The film Remember the Titans dramatizes the racial tension that still existed in the United States post Civil Right movement; it tells the story of Coach Boone (Denzel Washington) who is hired to coach a football team in a school that was forced to integrate. The fact that Coach Boone had the opportunity to fix some of the problems allows the movie to make the argument that one single person can make a difference even if the problem is racial tensions. Racial tensions were arising every day between team members because their school, T.C. Williams, became integrated. This brought a lot of questions to mind: Are all men created equal? Is it possible for a single person to make an impact on multiple people’s lives? Possibility is an understatement …show more content…
if it is the right person; 2000’s Remember the Titans proves that one man can make not just a difference, but thee difference. Though there are struggles to show that blacks and whites can get along, Coach Boone plays a fantastic role model for the athletes’ to look up to, as well as someone that each one of us can learn from. Each individual can make a huge impact on society through their actions, attitude, and the way they react when put in certain situations. Coach Boone unifies his team through (1) his past experiences and credentials, (2) his relationships with the team, and (3) his inspirational outlook on the future.
These things embody the argument that even just one person can make a difference. His uncanny ability to connect with players on so many different fields gives him the ability to affect these athletes lives for the better. Coach Boone employs his influence as a black head football coach in the south, budding racial tensions in community and his team, and the unified goal to be successful, in order to bring his racially divided football team together with a physically palpable …show more content…
speech. Jerry Bruckheimer’s Remember the Titans takes place in the south during 1970’s, during which time people thought that racial problems, like the ones associated with this film, were unsolvable. On one particular occasion after a day of bad practice, multiple fights, and lots of racial tension, Coach Boone and his team went for a jog in the early hours of the morning through the forest to resolve the matter. Upon arrival, the players catch their breath and come to the realization that they are on the ground of Gettysburg where the Civil War was fought. In the speech he gives at Gettysburg he utilizes his strong personality and comportment, and he gives a speech that is known as one of the best speeches of sports history; he convinces the players that no matter what they are going through it isn’t as bad as what the soldiers went through, but, if they don’t change how they act everything the soldiers went through was futile. Coach Boone was the first black coach in this time period, making him someone that was able to unify his team through his past experiences and credentials. In spite of everything he went through he stayed humble. Protesters threw a brick through his window, constantly harassed him, and even threatened his life. In the midst of all his adversity he lead by example, he didn’t let these things bring down his spirit of unity, his desire to bring the team together no matter what was going on around them. The spirit of unity and the ability to lead wasn’t something that he learned when he moved to T.C. Williams, he had had success at other schools coaching and leading young athletes to achieve their dreams. In order to accomplish these athlete’s dreams he used the attributes of being calm, deep, genuine, which allowed them to trust him, and open up to him even after all of the “hard love” he had been showing them. Coach Boone wasn’t able to just walk in and take control, in the beginning of the movie, he had to build a name for himself because of racial differences. With time, he showed the players that he did not care about what color you wore on your skin, but he cared about the sport that brought them together. Connection: the ability help one help oneself. Coach Boone’s way through which he connected with the players gave him an opportunity to help them come together, and in essence help themselves. The team as a whole had its dreams and goals, but because of their differences they weren’t able to complete them. They needed a mediator. Boone was just that, he helped them feel successful, appreciative, and unique, while simultaneously bringing out the competitive side of the players in an attempt to have them focus more on the desire to win rather than the social issues at hand. Knowing that winning was only possible by putting aside the racial barriers and helping everyone cooperate as a team he lead the way for them to know how to do just that. Under his hand, everyone on the team is an equal, it doesn’t matter what skin tone, however, he showed them that they need to humble themselves and pay their respects to those people who died for the betterment of their nation. By so humbling themselves it made them more willing to cooperate, more capable of having an open mind and heart, in essence, able to become of a team of unique individuals. He gave them something they weren’t able to offer themselves: the opportunity to feel unique in a racially divided community. Young people love to feel special and Boone facilitates unity by offering the football players a chance to be a model society for the rest of the nation. Through his love and care he was able to change their outlook and their ability to come together. From his love and care to everything else Boone had done up to this point it set him up to give his great speech in Gettysburg. Because Boone has an inspirational outlook on the future, the actions that take place during the run to Gettysburg, as well as the speech at Gettysburg, this is enough to convince the players to come together.
