When The Game Stands Tall (An analyzation of When The Game Stands Tall poetics) When The Game Stands Tall is the latest football movie. The movie is based on a true story about a high school in Concord California called De La Salle that still has the longest high school football winning streak in history. By the end of their 2003 season De La Salle had one hundred fifty one wins and zero losses. This movie is about how the team picked themselves back up after losing to a team who “haven’t slowed much since.” (Maxpreps, Stephens). This movie shows Aristotle's poetics by having a strong protagonist, hamartia, and using catharsis well. In this movie the protagonist is the whole 2004 De La Salle football team. Some people thought this football team could’ve kept winning forever. This team is the protagonist because you most identify the whole team instead of just one character. One could feel both fear and pity for this football team. One could feel pity because they lost their winning streak on their season opener to Bellevue High School. I felt …show more content…
mad at everything when I saw De La Salle’s loss at the movie theater. Fear especially worked into this movie by giving a sense of never wishing to be in that position. And according to Mitch Stephens they “didn't just pinch the 151-game streak, they ran all over the Spartans 39-20.” (Maxpreps, Stephens). The Protagonist really helps the poetics of this film. The fall of the protagonist or the hamartia is a really big factor in developing this films poetics.
The fall starts when The coach Bob Ladouceur almost dies, but is saved. The doctors tell him he can’t coach until April meaning he’ll miss all of spring training. This is a big setback for De La Salle. The murder of former player Terrence Kelly brings them even lower. The team hits rock bottom when they lose their winning streak on their game opener. This win by Bellevue was so impressive because “it more than doubled the previous high school win streak of 72 set by ” Hudson High School in Michigan (Maxpreps, Stephens). This fall of the protagonist helps the audience to identify them more. After this fall happened I was much more interested in seeing what the football team would do next. The fall of the protagonist or the Hamartia in this film really helps define Aristotle’s poetics about the team in this
film. Catharsis is used in this play and it helps identify Aristotle’s poetics that much more. Catharsis is identified as the use of fear and pity throughout the film. This film really uses both of those factors to their forte. The use of fear is used throughout the film by making the audience fear being in the position the team was in when they lost their streak. It made the audience seem like the players would be ashamed to see or talk to anybody after their loss. The use of pity is really exemplified in this film. As Bellevue “blew past De La Salle” I for one was feeling mad and sorry for the players on De La Salle’s team (Maxpreps, Stephens). Especially afterwards to see most of them crying in the locker room. The use of Catharsis really exemplifies Aristotle’s poetics throughout this particular football film. The story of Coach Laudeucer and his De La Salle team is a great one that won’t be forgotten soon. This film is a perfect example of using Aristotle’s poetics in film. De La Salle had what seemed like a perfect team going into a “nothing but ordinary cool night in Seattle” Washington on September 4, 2004 (Maxpreps, Stephens). That was when the Bellevue Wolverines blew past the De La Salle Spartans ending their twelve year winning streak. This film uses Aristotle’s poetics perfectly by having a strong protagonist, a good use of hamartia, and really bringing out the Catharsis in the story.
High school sports can have a tremendous effect on not only those who participate but the members of the community in which they participate. These effects can be positive, but they can also be negative. In the book Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger shows that they are often negative in communities where high school sports “keep the town alive” due to the social pressure. In this way, Friday Night Lights gives insight into the effects of high school football being the backbone of a community, revealing that the fate of the individual football players are inadvertently determined by the actions of the townspeople.
Students should read this book in a high school English classroom because it demonstrates how relationships can be difficult, but teamwork can help to solve many issues. Hutch realized that it would not help his team to continue fighting with Darryl and by being mad at his father. He was able to take those difficult relationships and form them into positive outcomes and achieve his goal. After winning the championship game, “Hutch made his way through his teammates, and up through the stands and did something he had not done in a very long time: Hutch hugged his father. And his father hugged him back” (Lupica 243). This proves to students that if they continue to work hard and focus on a goal, they can achieve it by being a team player on and off the field.
