Remember the Titans

Remember the Titans

Remember the Titans is a cultivating cinematic masterpiece that delivers a powerful message towards racial discrimination in the 1970’s. The film does exceptionally well in terms of the Representation Test, scoring 12 points out of a possible 24. For a movie based on a football team, Remember the Titans scored surprisingly high for its representation of women in the film. One of the biggest characters in the film is Coach Yoast’s daughter Sheryl Yoast because of her abnormal love for football analytics. Coach Boone sees a lot of himself in Sheryl from her competitive drive and determination, so when Sheryl had the option to either play with dolls or watch game film with Coach Boone, football was the clear choice. Sheryl’s interactions with Coach Boone’s daughter Carol Boone is also the reason why the movie passes the Bechdel test. These two girls are polar opposites most notably because Carol doesn’t share the same passion for football as Sheryl does, which disables them from getting along as easily from the beginning. Undoubtedly it’s hard to incorporate women into a film like this because it’s centered around the football team, but it’s clear to see how important the coach's wife and daughter mean to them. There’s never a point where women in the movie are just seen as an object of sex appeal which is seldomly seen in a movie that is dominated by males.

The movie doesn’t necessarily follow racial stereotypes, it just shows the reality of the hardships that these African American families had to experience on an everyday basis. People outside of the football team would constantly make racial slurs at some of the players, but the non black teammates would always defend another teammate if it was occurring. The movie doesn’t represent openly bisexual characters, although Sunshine kisses another teammate but it’s never clear if he was openly gay. One of the most inspirational scenes from the movie that symbolizes the progression of discrimination within the team is towards the end of the movie when Gerry is in the hospital from his car accident and his best friend/teammate Julius comes to visit. Julius, who’s an African American, is approached by the nurse and says  "Only kin's allowed in here."  Gerry responds with "Alice.  Are you blind?  Can't you see the family resemblance?  He's my brother." One of the more controversial aspect of grading this movie was the category of people with disabilities. Gerry, although not the protagonist in the film, is still seen as a major character because he’s the captain as well as the heart and soul of the football team. His car accident left him paralyzed him from the waist down, but that didn’t stop him from perceiving his role that he owns on the team. I included him under this category because after his injury you were able to see the team mesh together as a true family which made them a lot stronger mentally.

I believe that the Representation Test isn’t a fair way to grade movies because every movie has different plotlines and characters that contribute its own individual significance to its respective film. If a movie doesn’t score well on the Representation Test just because its lack of diversity racially/sexually then that has zero correlation on whether it is a good film or not. There’s nothing about the test itself that I’d change, but in fact I wish that people’s perspectives would change regarding that if the movie doesn’t pass the test that it makes it a bad film. The test should strictly be a guide upon the multifariousness of the movie and how different diversifications are represented in the film.