The TV drama that has incredulously captured the hearts of viewers across the nation does not look anything else on television these days. Set in the small town of Dillon, this west Texas town in “Friday Night Lights” is the type of place where football is worshipped and often depicted as a religion, much like how the rest of the great state of Texas is portrayed by the general population. But with all due respect to God, it might even be more than that. Peter Berg created the television series in perfect harmony to the film Friday Night Lights, an adaptation of a novel itself, which he also directed. The results are anything but a worn-out storyline: this “adaptation of an adaption” is actually good, really good. Berg incorporates the same …show more content…
The series is in due course, a television drama. The show surpassed all media expectations and expanded their audience past the younger generation that would indulge in a “high school drama” and goes beyond the sports spectators. Friday Night Lights takes a small piece of humanity and creates an entire realm that despite all of its praise and glory, is confronted by many issues that today’s society can relate to without having to be part of a football team or even a sports …show more content…
Tim is a representation of most of the town’s worshipped members of the team in the past; they all seem to have sadly peaked in high school (unless recruited by college scouts, which is far-fetched but not impossible). The town of Dillon repeatedly lets the Panther players get away with a lot, all the while over-glorifying them and failing to instill proper discipline (which Coach Taylor is left to do), which evidently shapes the future of Riggins and football players like him. They are ultimately, tragically setting them up to peak as a Panther football player. He might be one of the show’s most troubled players, living at home with his older brother Billy (head of all their financial struggles), a dead beat father who’s nowhere to be seen, and has a beer in his hand so often it almost becomes comical. Despite all this, Tim Riggins is without a doubt, one of the most talented players on the team, as well as a heavy partier. He embraces this very well, but you can almost spot the discouragement in his eyes when he overlooks the crowds of people from his float in the town’s homecoming parade and stares at the older men with their fists in the air. With their salt and pepper hair, worn-out high school varsity jackets and championship rings, Tim knows he is destined to become another one of them, living
The Twilight Zone episode was similar to the story since it mainly followed the story’s plot and setting, and there were no added or missing characters. But, they were different in plenty of ways, for instance, how they opened the button early in the episode, but in the original story, Norma opened it (or broke it, rather) at the ending of the story. Another large difference between the Twilight Zone episode and the story was the ending. In the story, Arthur dies after pushing the button, and Norma receives $50,000 from Arthur’s life insurance, while in the Twilight Zone, Arthur does not die, and he and his wife gain $200,000 in cash in a briefcase given by Mr. Steward.
The media is a powerful tool and has the ability to influence and change one’s overall perspective of the world and the position they play in it. Although Television shows such as Friday Night Lights are seen as entertainment by consumers, its storyline contributes to the social construction of reality about class in the United States.
When Boone was appointed to the position of football coach at T.C. Williams High School, he became the visionary of success to the program. His vision for the team from the beginning was to win a state championship. As a leader one must be a visionary and have an ultimate goal that needs to be accomplished. Difficult situations continuously present themselves and need to be handled effectively in order to accomplish the leader’s vision, which often occurred during Boone’s journey with his team. Throughout the film, no matter what circumstances Boone encountered, he was able to stay focused on the goal of winning a championship which consequently allowed the team to
leadership style. When Boone first meets the Titan coaching staff, he knows that he is not
African-American players are often negatively affected due to the prevalence of racism in the town. Ivory Christian, for instance, is a born-again Christian with aspirations to be a famous evangelist, but he is unable to pursue his dream due to his commitment to the football team. Because of this, the townspeople have unrealistic expectations of him and assume that he will put all his time and energy into football. Furthermore, there is a greater pressure on him to succeed...
Bissinger tackled the many problems in the town, such as extreme pressure to perform, racism, and the relationship between parent and child. While Bissinger had several preconceived notions, he was ultimately proven wrong and through analysis of themes and incorporation of comparisons in the form of conceits he was able to develop his understanding of the town and accurately depict the events that transpired. When examining Friday Night Lights, the book’s themes are quite clear. Bissinger explores the impact of adults’ living vicariously through their children. He introduces the typical football player’s parents in the form of Dale McDougal, who lives and breathes to see her son, Jerrod, play football.
