Hate-Watching Remember The Titans feat Andrew Sargent

We rewatch Remember The Titans with Dr. Andrew Sargent (West Chester University) and confront how a feel good sports movie can still center white sacrifice, flatten Black interiority, and sell a seductive colorblind story about integration. We also reconnect through grad school memories and talk about teaching film, African American literature, and cultural analysis when students arrive with strong feelings and sharper questions. 

Text mentioned in this conversation: 

https://www.amazon.com/Signs-Life-USA-Readings-Popular/dp/031264700X

Go here for the Smart Girl experience:

https://www.smartgirlbook.com/

Transcript

Cold Open And Season Setup

LT 0:01

So, Sam, in preparation for this episode, I want you to know that I hate watched Remember the Titans with my mom. It took me--

Sam 0:09

With your mom?

LT 0:11

With my mom, yes. It took me no lie three days to get through that movie. But why don't you introduce this episode?

Sam 0:19

Oh my god. I love everything about this, and I can't wait for this episode. Welcome to Smart Girl. I'm Sam Pinto. I'm like our guest, a professor of English and other things. And nice teaser there. I know other things. I mean, things that don't exist in my university anymore, like black studies and women's and gender studies, but exist like in the world, right? They are things. Um and we are here in Smart Girl Season 2 talking about sports, talking a lot about Remember the Titans and foot-ball and sports culture and media. And today talking to a friend of ours who writes about all of these things, who teaches about all of these things, who I will always remember as like thinking hard about the like interracial buddy cop movie as a genre. Yes, which I take with me everywhere as I quote Danny Glover saying I'm too old for the shit in Lethal Weapon. Um, I can't wait to talk to Dr. Andrew Sargent today. LT, introduce our guests.

LT 1:41

Our guest, Sarge, Sarge, as I know, Andrew. Um, for so for folks who are familiar with Smart Girl, the book, um, will recall two chapters in particular when I go deeply into my experience intergraduate school. And as I was thinking about like my own academic journey and what got me through, particularly those times in graduate school, I had to talk about the awesome foresome that was me, Molly, Lars, and Andrew, um, and our experience, our dissertation club. So um, I'm so excited to welcome Andrew Sargent, professor of English at West Chester University. What's up, Andrew?

Andrew 2:24

Hey, LT. Hey Sam. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really touched. I'm really touched to be here, delighted to be here. So thank you so much.

LT 2:33

Can't wait to get into this.

Sam 2:35

Oh, it's gonna be great. So, as I just mentioned, um, and as uh LT just talked about, uh and we just talked about, you're part of the grad school crew in Smart Girl, the memoir. Uh, one that also included Jim Lee, whom we already got a chance to talk to on the podcast. So exciting. Um, tell us more. This is a podcast also about how we get to college and how we get to grad school and how we find our career paths, uh, because it's always about that. Um, tell us more about what brought you to grad school, to your dissertation, um, and to your experience of that era with LT.

Andrew’s Road To UCLA

Andrew 3:13

Yeah, so thank you for that. I mean, I really loved literature in college. I was a big English major in college. I loved film, and um, you know, I just wanted to kind of continue that experience. I was really interested in writing for magazines. That was kind of a dream of mine. This would have been like the early to mid-90s when magazines were like--

LT 3:35

The Gen X dream.

