999) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Charlotte Byrde in the Netflix crime drama series "Ozark" (2017–2022).


title: Sofia Hublitz

text: Hublitz was born in Richmond, Virginia, on June 1, 1999. Due to her mother's work as a screen art director, she became familiar with film production from an early age. The family moved to New York City in 2007.


title: Sofia Hublitz

text: Hublitz first appeared on TV as a contestant on "MasterChef Junior" in 2013. At one point, she was seen crying over a mistake she had made during one of the tasks, with Gordon Ramsay comforting her and assisting her in redoing the task. The following year, she landed her first acting role as Danielle Hoffman in two episodes of Louis C.K.'s television series "Louie", and a young Sylvia in an episode of "Horace and Pete" in 2016. From 2017 to 2022, she starred as Charlotte Byrde in the Netflix series "Ozark".


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: How to Train Your Dragon (abbreviated HTTYD) is an American media franchise from DreamWorks Animation and loosely based on the eponymous series of children's books by British author Cressida Cowell. It consists of three feature films: "How to Train Your Dragon" (2010), "How to Train Your Dragon 2" (2014) and "" (2019). The franchise also contains five short films: "Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon" (2010), "Book of Dragons" (2010), "Gift of the Night Fury" (2011), "Dawn of the Dragon Racers" (2014) and "" (2019).


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The television series based on the events of the first film, "DreamWorks Dragons", began airing on Cartoon Network in September 2012. The first and second seasons were titled "Dragons: Riders of Berk" and "Dragons: Defenders of Berk" respectively. After the two seasons on Cartoon Network, the series was given the new title "Dragons: Race to the Edge". The characters are older and it served as a prequel to the second film, running from June 2015 to February 2018. A second series, titled "", began airing on Netflix in 2019 and features a completely different cast and locale than the original series of films and TV shows, but is set in the same universe. A third series, "", began streaming on Hulu and Peacock in December 2021, with "Rescue Riders" transferring to Peacock beginning with the third season under the "Heroes of the Sky" subtitle. Unlike past entries in the franchise, "The Nine Realms" is set in the 21st century, specifically 1,300 years after the events of "The Hidden World".


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The franchise primarily follows the adventures of a young Viking named Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (voiced by Jay Baruchel), son of Stoick the Vast, leader of the Viking island of Berk. Although initially dismissed as a clumsy and underweight misfit, he soon becomes renowned as a courageous expert in dragons, alongside Toothless, a member of the rare Night Fury breed as his flying mount and his closest companion. Together with his friends, he manages the village's allied dragon population in defense of his home as leader of a flying corps of dragon riders. Upon becoming leaders of their kind, Hiccup and Toothless are forced to make choices that will truly ensure peace between people and dragons. Dean DeBlois, the director of the film trilogy, described its story as "Hiccup's coming of age", taking place across a span of five years between the first and second film, and a year between the second and third film.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The film series has been highly acclaimed, with each film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, in addition to the first film's nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Score.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: "How to Train Your Dragon", the first film in the series, was released on March 26, 2010. It was directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, and is inspired by the 2003 book of the same name by Cressida Cowell. The story takes place in a mythical Viking world where a young Viking teenager named Hiccup aspires to follow his tribe's tradition of becoming a dragon slayer. After finally capturing his first dragon, and with his chance of finally gaining the tribe's acceptance, he finds that he no longer has the desire to kill the dragon and instead befriends it. The film grossed nearly $500 million worldwide, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: A sequel, "How to Train Your Dragon 2", was confirmed on April 27, 2010. The film was written and directed by DeBlois, the co-director of the first film. Bonnie Arnold, the producer of the first film, also returned, with Sanders, who co-directed the first film, only exec-producing this time due to his involvement with "The Croods" and its sequel until the latter was delayed. The film was released on June 13, 2014. It was announced that the entire original voice cast – Baruchel, Butler, Ferguson, Ferrera, Hill, Mintz-Plasse, Miller and Wiig – would return for the sequel. New cast includes Kit Harington as Eret, Cate Blanchett as Valka, and Djimon Hounsou as Drago Bludvist. John Powell, the composer of the first film's score, returned for the second and third film.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: Set five years after the events of the original film, Hiccup and Toothless have successfully united dragons and Vikings. Now 20 years old, Hiccup is pressed to succeed his father as chieftain. When he discovers a group of dragon trappers led by Drago Bludvist, he goes on a quest to find Drago, while also coming across his long-lost mother Valka.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: In December 2010, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg confirmed that there would also be a third film in the series: ""How To Train Your Dragon" is at least three: maybe more, but we know there are at least three chapters to that story." DeBlois, the writer, and director of the second and the third film, said that "How to Train Your Dragon 2" is being intentionally designed as the second act of the trilogy: "There are certain characters and situations that come into play in the second film that will have to become much more crucial to the story by the third."


