Remember the Titans Essay

Remember the titans is a film based on a true story of a high school football team in Alexandria Virginia T.C Williams High School was on the verge of integrating and being one of the first schools to integrate in America. However a mass protest was being held against the integration of the school due to the brutal murder of a black student. Nevertheless the school still integrated in the summer of 1971, which eventually led to individual change in many of the members of the community. The film portrays how people may change on a social or political level but not on an individual level. Martian Luther king JR. Had a dream that all men would be treated equally regardless of the colour their skin. The film remember the titans illustrates how difficult it is for a community to not only make social or political changes, but changes as individuals, most people are ignorant and narrow minded when making choices and this influences other people to do the same people often stay with the majority instead of the minority in order to feel safe and out of harm’s way. The director is trying to demonstrate that a person’s perspective and way of thinking may not change along with social or political issues.
The first change to happen in remember the titans is political change. In 1971 in Alexandria, the government passed a new law that schools had to be integrated because of this people were protesting and rioting. They were also rioting because a black kid had been killed. A direct influence or effect of the political change was that Coach Yoast lost his job as head coach, to Coach Boone who was black. The school board had to appoint a black coach to show support for integration. Throughout the whole movie the school board are fighting this change, which integration one example of this is when they appoint Coach Boone as head coach and then telling him that if he loses one game he is out and also telling Coach Yoast the plan to have Boone fail by not being able unite the team.
After the political change individuals are forced to either accept the change a fight it. Integration of the high schools was a very difficult change for most of the people in Alexandria to make Coach Boone and coach Yoast two main characters in the story don’t accept the changes very well. Coach Yoast is mostly affected by integration because he loses his job as head coach. The two coaches don’t like each other or respect each other, they don’t work together well. They start to change because of the boy’s example. For Boone he is not against integration but against people being treated differently because of the colour of their skin during camp he takes them to the battle of Gettysburg and he says this to the boys “if we don’t come together right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were. I don’t care if you like each other or not, but you will respect one another. Coach Yoast respects this and then he begins to work with Boone and forgets about the hall of fame and the team becomes the most important thing to him. A character who takes a lot longer to accept integration is Emma, Gerry’s girlfriend. She refuses to shake Julius Campbell’s hand because he is black. Later in the film she leaves Gerry, stating that you clearly got your priorities mixed up this time. This shows how Emma decided with the majority instead if the minority, because she felt safe the way however nearing the end of the film, in the state finals Emma runs out onto the field, apologises to Julius, approaches Gerry and sates “guess you weren’t the one with your priorities mixed up after all. This paragraph shows that people accept change in their own time, when they are ready.

Social change takes a lot longer to happen in remember the titans because the majority of the school is so against integration and so is the majority of Alexandria. The football team arrive at school after camp, friends and accepting of integration. As they get of the bus they see protestors everywhere parents and others protesting about the integration of the high school Julius makes a comment to bertier “they hate us…. It’s never going to change…. Back to the real world” the rest of the school is completely un accepting of the unity In the football team, there are fights in there are fights in the hall way and even some of the football team are not supportive of unity, like ray, who ends up being kicked of the team by his best mate bertier. When the titans start winning their games, the school quickly gets behind them and this spreads throughout the school, in the community they didn’t agree with the Titans but after they started winning the town started to change. Shops were against the black people like when sunshine took them to a café abut the owner told them to get out because he didn’t serve their kind but all of that changed as the team began to win, they started putting up signs like, “titans eat free”. But they started eating too much so they changed the sign to half price. Parents were also affected first they were all sitting on one side of the stadium blacks on one side and whites on the other, but after the team started winning the started to sit next each other and didn’t have any problems with each other. They became united in support of the team. So we can see that social change is the last change that occurs. It is only after individuals change, and the team starts winning, that the team accepts the integration of T.C Williams Hs.
In conclusion remember the titan’s highlights three different changes, political, individual and social changes. These three changes cause people to go through some difficult time first the social being changed than the football team and the town, but because of the Titans the whole town comes together and start to accept the change.