Someone once said that storytelling is creating a memory for the reader. It is obvious when we think about it in hindsight. Every memory we have is a story constructed by our brains to capture the essence and importance of a given event, whether that be good or bad. Sports, much like most games and most live, in person actions, are a form of storytelling. The sports story has had a rocky history, mostly due to how tradition gives us certain expectations we want met: it is either a story of overcoming great odds, or a story of the attempt being good in and of itself. It is the difference between Rudy and Rocky, about attaining the seemingly unattainable, or otherwise learning something about yourself along the way that made the defeat in the end worth it still. These two types of sports stories, however, are extremely restrictive, and have created a pattern within the "sports film" genre that has been lambasted and bored out of significance in the greater medium. Many have convinced themselves that the sports story simply has no other avenues, but that is only true if you keep the focus on the game as it is meant to be played, not on how the game is actually approached, the culture that surrounds it, and all that it touches and effects. Sports movies are not a dead genre, they have just found their best works on the periphery. Films such as Big Fan stick out particularly well as examples of how the sports movie doesn't have to be about a game being played, per se. The culture itself is enough to hold our attention.
Friday Night Lights needs no introduction, thanks in part for its critically acclaimed TV show adaption. But the movie is more than worth a look. I, myself, am not a big sports fan. I enjoy watching Baseball and Hockey, and I can get by watching Basketball if the situation has a game as its pivotal focus, but I've never been much of a fan of Football. In part, this is because I grew up in "Football Country", parts of the south and midwest where the sport takes on a religious significance. Texas and Oklahoma, in particular, seem to exist on a moral currency of how the Big Teams are doing this year. OU, The Cowboys, OSU, UT and Texas Tech are all big names you are likely to hear or see the iconography for just about anywhere you go in these states, and the effect on a less-than-sports-minded person is to block it all out. For those in the game, however, it is something else entirely.
The toxic nature of sports, the bittersweet mix of the game itself and the pressure and judgement involved in those who play it, particularly young men who aren't just proving themselves, but ironing out and relying on it for their entire futures, is one not looked at nearly as much as it should be. Friday Night Lights follows a small but traditionally successful high school Football team from Odessa, a tiny, shit-hole town in West Texas known for Football and being a shit-hole town in West Texas. There, Football is the most important thing in the world. There is nothing better, nothing more important, and teens within the sport dedicate their young lives to the game. There is a point midway through the film that punctuates this well. Three of the players are out shooting rocks with a shotgun after a recent defeat, talking over their youth. "I don't feel seventeen, do you?" One of them asks. "No, I don't feel seventeen." The other responds. "Pull," a rock flies through the air. There is the percussion of a 20 gauge exploding, the full force of the pressure they feel being shot into the sky in a hail of destruction. Everywhere these kids go, there is pressure to succeed. A sheriff pulls up to a 7-11 where two Football teens are eating breakfast before school. The sheriff asks "You gonna win state?" with a cold glare through aviators and a tapping of his own state championship ring on the wheel. "Yes, sir."
Friday Night Lights doesn't hate the game, but it realizes there is more than just winning and losing at stake. For a lot of these kids, abuse is the answer to defeat, or somehow worse, no future at all. The only people who remain in the town are those who never made it to the big leagues, people fixated on their teenage days as though that was their last shot, dumping that same pressure on their kids. "You got one year, and then it is all gone." Multiple teens hear some variation of this message. Most of these kids are poor, with next to no prospects for getting out of this town or making any sort of life for themselves outside of the sport. This makes any sense of failure a life changing affair, something that could haunt them for the rest of their lives, sealing their fate.
Football is given more than reverence here. It is a virtual religion, and these kids, dealing with ailing mothers and sometimes coasting on physical talent alone are riding a razor's edge. I don't much care for the sport, but even I get exhilarating watching the game when it is on. There is something primal about the violence of it, the field control, the quick plays. Friday Night Lights is a sports story not about the game being played, but the game being beloved. It is a dark portrait of what we put kids through when they play a game they are supposed to love with the pressure of their entire lives being held in the balance, of an industry that grinds up male physical talent and takes very few all the way. At one point, a talent agent asks a player if he loves the game, and he hesitates. He glares at the man, unable to speak for a second, before his mother answers for him. Love the game? Why should that factor in? This is about the future, about a career, about getting out of Odessa and finally being able to provide for oneself and ones loved ones. Who cares about love when this is the last chance out of a dead end.
8.5
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