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The film's release date was changed several times. In September 2012, 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks Animation announced an initial release date of June 18, 2016, which was later changed to June 16, 2016. It was then moved to June 9, 2017, and later to May 18, 2018, taking over the release date of Warner Animation Group's "". On December 5, 2016, the release date was pushed back again to March 2, 2019. This was the first DreamWorks Animation film to be distributed by Universal Pictures, after NBCUniversal's acquisition of the company in 2016, and followed DreamWorks' departure from 20th Century Fox after 2017's "".


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The film was produced by Arnold, and exec-produced by DeBlois and Sanders. Baruchel, Butler, Blanchett, Ferguson, Ferrera, Hill, Mintz-Plasse, Harington and Wiig reprised their roles from previous films. F. Murray Abraham joined the cast as the film's main villain, Grimmel.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: Set one year after the events of the second film, Hiccup had become the new chieftain of Berk for dragons and Vikings. His late father told a younger Hiccup to seek out the haven of dragons, known as the "Hidden World". Upon discovering a female Fury dragon, Toothless initiates a new bond with her. The Night Fury killer, Grimmel the Grisly, sets out to find and kill Toothless, prompting Hiccup to choose between keeping the dragons or letting them all go.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: On October 12, 2010, it was announced that Cartoon Network had acquired worldwide broadcast rights to a weekly animated series based on the movie, which was scheduled to begin sometime in 2012. In January 2011, producer Tim Johnson confirmed that work had begun on the series and that, unlike the TV series spin-offs of the films "Madagascar", "Kung Fu Panda" and "Monsters vs. Aliens", "How To Train Your Dragon"'s series is much darker and deeper, like the movie. The show is the first DreamWorks Animation series that airs on Cartoon Network instead of Nickelodeon, unlike previous series such as "The Penguins of Madagascar", "" and "Monsters vs. Aliens".


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: Although it was announced that the series would be called "Dragons: The Series", TV promos shown in June 2012 revealed a new title – "Dragons: Riders of Berk". The series began airing in the third quarter of 2012. John Sanford, the director of seven episodes in the first season, confirmed that there would also be a second season. Jay Baruchel, who voiced Hiccup, also stars in the series, as well as America Ferrera (Astrid), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Fishlegs), and T. J. Miller (Tuffnut). The second season is accompanied with the new subtitle, "Defenders of Berk", replacing the previous "Riders of Berk" subtitle. Starting with the third season, the series moved to Netflix and is accompanied by the subtitle "Race to the Edge".


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: A preschool-oriented spin-off, "DreamWorks Dragons: Rescue Riders" was released on Netflix on September 27, 2019.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: On October 13, 2021, DreamWorks announced "DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms", set 1,300 years after "The Hidden World". The six-episode series was released on Peacock and Hulu on December 23, 2021. "The Nine Realms" stars Jeremy Shada, and is executive produced by showrunner John Tellegen, Chuck Austen and Henry Gilroy.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: "Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon" is a 16 minute sequel short film to the feature film "How to Train Your Dragon". The short was originally broadcast on television on October 14, 2010, on Cartoon Network, and released next day as a special feature on Blu-ray and double DVD edition of the original feature film.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The film follows Hiccup and his young fellows accompanying their mentor, Gobber, on a quest to kill the legendary Boneknapper Dragon. About half the film is done in traditional animation, showing Gobber's history and his encounters with the Boneknapper, and how he comes to look like he does now.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: "Book of Dragons" is an 18-minute short film, based on "How to Train Your Dragon", and was released on November 15, 2011, on DVD and Blu-ray, along with "Gift of the Night Fury". The short shows Hiccup, Astrid, Fishlegs, Toothless and Gobber telling the legend behind the Book of Dragons and revealing insider training secrets about new, never before seen dragons. The short shows a total of 14 different dragons, each separated into 7 classes: Stoker (Terrible Terror, Monstrous Nightmare), Boulder (Gronckle, Whispering Death), Fear (Hideous Zippleback, Snaptrapper), Sharp (Deadly Ladder, Timberjack), Tidal (Scauldron, Thunderdrum), Mystery (Changewing, Boneknapper) and Strike (Skrill, Night Fury).


