Remember the Titans Essay
Remember the Titans Essay
Remember the Titans directed by Boaz Yakin is a film set in Alexandria, Virginia in 1971. At this time the first school was being integrated and neither race was happy about it. This film tackles the theme of overcoming racism and uses techniques such as camera angles, dialogue and music to evoke a strong emotional response from the audience.
In the beginning of the film, the white and black members of the team hate each other. Both sides have preconceived ideas about the other. The whites don’t want to “Play with any of those black animals” and the blacks don’t want to integrate either because they don’t trust “your people to be honest.” One scene where we seen this clearly is when Alan and Petey are forced to learn about each other at the football camp. They are sitting on opposite sides of the shot, facing each other like adversaries. Dividing them is a path running between them up towards a big traditional-style door to the centuries-old buildings of Gettysburg College. This path represents the tradition of racism in America between blacks and whites all the way back to slave-ownership times that divides Alan and Petey in present day, 1971. This camera shot is combined with dialogue which is impersonal, defensive and suspicious. It is more “interview style” than a conversation between team-mates and this illustrates how little they know or understand about each other’s background. For example, “What’s your daddy’s name? Wait. You do have a daddy, right?...He does have a job?” The camera shot and dialogue makes this scene very poignant. It makes the audience realise how big the gap is between the two races as they try to set their differences aside to form a successful, united football team. It makes us realise the full weight of the suspicion and defensiveness that sits between the black and white players and saddened by the white student’s preconceptions about black families.
One of the turning points of the film comes when
Remember the Titans directed by Boaz Yakin is a film set in Alexandria, Virginia in 1971. At this time the first school was being integrated and neither race was happy about it. This film tackles the theme of overcoming racism and uses techniques such as camera angles, dialogue and music to evoke a strong emotional response from the audience.
In the beginning of the film, the white and black members of the team hate each other. Both sides have preconceived ideas about the other. The whites don’t want to “Play with any of those black animals” and the blacks don’t want to integrate either because they don’t trust “your people to be honest.” One scene where we seen this clearly is when Alan and Petey are forced to learn about each other at the football camp. They are sitting on opposite sides of the shot, facing each other like adversaries. Dividing them is a path running between them up towards a big traditional-style door to the centuries-old buildings of Gettysburg College. This path represents the tradition of racism in America between blacks and whites all the way back to slave-ownership times that divides Alan and Petey in present day, 1971. This camera shot is combined with dialogue which is impersonal, defensive and suspicious. It is more “interview style” than a conversation between team-mates and this illustrates how little they know or understand about each other’s background. For example, “What’s your daddy’s name? Wait. You do have a daddy, right?...He does have a job?” The camera shot and dialogue makes this scene very poignant. It makes the audience realise how big the gap is between the two races as they try to set their differences aside to form a successful, united football team. It makes us realise the full weight of the suspicion and defensiveness that sits between the black and white players and saddened by the white student’s preconceptions about black families.
One of the turning points of the film comes when