“His mother, Dale, felt the same way, for football had become as important to her as it had to her son. She went to every practice, and on Thursday nights she always invited a bunch of the players over for lasagna. She had sobbed after the loss to Lee just as hard as Jerrod had, for she feared the season’s ending every bit as much as he did” (Bissinger 249). Bissinger is astounded by the need for the parents to push their children into sports. Bissinger also analyzes the theme of downfall through several characters.
Bissinger creates empathy in the reader by narrating the lives of once Permian heros. Charlie Billingsley, a Permian football player, “was somewhere at the top” while he was playing. It was hard for the football town of Odessa to forget “how that son of a bitch played the game in the late sixties”(80). While in Odessa, Permian players receive praise unmatched by even professional football. This unmatchable praise becomes something Permian players like Billingsley become accustomed to, and when he “found out that...you were a lot more expendable in college(80). This lack of appreciation that is equivalent to the one that they have received their whole life makes them go from “a hero one day to a broken down nobody the next”(81). With the realization of this reality, Billingsley becomes one of the many to spend life as a wastrel, living in his memory of playing for the Permian Panthers. The reader becomes empathetic towards how the once likely to succeed Billingsley, becomes another Odessan wastrel due to the over emphasis and extreme praise the Odessan football team receives. Bissinger does not stop with a classic riches to rags story to spur the reader’s empathy but talks about the effect the Odessan attitude toward football has on the health of its players. Just like in many parts of the world, in Odessa, sports equates to manliness and manliness equates to not showing signs of pain. Philip, an eighth grade boy aspiring to one day be a Permian Panther is lauded by his stepfather as he “broke his arm during the first demonstrative series of a game ...[but] managed to set it back in” and continued playing for the rest of the game. It is noted that Philip’s arm “swelled considerably, to the point the forearm pads...had to be cut off”(43). By adding details such as these, Bissinger
In Friday Night Lights we see the theory of functionalism not only in the team, but the town and its dream of solidarity through winning the state championship. In a small town, such as Odessa, Texas, high school football helps to keep the town together by keeping it alive. On Friday nights, when the flood lights turn on inside the Permian stadium the strength of Odessa seems dependent on what will occur in that football stadium. Businesses shut down; families and community come together within the constraints of this stadium to cheer their team onto victory. Thus during football season, litt...
A message that really explains the movie in a sentence is every human is not perfect and each human has their own personal struggles that they will try to overcome. Boobie Miles thought he was perfect and he actually put a curse on himself and got injured right at the beginning.The primary theme in the film is the Underdogs don’t always win. We thought because they were underdogs they were going to win but they ended up losing. They still did put up a great fight. Some other themes are the impact of adults’ hopes and goals lived vicariously through their children. The most important theme of the novel involves the impact of adults’ hopes and goals lived vicariously through their children. The people of Odessa place an unmistaken spell on the shoulders of their sons to be champions every year so that the adults can take the triumph as their own. The result is that their children can never leave their triumphs and defeats of that short time behind. It follows them no matter what they make of their lives, and it is unfair that they must do so. The last important theme is that of misplaced priorities. The people of Odessa wouldn’t accept the fact that their obsession with football was impacting on the educational success of their children. Their need to have a winning season affected class time, homework, tests, and even whether school
Coach Herman Boone is the main African-American character in this film. He is a football coach who is brought in by the newly diversified T.C. Williams High School as a form of affirmative action. This character struggles throughout the movie with dealing with the prejudices of his players, of other football coaches, of parents, and even of the school board who hired him in order to try to create a winning football team. Another key black character is Julius Campbell. He plays a linebacker who ends up becoming best friends with a white linebacker on the team. He, too, struggles with prejudices from some of his teammates and people in the town because of the new desegregation of the team. The remaining black players on the T.C. Williams High School had very similar roles in the film. Petey Jones, Jerry Williams (quarterback), and Blue Stanton all are shown facing racial inequality by players, citizens, and even other football coaches. The attitudes of ...