The midnight setting at the cemetery for the Battle of Gettysburg gave Boone’s words an extraordinary power; he gave them a patriotic and an innate sense of responsibility to make sure that those soldiers that died died in order to unite people and bring them together. By informing the team of the historical background and the importance of the events that took place there he has power behind his words, and his slow and deliberate tone allots them adequate time for total comprehension. But like all teachers do, he started with a question giving them an opportunity to become engaged as well as making it real for them. Without even saying anything, team unity is promoted by having them run together, as well as listen to the speech together. During his speech he emphasizes that exact point “I don’t care if you like each other or not. But you will respect each other. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe we’ll learn to play this game like men”. He was in the position to say these things to them at this point because of the authority he had developed up to this point, if he had tried to do this in the beginning it would not have gone how it did at this point. In his speech he borrowed credibility from Gettysburg, towards the end of the speech he told the boys to “take a lesson
from the dead” and realize that if they do not stop these actions of malice towards one another they would not be able to progress as a team. Coach Boone showed them what it meant to “play this game like men”. They come to realize that they wouldn’t be inconvenienced in the middle of the night if they had simply worked together. Team and viewers alike can feel the emotion Boone emits and have the desire to do whatever it takes to resolve the problem. Being in a position of authority puts Boone in a spot where he can influence every aspect of these young athletes lives. He is sufficiently able to convince his players to unite, and help them achieve the ultimate mark of brotherhood. Boone uses his past experiences, his connection with the team, and his dreams and goals to inspire the athlete’s future and in turn bring them together to form that brotherhood. All of the work that Boone put in comes full circle close to the end of the movie as your heart breaks when the white player Gary tells the nurse, after she said only family are allowed to visit him, talking about his black teammate Julius, “Alice, are you blind? Don't you see the family resemblance? That's my brother.” It is quite clear that everything that has been done up to this point worked, from the intensive training in an effort to humble the team to the team bonding time, it was all worth it. One man can influence people for the better. Each one of us can make a difference, but it all starts with that first small step.
Coach Tyrell is one of the major Antagonists in the movie Remember The Titans. Coach Tyrell would be considered and antagonists because he is against Coach Yoost. For example in the movie Coach Tyrell dislikes that Coach Yoost is okay with having a black coach on the team. Another example of Coach Tyrell being an antagonist is when he disagrees with Coach Boone about coach Yoost leaving the head coach job. He thinks that coach Yoost should stay as head coach. Coach Tyrell is against many of the protagonist like Coach Yoost and Coach Boone and for that reason would be considered a antagonist.
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...
leadership style. When Boone first meets the Titan coaching staff, he knows that he is not
Remember the Titans was a film based on the 1970s, a time of racial segregation. The Gettysburg Speech, given by Coach Boone, is an attempt to persuade his players to integrate regardless their racial differences. He brings the team to Gettysburg to deliver his speech, hoping to emphasize the point he is trying to make. Coach Boone explains that they too will be destroyed like the men of Gettysburg if they do not end this feud. Coach Boone was able to successfully unify his team despite their racial differences by effectively utilizing imagery, alliteration, and pausing throughout his speech.
The first personal traits that Coach Dale was forced to exhibit were his toughness and his assertiveness. On his first night in Hickory he met the men of town in the barbershop who were all willing to provide their experience and insight on the team and how to coach. Coach Dale had enough self confidence to know that none of these “insights” were going to help the Hickory team win basketball games and let them know they weren’t welcome by turning his back and walking out. Additionally, he was forced to demonstrate his toughness twice more on the first day of practice by telling the temporary coach, “Secondly, your days of coaching are over,” and then by standing up to the group of men after he dismissed Buddy from the team. These actions made no friends of the men; however, th...