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: "Light of the Night Fury" is a 22-minute How to Train Your Dragon Christmas special, directed by Tom Owens. It was released on November 15, 2011, on DVD and Blu-ray, along with "Book of Dragons".


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: Based on "How to Train Your Dragon", the short takes place in the middle of preparing for the Viking winter holiday, 'Snoggletog', when suddenly all the dragons inexplicably go on a mass migration, except for Toothless, so Hiccup gives him something to help.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: A 25-minute short film, titled "Dawn of the Dragon Racers", was released on November 11, 2014, on the DVD/Blu-ray/digital release of "How to Train Your Dragon 2". It was released on DVD separately on March 3, 2015, and it also includes "Book of Dragons" and "Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon". It was directed by John Sanford and Elaine Bogan, and it features the voices of Jay Baruchel and America Ferrera along with the cast from the television series. In the short, a hunt for a lost sheep turns into a competition between Hiccup and his friends for the first title of Dragon Racing Champion of Berk.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: "How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming" is a 22-minute holiday special which aired on NBC on December 3, 2019. It is set ten years after the dragons left the Vikings in "", but within the film's epilogue. Hiccup and Astrid's children believe dragons are dangerous monsters after finding Stoick's old journals, leading Hiccup and Astrid to bring back the Snoggletog Pageant in order to convince them otherwise. Meanwhile, Toothless and the Light Fury's three Night Light children come to New Berk looking for Hiccup, prompting their parents to go after them.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: "Snoggletog Log" is a 28-minute slow television short film inspired by "The Yule Log"; it is a single continuous 28-minute shot of a Christmas fireplace, with various gags involving the franchise's main characters, Viking and dragon alike, happening every so often. It has been available on Hulu since the 2019 holiday season.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: A series of comic books, titled "Dragons: Riders of Berk", were released by Titan Comics, starting with the first volume, "Dragon Down", on April 30, 2014. The comics were written by Simon Furman and drawn by Iwan Nazif. Other volumes are "Dangers of the Deep" (2014), "The Ice Castle" (2015), "The Stowaway" (2015), "The Legend of Ragnarok" (2015), and "Underworld" (2015). Two more comic books were published on February 24, 2016, titled "Dragons: Defenders of Berk". The following volumes are "The Endless Night" (2016) and "Snowmageddon" (2016).


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: Dark Horse Comics have released a series of graphic novels based on the franchise, starting with "How to Train Your Dragon: The Serpent's Heir" in 2016. The series was co-written by Dean DeBlois, writer and director of the film series, and Richard Hamilton, writer of "Dragons: Race to the Edge", with the production designer of "How to Train Your Dragon 2", Pierre-Olivier Vincent, providing cover artwork. The series took place between the events of second and third film, with the first novel picking up right after the conclusion of the second film.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: A Broadway-style production named "How To Train Your Dragon ON ICE" is currently on Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: "How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular" or "How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular" is an arena show adaptation of the feature film "How to Train Your Dragon". The show is being produced in partnership with Global Creatures, the company behind another arena show "Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular", and directed by Nigel Jamieson. The score was composed by John Powell and Jónsi from Sigur Rós. "Arena Spectacular" features 24 animatronic dragons – 10 different species in various sizes: Nadder, Gronckle, Monstrous Nightmare, Night Fury (Toothless), Red Death, Skrill, Stinger, Kite Dragon, Zippleback and Egg Biter. It also features villagers and Vikings, including Hiccup (Rarmian Newton/Riley Miner), Astrid (Sarah McCreanor/Gemma Nguyen), Stoick (Robert Morgan), and Gobber (Will Watkins).


