Sports Pages #13: Friday Night Lights

Countless times in movies, hollywood and so many national depictions the significance of sport in African American culture has been so important.  Many times this depiction of the lives of African Americans displays their lives in ways that it seems that the only thing African Americans can do is sports.  In no way do I agree with the previous observation, however there are several real life stories like we saw in Hoop Dreams where young African American's only chance at a better life is to succeed in sports and receive scholarships.  In those cases where young African Americans use sports to get out of there rough home life and childhood, sports are incredibly important and play a significant role in their lives.  

In the film Friday Night Lights, the story follows the world of high school football in a small town, Odessa, Texas.  The film follows the high school football team through the entire season until the state championship game, which they lose (sorry for the spoiler if you haven't seen it).  The team's star running back who 'carries' the team, Booby Miles, tears his ACL in the first game of the season.  Booby then spends the rest of the movie trying to cope with his injury and trying to keep his numerous Division I scholarships.  This is very similar to the story we saw in Hoop Dreams with William Gates.  Just as William struggles with getting good grades in school to be able to get into college we see the same thing in a powerful scene in Friday Night Lights in which Booby breaks down in the car with his uncle and cries and repeats that all he wants to do is play football and the only thing he can do is play football. 

Personally, I don't think sports are ruining African Americans, in most cases I think sports create a vast amount of advantages just as they do to other athletes.  This idea of sports ruining African Americans is rooted in the idea of the lack of advantages they have in other aspects of life.  If we really want to change this idea and not make sports such a focus maybe there should be more advocating for educational and real-world advantages to African Americans.  As far as this idea preserving race, I don't agree at all.  However, if we are going to acknowledge this and say maybe it is preserving race, then there are countless other things present in today's society that are preserving race as well.  Race is always going to be present, its not going away.  What can go away is choosing to judge, stereotype, deny, and overall let it affect the way we interact with people on a daily basis.  If we could act this way it wouldn't matter if race was preserved or not because at the end of the day disparities among races wouldn't be anything like they were fifty years ago, or eventually the way they are today.  

Gendered Sports: Football Cops Commercial

This commercial aired about a year and a half ago for Directv that I think was exclusively aired on their on demand channels.  Personally, I think this commercial is hilarious and I was dying laughing so hard the first time I saw it.  Especially Peyton Manning's line at the end when he says "He knows what it means!"  Obviously, that it was the commercial is going for, a funny commercial with two professional quarterbacks that aren't known for their acting talents.  A deeper meaning behind this commercial shows gender roles and also the fame that the American society holds professional athlete to.  Although Eli Manning and Peyton Manning are playing fake cops there still is some resemblance to the way these two men represent and stand for the city they play in.  These men and especially professional athletes in general are more popular and famed than actual police officers that protect the city.  Furthermore, there are also no women athletes in these commercials, which shows the gross inequality of men over women athletes in media.  In almost every women sport played, especially in the US, women sports continue to stay in the shadows of male sports (Rodriguez).  The only time we are likely to see women in the media with commercials and advertisements come from sexualized ads where the females exposed their bodies for whatever the product is even if it has nothing to with a person's body.  On an obscure level this commercial with the women in distress being saved by the Mannings is sort of related to the way men's sports is viewed as the savior of sports within American society.  Women's sport is viewed as this lesser form of sport and not equal to the level of play within men's sports.  Therefore, American society reinforces gender roles by men being this being made for sport and physical activity while women are seen as mere sex symbolic rather than actual superior athletes.  This may be an extreme classification of of men and women's sports, however at one time in history society was truly viewed this way.  Today I think women have made great strides in being viewed as equals and I think things are continually getting better.