Andrew 3:36

Yeah, yeah. Like writing, I I interned at the Atlantic Monthly, and I was like fancying myself gonna be like a feature writer or something. And and I, of course, that internship was unpaid. Um, but I I also knew I wanted to continue literary study, and so I you know, I applied to just a handful of programs, got into UCLA, really loved the community. The people were very welcoming when I was a prospective student, and um I just I loved the Southern California vibe too. So, you know, I I was thinking about this, uh, just you know, LT reading your book and thinking the the process of like finding the arcs in your story. And I think a big arc for me in coming to UCLA is I was pretty, I would say, insulated from thinking about like race and um class and gender. I was studying literature with some kind of highbrow, diluted, like highfalutin kind of approach. And I think UCLA really, there were several things that really shifted my me over to being interested in race and African-American literature, which is you know what I specialize in now. Um, one of them was the cohort you just mentioned. I mean, thinking about like you mentioned Nick, uh LT in your book, who ironically you mentioned because he recommends friends to you, which I had totally forgotten. I remember he loved Chandler. But Nick, Nick was the person who introduced me to the concept of just like every text can be read politically, every text has a racial politics. Um, and I was kind of you know resistant to that maybe at first, because I was still wedded to some sort of canonical literature uh vibe, you know, and that that really changed. I think having seminars with like Eric Sundquist and Michael North, who were two professors who were like white men focusing a lot on race in American literature. I got really interested in Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Toni Morrison, who are, you know, kind of maybe a starter pack for a lot of people getting into African American literature. And you know, I found myself co-chairing the Marathon Reading, uh, second year of grad school, where we we did Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Yeah, and Rosa Parks came to the event. You know, she was probably in her 80s, 70s at that point, but Michael Ellison Lewis, who was Ralph Ellison's nephew, I was able to get to come to the event, and he brought Rosa Parks. And so I started to just get really just start to feel like literary study felt empty without thinking about um race. And then I had really focused a lot on uh I really came to focus a lot on these interracial body pairings, Sam, as you mentioned. And I think that was like from my childhood, from my teenage years. I had been interested in in Miami Vice and Lethal Weapon as just a pop entertainment thing. And they became this text I wanted to try to submit my, you know, new newly developing analytical skills to, you know. Um, I think having Richard Yarbrough was key uh on my dissertation committee. Um and I think even like when we were trained to teach English three, if you if you guys remember the the first year writing class, of course, we used Sonia Masik's one option presented to us probably a conflict of interest, but Sonia Masik was the the one of the instructors in that class, and she had that anthology about readings and popular culture for writers. And I remember being really taken with some of the essays on you know race and gender and how these could be used in like a composition class. So I think that all of those things contributed to just this sense of like, I'm not gonna be writing on like Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw. That that stuff is really interesting and can be viewed through a racial lens. And somebody like Arthur Little was doing that kind of work with Shakespeare. But I started to get really drawn to African American literature and race and popular culture, the civil rights movement, criminal justice. These these things all became really important to my my my scholarly work, you know, at that point. Um and you you asked what that I mean, I think that's what brought me to my dissertation. I I think another just piece of the story is just that I struggled at LT. You may remember this. I struggled to let go of the need to like redeem the buddy pairings, you know, like and this this will I'm I'm really relieved to hear you say that you hate watched Remember the Titans because I watched it a couple of times for the to to rewatched it. Oh my god. I hadn't seen it in 20 years, and I think I think I you know I have some thoughts to to share when we get to it, but I could imagine my 2000 self, 2001 or thereabouts, like clinging to the need to believe in the sort of utopian racial dream that that movie presents, and now my much more wised up self can see all the scenes and all the the blind spots and contradictions and and so forth in this in this movie. And I think I went through that process with the dissertation where I had to really reorient myself to like I don't need to like if Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are friends, that's not going to solve racism. And that's such an obvious realization now. But when I was 27 or 26 and trying to figure out my dissertation, um that was something I really had to to work through. And I think that's why I ultimately moved more in the direction of like studying African-American literature, like 20th century, especially, is because I I think I was learning more. It just felt like a better fit. I was learning more from Richard Wright or Toni Morrison or William Melvin Kelly than I was from Lethal Weapon, you know? So and that makes sense. I would hope that would be true. Um so I think that that that's a larger arc kind of that I've that I've gone through. And then being able to teach African-American literature at WCU has kind of made me uh kind of kind of completed that I guess uh sort of professional evolution in terms of what my scholarship was about.

LT 9:49

Um my god, you just you took me back in like the best possible way. First, but no, first I want to say I got an email from Richard Yarborough who listened to one of the episodes of the of Smart Girl and said how much he enjoyed it. And I think he used italics, which we all know is huge for Richard Yarborough, does not use italics or bold.

Sam 10:16

RY, I think you mean R Y, yeah.

LT 10:20

So that's the the highest, the highest praise. Um, and um I wanted to dig in a little more before before we ask you, you know, your take on Remember the Titans about um uh the time that I you know I talk about our time together, the the foursome, our dissertation committee.

Dissertation Group And Surviving Grad School

LT 10:41

Um because again, the way I saw it is that the we really just kind of got ourselves to get like together, got ourselves through this process. And and I remember it as a time of us kind of experimenting and feeling comfortable with one another, try trying out new ideas, um, and also doing fun stuff. But that's my take. Is there um what's your take? Or is there anything else that you remember from that time that let's say I didn't include in the book?