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The show premiered as "How to Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular" on March 3, 2012, in Melbourne, Australia, and was followed by a New Zealand tour in April 2012. Renamed to "How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular", it toured United States and Canada between June 2012 and January 2013, when it was cancelled in favour of taking the show to China where it premiered in July 2014. It was also planned to come to England but was later scrapped due to an increase in market demand in China.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: In 2016, the German theme park Heide Park created a whole section of the park offering various rides based on the franchise called ""How to Train Your Dragon": The Island". It offers three different flying attractions and a boat ride where guests venture into the dark Dragon Caves to meet and help Hiccup, Toothless and their friends.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The Dubai Hollywood-inspired theme park Motiongate Dubai also features a section of the park based on the films and television series. The most prominent attraction is the hanging roller coaster named "Dragon Gliders". Riders join Hiccup, Toothless, Astrid, and Stormfly in flying through the caves of the Forbidden Island, where they come across an unexpected threat. Guests can also meet and greet with Hiccup, Toothless, and Astrid.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: To promote "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World", Universal Studios Florida briefly had a limited-time virtual reality experience where guests could experience riding on Toothless, while Universal Studios Hollywood allowed visitors to meet and greet with Toothless. In addition, it is rumored that a HTTYD land is in the works for Universal Orlando Resort's newest theme park, Epic Universe, including a Gerstlauer Sky Fly, an attraction similar to a MACK Rides "Splash Battle", and an over-water rollercoaster.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: A Proslide KrakenRACER mat racing slide called Dragon Racers opened at DreamWorks Water Park at American Dream in East Rutherford NJ on October 1, 2020, along with a Proslide and the world's tallest and longest hydromagnetic water coaster called Toothless Trickling Torpedo.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: Having earned over $1.6 billion worldwide, "How to Train Your Dragon" is the 13th highest-grossing animated franchise.


title: How to Train Your Dragon

text: The franchise was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Animated Feature, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film.


title: Space Jam

text: Space Jam is a 1996 American live-action/animated sports comedy film directed by Joe Pytka, with animation sequences directed by Bruce W. Smith and Tony Cervone, and written by Leo Benvenuti, Steve Rudnick, Timothy Harris, and Herschel Weingrod. The film stars basketball player Michael Jordan as a fictional version of himself; Wayne Knight and Theresa Randle appear in supporting roles, while Billy West, Dee Bradley Baker, Kath Soucie and Danny DeVito headline the voice cast. The film is a fictionalized account of the timeline between Jordan's initial retirement from the NBA in 1993 and his , during which he is enlisted by the "Looney Tunes" characters to aid them in a basketball match against visiting aliens who intend to enslave them as attractions for their amusement park.


title: Space Jam

text: "Space Jam" was the first film to be produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation and was released theatrically in the United States on November 15, 1996, by Warner Bros. Pictures under its Warner Bros. Family Entertainment label. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who were divided over its premise of combining Jordan and his profession with the "Looney Tunes" characters, while the technical achievements of its intertwining of live-action and animation were praised. It was a box office success, grossing over $250 million worldwide to become the highest-grossing basketball film of all time and the tenth-highest-grossing film of 1996.


title: Space Jam

text: A standalone sequel, "", was released in July 2021, with LeBron James in the lead role, and was unable to match the financial success of its predecessor.


title: Space Jam

text: In 1973, a young Michael Jordan tells his father, James, about his dreams of playing in the NBA. Twenty years later, following his father's death, Jordan announces his retirement from basketball and pursues a baseball career.


title: Space Jam

text: Meanwhile, in outer space, the amusement park Moron Mountain is in decline. Mr. Swackhammer, the park's proprietor, learns of the Looney Tunes from his minions, the Nerdlucks, and tasks them with abducting them to serve as attractions. Upon their arrival in the Looney Tunes' universe underground, the Nerdlucks hold them hostage before Bugs Bunny convinces them into allowing them to defend themselves. Noting the Nerdlucks' small stature, the Looney Tunes challenge them to a basketball game. After learning more of basketball, the Nerdlucks infiltrate various games, usurping the talents of Charles Barkley, Shawn Bradley, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, and Muggsy Bogues. The Nerdlucks use these talents to transform into gigantic, muscular creatures, whom Sylvester refers to as Monstars. The Looney Tunes realize that they need professional help.


