Friday Night Lights Gender Roles

American football is among one of the most popular sports in the western culture. It is considered “‘normal’, healthy, and expected,” like with other sports (Cherney & Lindermann, 2014, p. 2). The television show Friday Night Lights uses the platform of football to show the “mythology of a rural U.S. heartland,” in a place known, “…for aggressive sport culture…” (Johnson, 2010, p. 61). The purpose of this paper is to analyze the episode, “Last Days of Summer,” from Friday Night Lights using the text from Kellner and Fiske. I assert from a critical cultural studies perspective that “Last Days of Summer,” normalizes gender roles through separation of parenthood into: motherhood and fatherhood, and how their interaction with their daughter furthers the ideological family dynamic. Through a textual
Motherhood in this episode is shown to be the downfall of the family. Julie’s interaction with her mother has changed in the show as she gets older and she is distancing herself to find out her identity (Fields & Johnson, 2013, p. 286; Thompson-Hayes, Gibson, Webb, Nelson, Smith & Walker, 2008, p. 154). Tami is seen as having a dysfunctional relationship with her daughter by not connecting with her even though they both live at home. Eric is seen as fixing this. Gender roles that are reinforced are the mother more focused on “domestic issues”, while the father is more focused on his career (Elasmar, Hasegawa & Brian, 1999, p. 23). The mother is punished for her traits while the father is not punished for working on his career. The mother’s role seems to hinder her relationship with her daughter while the father’s role seems to heal his relationship with his daughter. The father saves the family from the mother and does it by interacting with his daughter and community. Fatherhood saves the day and is considered stronger in keeping the family afloat financially and