Imagine, if you will, a time that seemed innocent... almost too innocent. Imagine a nation under whose seemingly conformist and conservative surface dramatic social changes were brewing, changes as obvious as integration and as subtle as fast food. And imagine, if you will, a radical television show that scrutinized, criticized, and most importantly, publicized these changes, making the social turmoil of a nation apparent to its post-world war, self-contented middle-class citizens. But what if this television show was not as it appeared? What if it masqueraded as simple science fiction, and did not reveal its true agenda until viewers took a closer look? Let us examine how such a television program can become a defining force in the culture of a nation, a force that remains just as powerful almost forty-five years after it first appeared. Let us investigate the secrets of... The Twilight Zone.
The film Friday Night Lights, directed by Peter Berg explains a story about a small town in Odessa, Texas that is obsessed to their high school football team (Permian Panthers) to the point where it’s strange. Boobie Miles (Derek Luke) is an cocky, star tailback who tore his ACL in the first game of the season and everyone in the town just became hopeless cause their star isn’t playing for a long time. The townspeople have to now rely on the new coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton), to motivate the other team members to be able to respect, step up their game, and improve quickly. During this process, racism has made it harder to have a success and be happy and the team has to overcome them as a family.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2007) women’s labor force participation raised from 33.9% in 1950 to 57.5% in 1990. The TV shows Married with Children and Roseanne are similar and different in the way they portray that statistic through their gender roles. Married with Children shows the more traditional type of gender roles, while Roseanne shows gender roles that were not as common in past decades. Both shows exemplify gender roles that were common and rare compared to decades prior. The TV shows, Married with Children and Roseanne are similar and different because of the gender roles each television show displays.
The bunch of law-breaking teenagers from 70’s in Brooklyn were presented as a fearsomely resilient and incredulous who brings their own dose of happiness fever every Saturday night.
Moonlight is a motion picture with a tender, heartbreaking story of a young man's struggle to find himself, told across three chapters in his life as he experiences ecstasy, pain, and the beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality and dealing with his more difficult past. Moonlight is a touching journey of those moments, people and unknown forces that shape our lives and make us the way we are. A major theme of Moonlight is the black male identity and its interactions with sexual identity. The motion picture combines acceptance and love with pain and narrow-mindedness. In it’s simplicity, the movie is a chronicle of the childhood, adolescence and burgeoning adulthood of a young black man growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami.
Months before, a white football fan in a dusty little town watched #35 as he sprinted down the field; the fan did not really see some black kid, they saw a Mojo running back. Just like so many other fans, they cheer for the black and white jersey, not particularly caring about the color of the body it’s on. The fans saw #35 as the future of their much-exalted football team; the color of his skin seemed irrelevant. As long as he wore the jersey and performed every week like he should, they celebrated him as the Great Black Hope of the 1988 season. Now, injury has taken him from the game that he devoted his life to, and he is no longer #35. Instead, he is just another useless black kid who will never amount to anything in the rigid society that
Bissinger, H. G. Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1990. Print.
Americans have become addicted to gaining quick rewards of satisfaction through sports and action because they want to be entertained thoroughly without needing to ponder any hidden meaning so it doesn’t take away from the pure entertainment of the action. In his time, Bradbury was fearful of the way that the television’s empty shows were in invading every home in America. The culture in the novel demands for “everything (to be boiled) down to the rag, the snap ending” (Bradbury 52), leaving nothing for the viewer to ponder; they would rather enjoy themselves “a solid entertainment” (Bradbury 58). The same is true in today’s movies and shows, in which most must contain many action scenes in order to keep the viewer’s attention, and the meaning and symbols must be clearly spelled out for them. This is also why Bradbury includes sports as being the main focus of schools in his story, since th...
“A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory” argues that the application of film and literary genre theory do not fully translate when analyzing television, because of “the specific industry and audience practices unique to television, or for the mixture of fictional and nonfictional programming that constitutes the lineup on nearly every TV channel. 2” The goal of media genre studies, Mittell asserts, is to understand how media is arranged within the contexts of production and reception, and how media work to create our vision of the world.