title: Space Jam

text: The Looney Tunes abduct Jordan into their universe as he golfs with Bill Murray, Larry Bird, and Jordan's PA, Stan Podolak. Bugs explains their situation to Jordan, who is initially reluctant to help. However, Jordan agrees after a confrontation with the Monstars, and forms the Tune Squad with the Looney Tunes; they are joined by Lola Bunny, with whom Bugs is enamored. Initially unprepared, Jordan sends Bugs and Daffy Duck back to his house to obtain his basketball gear. Jordan's children aid them and agree to keep the game a secret, while Stan, who is searching for Jordan, notices Bugs and Daffy, follows them into their world, and joins the team. Meanwhile, the incapacity of the five NBA players results in national panic that culminates in the season's suspension. The players try to restore their skills through various methods, with no success.


title: Space Jam

text: The game between the Tune Squad and the Monstars commences, with Swackhammer arriving as a VIP. The Monstars dominate the first half, lowering the Tune Squad's morale. During halftime, Stan sneaks into the Monstars' locker room, learns how they obtained their talent, and informs the Tune Squad. Disguising a bottle of water as "secret stuff," Bugs and Jordan motivate the Tune Squad, who improve in the second half using their cartoon physics. During a timeout, Jordan raises the stakes with Swackhammer: if the Tune Squad wins, the Monstars must relinquish their stolen talent; if the Monstars win, Jordan will become a new Moron Mountain attraction. On Swackhammer's orders, the Monstars become increasingly violent, injuring most of the Tune Squad.


title: Space Jam

text: With ten seconds left in the game, the Tune Squad are down by one point and one player, with only Jordan, Bugs, Lola, and Daffy still able to play. Murray unexpectedly arrives and joins the team. In the final seconds, Jordan gains the ball with Murray's assistance but is pulled back by the Monstars. On Bugs' advice, Jordan uses cartoon physics to extend his arm and achieve a slam dunk, winning the match with a buzzer beater. After Swackhammer scolds the Monstars for their failure, Jordan helps them realize that they only served him because they were once smaller. They insert Swackhammer inside a missile that sends him to the Moon. After relinquishing their talent, the Nerdlucks join the Looney Tunes and return Jordan and Stan to Earth in their spaceship.


title: Space Jam

text: Jordan later returns the talent to the five players, whose remarks convince Jordan to return to the NBA.


title: Space Jam

text: NBA players Danny Ainge, Steve Kerr, Alonzo Mourning, Horace Grant, A. C. Green, Charles Oakley, Luc Longley, Cedric Ceballos, Derek Harper, Vlade Divac, Brian Shaw, Jeff Malone, Bill Wennington, Anthony Miller and Sharone Wright make cameo appearances in the film, as do coaches Del Harris and Paul Westphal and broadcasters Ahmad Rashad and Jim Rome. Dan Castellaneta and Patricia Heaton cameo as fans at a game between the New York Knicks and Phoenix Suns.


title: Space Jam

text: In 1992 and 1993, two Super Bowl Nike ads, "Hare Jordan" and "Aerospace Jordan" respectively, aired on television and featured Michael Jordan with the character Bugs Bunny. Wieden+Kennedy creative director Jim Riswold conceived the "Hare Jordan" campaign following the popularity of advertisements where Jordan played with Mars Blackmon (played by Spike Lee), a character from "She's Gotta Have It" (1986); he chose Bugs Bunny for his next campaign because the character was his "childhood hero". Directed by Joe Pytka, "Hare Jordan" took six months and a $1 million budget to make. It was hindered by reluctance from Warner Bros. to allow Nike to modernize Bugs' character; however, the commercial success of both ads "was a nice bit of research for Warner Bros. to understand that the Bugs character still had relevance and to tie it in with Michael", explained Pytka. This led to the company green-lighting a film featuring Jordan and Bugs, which came out of a plane meeting between a Nike executive and producer Ivan Reitman. Jordan was offered movie deals previously, but his manager, David Falk, turned them all down because he felt the basketball icon could only act as himself.


title: Space Jam

text: The project was closed when Jordan retired from basketball in 1993, only to be reopened in 1995 when Jordan returned as a basketball player. Falk pitched the idea to several major studios, without a story or script written. One of them was Warner Bros., which tried to create more "adult, sophisticated material" that deviated from the formula set by Disney in the animated film market. After Warner Bros. initially rejected Falk's pitch, he called the consumer products division leader, Dan Romanelli, reacting in surprise the studio would turn down a project having potential of high-selling merchandise.