The movie I decided to analyze was Remember the Titans. I examined the dilemmas and ethical choices that were displayed throughout the story. In the early 1970s, two schools in Alexandria Virginia integrate forming T.C. Williams High School. The Caucasian head coach of the Titans is replaced by an African American coach (Denzel Washington) from North Carolina, which causes a fury among white parents and students. Tensions arise quickly among the players and throughout the community when players of different races are forced together on the same football team. Coach Boone is a great example of a leader. He knows he faces a tough year of teaching his hated team. But, instead of listening to the hating town or administrators, Boone pushes his team to their limits and forces good relationships between players, regardless of race. His vision for the team involves getting the players concerned in what the team needs to become, and not what it is supposed to be; a waste. Boone is a convincing leader with a brutal, boot camp approach to coaching. He believes in making the players re-build themselves as a team. When Boone says, You will wear a jacket, shirt, and tie. If you don't have one buy one, can't afford one then borrow one from your old man, if you don't have an old man, then find a drunk, trade him for his. It showed that he was a handy Craftsman and wanted done what he wanted done no matter what it took.During training camp, Boone pairs black players with white players and instructs them to learn about each other. This idea is met with a lot of fighting, but black linebacker Julius Campbell and stubborn white All-American Gerry Bertier. It was difficult for the players to cope with the fact they had to play with and compete with ...
Abstract: High school football in the state of Texas has become out of control. The sport is no longer played for the sake of the school but rather has become a Friday night ritual to these small towns in Texas. The players are no longer just high school kids inter acting in school sports but have now become heroes to these small town communities. Communities simply no longer support their local high school team but rally in pride of their hometown rivalry against another team. School administrators and coaches no longer are teachers and mentors for the kids but are the equivalent to what in professional football are team owners and "real coaches". Parents have become agents and sacrifice their jobs and homes so that their child may play for the right team. Finally the fans, the fans have lost the sense that it is just a high school sport and changed the game to a level of professional sports. I plan to prove and show that for all these reasons Texas high school football has become out of control. It is no longer the game that it was originally meant to be.
This movie is based on changing the lives of Mexican Americans by making a stand and challenging the authority. Even when the cops were against them the whole time and even with the brutal beatings they received within one of the walk out, they held on. They stuck to their guns and they proved their point. The main character was threatened by the school administrators, she was told if she went through with the walkout she would be expelled. While they wanted everyone who was going to graduate to simply look the other way, the students risked it all and gave it their all to make their voices
There is a scene in this movie where the coach takes the team on a long run in the middle of the night. They end up at the break of dawn at a cemetery. The coach tells the young men of the battle that was fought on that ground. He told of the blood shed on those grounds that turned the whole area red. This can help many people that want to make a difference in this world. They had to stand up for their new knowledge to people that they love and trust.
Facing the Giants (2006) merges both football and faith into an inspirational Christian film. Directed by and starring Alex Kendrick as Grant Taylor, this movie about a high school football team asks viewers, “Do you bring your best every day?” Facing the Giants is a movie that reminds its viewers, “Never Give Up, Never Back Down, Never Lose Faith.”
In sports a team will do whatever it takes to win. When teams do something different it can create controversy. That is what happens in Football Champ. Troy is a twelve year old boy. He is a football genius. When a team lines up to run a play on offense, Troy can predict the play that is going to be run. He gets hired by the Atlanta Falcons to help their defense. This book is about what happens when the league discovers Troy. In this journal I will be visualizing the scenes from Troy’s junior football team, evaluating the Falcons use of Troy and they way that the National Football League reacts, and making a prediction about Troy’s future.
Many movies out there are based on a lot of things such as true stories. Some are about the paranormal, history, or even sports. Sports bring people together the most because they are almost always about overcoming a greater force. The film that I am writing about is one that is very good and touches the heart of many. When the Game Stands Tall was directed by a Thomas Carter. The film is about a high school football team with the best winning streak in the history of sports, a 151 consecutive games and the team members had to face the challenges of defeat and death. The thing that hurt them the most was overcoming the mental challenges.
Basketball Game Beep. Beep. I am a snob. Beep. I am a snob.