Andrew 11:10

Yes, okay. So I wanted to I want to say two things to that. One one is that the I highlighted a passage from I highlighted about like about a hundred passages from Smart Girl. And oh my gosh. I said before we started, and I'll just say again for the for the the record, I just I'm really moved by learning so much more about you uh through this story. And by the time you get to the part that I connect with your life, you know, this is the close to the end of the book. I just I almost just was so touched that I just feel so lucky that I got to know you in that context and and not fully knowing all the things that you had been through. Like I didn't know you had gone to UNC Chapel Hill for a year. I I had forgotten that. I I remembered Howard and Maryland, but in any case, yeah. In any case, you you said this the sentence. I was not okay. With this group, talking about our dissertation group of you, me, Lars, and Molly. I was not afraid to sound stupid as I pitched alliterative project titles, "Hoops, Hype, and Homies", "Dribble, Dunk, Disrupt", even though I had yet to write a single word. We were trying out ideas to see what stuck and landed. And I that is so true. And I'm touched that you felt that way in our group. But B, I remember really struggling with the dissertation. And like I I remember presenting my first conference paper, which was on the movie Deep Cover, which was like a undercover cockpit with Lawrence Fishburne and Jeff Goldum at the American Studies Association, which is like not a great place to do your first conference because it's just such a uh a high-powered type of conference where there's a lot of status and you know. Um, but I I had like a few days before I had to go, and I just said I said, "Dissertation group, I need your help. Please read this draft and tell me what I should do." And and you guys all got back to me with feedback and you were super encouraging. And I just that really meant a lot. And then the other thing, LT, which is just a full circle moment for this episode, is that you you were always really good at dragging me out of my like sort of um what's the word? Kind of like self-isolating tendencies, you know, where I would be like everything had to be perfect before it could see the light of day. And you're like, no, we're not doing that. I you're coming to my class. I'm teaching a class in sports in American society, something something to that effect. And I want you to come and present on your dissertation research on and and I want you to focus on Jerry Maguire for your movie. And we're and so you and I watched the movie on my futon in my West LA apartment, and we like discussed the movie. And we did, should we do American History X? I think you said you were like, and then we and then we agreed, no, let's not do that because that's about race and it's super problematic. Let's do a movie that is thinks it's colorblind, and and we'll it'll be more interesting for the students to sort of analyze the sub to the racial subtext. So, of course, I was like filled with dread. I was like, oh God, I'm gonna mess up LT's class, the students aren't gonna care what I have to say, but you you just and this podcast is is is just like that. I was like, oh, this is such a great opportunity because LT is you know making it happen, you know. So for me, you represented this person who was like, you can get your work out there, it doesn't have to be perfect, it's ready for prime time, it's ready for public consumption, just get get it out there. And and I so I'm really grateful to you for that. That's my memory of being in that group with you.

LT 14:31

Oh, thanks for that. I I completely until you said it, have forgotten about Jerry McGuire, but then as soon as you said it, I remember it immediately. And it was just I mean, the classes were grad school courses were kind of challenging in a different way. And then once so for folks, especially those who are yet into graduate programs um or in them, but not at this point. But then once you've complete coursework, you're really on your own, right? And you have to you have to structure your day, you have to structure your time and um figure out what your own goals were, and so that group was just so helpful. We were at the same same spot um and trying to like just pull each other along, right? But we laugh so much, clearly.

Andrew 15:23

Yeah, yeah, we did.

Sam 15:26

So awesome. I feel like grad school of friends are like these, it's just like forever friends. I don't know why. For me, it's more that than undergrad, right? It's like that's the thing, that's that's where it's at. Um, also, I love the dramatic reading of the smart girl passage. That's like my favorite thing ever. I just want to put a post on it if this was a video dramatic reading. Um,

Rewatching Remember The Titans

Sam 15:50

so as we've already talked about a lot, this is the sports season, and we're focusing during part of the podcast um on a story from one of LT's uh former high schools, uh known formerly known as TC Williams, and it's the subject of Remember the Titans, which we forced Andrew to rewatch, we forced LT to rewatch, and I rewatched it. Um we have all kinds of thoughts. I'm like where to start, like hot takes. Um, Andrew, we knew that we had to have you on the podcast because you're an expert on sports and race and masculinity. Um, like how are you situating it within the history of black films? I mean, it's not a black film, right? But it is, right? We'll talk about that. Um, that you teach and write about might be one question, but that in some ways is also trying to rescue it. But we really do, we're not interested in rescuing it as much as we really want to say, what happened when you watched it again?

Andrew 17:01

Yeah, no, that's so that's so --

Sam 17:02

what happened to you, Andrew?