title: Space Jam

text: Pytka was informed about the project only months before the start of principal photography; in addition to being hired as director, he also revised the script, including writing a scene where Jordan hits a home run after he returns to Earth that was filmed, but ultimately never used. Spike Lee was also interested in helping Pytka with the screenplay, but Warner Bros. blocked him from the project out of dissatisfaction from how he funded "Malcolm X" (1992).


title: Space Jam

text: According to Pytka, it was difficult to get most actors involved with "Space Jam" due to its odd premise: "I mean, they're going to work with an animated character and an athlete — are you serious? They just didn't want to do it." Before Wayne Knight was cast as Stan, his initial choices were Michael J. Fox and Chevy Chase, whom he had worked with on Doritos commercials; Warner Bros. rejected both actors. Jason Alexander also turned down the role. There were also attempts to replace Jordan's character with a more experienced actor, but "we couldn't find anyone better". The easiest actors to obtain were the NBA players, except for Gheorghe Mureșan. Bill Murray's appearance was present in the script from the beginning, but the filmmakers were unable to book him until filming started; there are rumors that Jordan begged Murray to be in the film.


title: Space Jam

text: Reitman, serious about the voice actors for the established "Looney Tunes" characters being far better than their original voice actor, Mel Blanc, and not just replications, was very involved in the voice casting. Joe Alaskey, one of Blanc's successors since the latter's death, was put by Reitman through a set of auditions, which lasted for months until Alaskey grew tired of auditioning and backed out from the project. Billy West learned of "Space Jam" through Reitman on "The Howard Stern Show", who was producing Stern's film, "Private Parts". Reitman was impressed by West's voice talent and asked him if he could audition for "Space Jam". West accepted, and after doing an audition, he landed the roles of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. The casting directors originally planned several voice cameos; however, that did not work out, and Danny DeVito ended up being the only celebrity voice actor in the film, which was for Mr. Swackhammer, who was originally planned to be played by Jack Palance. Swackhammer was also planned to be a live-action character until the very final days of development, with Dennis Hopper possibly playing the role due to his friendship with Pytka.


title: Space Jam

text: The Classic Animation faction of Warner Bros., which animated the commercials and was located in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, was originally planned to be the only company responsible for "Space Jam". However, after only a week, the animation work was so complicated that Warner Bros. contacted more studios, including reassigning the Feature Animation division in Glendale from working on "Quest for Camelot" (1998) to "Space Jam". Ten of Classic Animation's members, including the production's animation director Tony Cervone, were taken out of the faction to become involved all throughout production, and development artists were reassigned to animating jobs, including supervising animator Bruce Woodside, who had little faith in the project: "Like so many other animators, I adore the classic Warner Bros. characters, but I really had little hope that tying them to the massive anchor of an apparently doomed marketing scheme could actually give them a successful second life in features".


title: Space Jam

text: After Cervone was hired as animation director, Jerry Rees contacted Bruce W. Smith about being another animation director on the film; Rees was fired by the time Smith joined, and Pykta hired Smith to direct the animation sequences alongside Cervone. Before January 1996, when animation production was put into overdrive, none of the animators' drafts or concepts for how the film should look met with Reitman's approval; Bill Perkins joined that month as animation art director, and when first arriving at the Sherman Oaks division, "we only had around eight months to do about 52 minutes of animation" and "it was just kind of a little skeleton crew." Cervone highlighted Reitman's role as supervisor: "It started off as a string of gags with no structure, and he helped a lot with that." The drafting process involved the animators and artists using the original cartoons as references. Ultimately, they went with Bob Clampett's style of animation due to being wilder than Chuck Jones' style.


title: Space Jam

text: Production of "Space Jam" totaled around 19 months, with filming taking up ten of them; this was half the time of any other film of its kind according to Smith. The animation was done at a very


title: Space Jam

text: quick pace by more than 700 workers from 18 studios in London, Canada, California and Ohio, starting January 1996 by the recently joined producers Ron Tippe and Allison Abbate. In trying to track the huge amount work done at the 18 studios, Tippe hung stills of all the shots throughout the Feature Animation faction's hallways, with completed ones marked in red.