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
This means standing up for what you believe in, and going with your gut. Coach Boone often stands up for his opinion against racism and eventually, the town stands up against racism. However, the most prominent example from the movie are the white football players standing up for their African American friends back at school. After a two week football practice camp in Pennsylvania, the African Americans and whites have blended, and they are all friends. But when they get back to school, nothing has changed; racism is still very much alive. But, the white football players do not turn their backs on their African American football friends, even if their school friends say to. Eventually, they turn the whole town around to see their point of view. As Coach Boone said in the locker room right before their championship game, “You’ve taught this city how to trust the soul of a man rather than the look of him,”. This shows being true to one’s self because they had now realized that racism was wrong, and by sticking up for their opinion, they are being to true to themselves and they convince the whole town. An aspect of character in "Remember the Titans" is being true to one’s self because it shows that they stick with their gut tells them what is right and were true to themselves about their feelings toward
Remember the Titans is a film based on the true story of Coach Herman Boone, who tries to integrate a racially divided team. Throughout training camp and the season, Boone and Yoast 's black and white players learn to accept each other, to work together, and that football knows no race. As they learn from each other, Boone and Yoast also learn from them and in turn, the whole town learns from the team, the Titans. Thus, they are prepared to pursue the State Championship and to deal with and some adversity that threatens to effect their season.
The Civil Rights Era impacted the realm of sports in a great and powerful way. Throughout the mid 1900s, many minority athletes emerged through all odds and began to integrate themselves in the white dominated athletic business. These athletes endured constant hardships in order to achieve their goals and dreams; facing much racism, segregation, and violence. Minorities across the country began to look up to these sportsmen and realized that anybody could attain greatness despite the social troubles of the time. Stories depicting the struggles of minority athletes soon arose and grew popular among different cultures. These true accounts passed from generation to generation, each admiring the courage and bravery of athletes and how important they became in obtaining an equal society. Producers and directors soon found a way to revolutionize the film industry by retelling the racial discrimination that minority athletes faced. Remember the Titans, The Perfect Game, 42, and The Express are all examples of how minority athletes overcame racial adversities in order to obtain the championship. These Hollywood movies contain many inaccuracies that draw away from the true impact minority athletes had during the Civil Right Era. Although these films do depict the racial components of the time, they do not depict the accurate occurrences of the stories they try to recreate.
In the movie "Remember the Titans" there are many lessons that every person should learn in their life. One of the most important lessons is that of racism. In this day and age some people believe that racism is over because there are no longer any slaves, some people believe that there is still racism but that it is ok. I believe that those people would benefit a great deal from seeing this movie. I know that there is still racism, I also know that it is not okay.
As students, studying battles such as this, we have the advantage of hindsight, knowing the outcome. Nonetheless, we can still learn valuable lessons from it. To do so, this analysis will explore some of the decisions of the leaders at Gettysburg, and how they were affected by the operational variables. This essay will scrutinize some of the leaders at Gettysburg, and the impact of their actions. The outcome of this analysis will show that what was true in 1863 is still true today.
Remember the Titans is a film from 2000 displaying a true story of a racially divided football team from the 1970s. The movie highlights the relationships of the black and white people, and how they learned to interact with each other in a time when this was not the way of life. It brings up a number of questions throughout, of what is right and what is wrong, and really challenges the characters, making it a very interesting movie to watch. I have seen this movie many times, and each time I feel like I get something new out of it. It is a movie that can be used as a teaching tool, it does a great job of interpreting not only what was happening in the United States of America at that time, but social psychology concepts through real life situations.
It is clear to us that Boone did in fact face a challenge that he overcame. He wanted to be accepted by the community by proving that he was a valued member of it, a valuable football coach. In order to do this he had to prove that he could coach The Titans through all of their games, this required team unity. He gained the respect and acceptance of the football players in order to encourage their unity. He knew that only through their unity could they succeed. It is not the mere challenge that Boone faced that gained merit; it was what he succeeded in doing that was the real important achievement, succeeding to prove to the community that they could indeed be united.
Whenever people discuss race relations today and the effect of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, they remember the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was and continues to be one of the most i...
The scholars expounds that Black athletes were commodities on the playing field to help win games and bring in revenue to their respected schools. However, the schools were just as eager and willing to leave their Black players behind and dishonoring the player as a part of the team. Therefore, not compromising the team’s winning and bring in profits for the school. Sadly, Black athletes at predominately White institutions (PWIs) who believed that they were bettering the live of themselves and their families members by going to college and playing collegiate sports to increase their post secondary careers. However, these athletes were only “show ponies” for their schools. Unfortunately, Black athletes had allegiance to their school; however, the school turned their backs on the athletes to protect the profit and notoriety of the school and the programs. Money and respect from White fans and spectators were more important to the PWIs than standing up for the respect of their Black players. Racial bigotry in sports was rampant and it was only going to get worse.