Andrew 17:04

Yeah, so I I I will just say as an aside, I have lived with this movie for for as long as I've been at Westchester because in my first year writing class, I do a movie review assignment. I've done it for a long time. And every semester I do this assignment, there will be some um women in the class who write on the notebook. And it now it's a movie review assignment where they have to write on their um a movie they have a relationship to, whether they hated it or loved it, or maybe it's something they've evolved over the course of a few years. They have to talk about like their viewing experience and so forth. And somebody always writes on the notebook, and somebody all always writes on Remember the Titans, and it's very gendered. And it occurred to me like Remember the Titans is sort of like like the male notebook in some ways. Um, both of them have Ryan Gosling, coincidentally. Um, but just to answer your question of like I I was surprised when I re-watched this movie how uh surprised, not surprised, I guess I should say, that I was expecting it to be a Denzel Washington vehicle. And it's actually like a white martyrdom movie. You know, it's very much there's there's a lot of focus on the Will Patton character, Coach Yoast, and a lot of focus on Bertier, uh, and a lot of focus on the the Hayden Panettiere, the daughter of Coach Yoast. She narrates the movie. And Coach, it's it's really a movie that's it presents integration as like an invasion of white space, black invasion of white space, and it's up to the white people to be heroic and get all the credit for being heroic for accepting integration. And I was I just it it kind of made me wonder if Denzel Washington knew that. I mean, I know he has to swallow all kinds of stuff. He's a he's a black actor in Hollywood, he's not like in control necessarily of every product he's in, but it just it just I was surprised at how much it was really celebrating white sacrifice more than the struggles that the black coach and his family have to go through. Um that's why I call it like a white sacrifice movie or a white martyrdom movie.

White Martyrdom And The Daughter Narrator

LT 19:13

Oh my gosh. I want to say more, but the thing that frustrated me is that the daughter uh is the smart girl, right? Um, and it is her perspective, which is so odd. I I don't know why. I don't I'd love to Sam, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. What like why that particular choice? Number one, and we understand this is fiction, but I just want to say there was not there was three daughters actually. Yoast did not only have the one daughter, so I'm just curious why it was like focused, hyper focused on her perspective on this, and then the con the continual contrast between her and Denzel's daughter, right? Who's the the feminine one who doesn't know the sports and girl get out of my face kind of thing? Um, but but yeah, that I had forgotten how much this was about Will Patton's character. Yeah. Sam, what did you think?

Sam 20:11

So this is you know, I went in sort of ready to hate watch it and was not disappointed, right? In re-watching it. And I think I like rolled my eyes when I saw it in the first place. It's like I watched it because, like, you it's like you have to watch Denzel Washington movies if you're in African-American lit studies, right? Like it's like canon, basically. So you have to know them, right? Um, but I hadn't watched it since then. Um, and generally biopic movies and sports history movies, like history movies aren't my thing. Um, but what I noted so much about the comparison between the daughters, and let us also not forget that Nicole Ari Parker is like completely wasted as the wife, right? Is they really, it's a movie that needs Boone, Denzel's character, to be hypernormative, and his wife and his daughters have to be hypernormative. And then the white savior coach, right, is like not just humanized, but sort of like made into someone more marginal because there's no wife, he's raising a daughter by himself, and that daughter is gender gender non normative in the sense that she's a sports nut tomboy, right? And so it's another way for them to be the center of the story, but it's also a way like it's a cheat to get that coach to not to like understand marginalization, right? And to be human, right? Right, is that he has experienced hardship and he's not raising like a normative girl. And I think in some ways that's like a we're supposed to believe that he's feminist, right? For this reason, uh, even though that's nowhere else in the movie, right? In any other way. We're supposed to give him credit for that in the same way we're supposed to give him credit for like he's not racist when he first quits. He's just like not gonna take a demotion, right? And then he goes back and takes the job, the assistant coach job, just to help his players get into college, y'all. Like that that's it, right? And there's so many ways I wonder about the same things, Andrew, about like what Denzel Washington knew when he started it and what he got to shift, because there's certain moments where you could tell someone gave them the note, like, this is a little too white saviory-y, right? And you have Denzel being like, You're worried that your daughter was in my house when this happened, my family was here. Or I watch you be nice to these kids, and you are only nice and are treating, you know, the black kids differently than the white kids on the team. I'm the same asshole no matter what, right? And so I'm wondering about those moments and whether they were already written in or they were like kind of script notes as we go to temper that deep what we should be concerned about is how white people are feeling about integration and how they could come to see it differently and positively, um, which is absolutely the story arc of the movie.

Andrew 23:46

Yeah, I I agree with everything you said. I mean, I it's funny that the bringing in the daughters, I I was getting Scout Finch vibes from the Hayden Panettiere character the whole time. You know, just this is so many dogs named after that girl. I mean, she, you know, she's got she's sort of the tomboy girl. She narrates the story. It's it's um and and you're right, you there are little moments where, like that moment you're talking about where the where Yoast and Boone are on the stairwell and Boone says, you know, "Well, welcome to my world." I, you know, "I get a brick." I'm sorry your daughter experienced what it's like to get, you know, have a brick thrown through your window by racists, but that's my world. That felt like a moment where the movie wants the white viewer to recognize these aren't just two like warring camps, but there's real inequality here. But the rest of the movie, the movie doesn't really care about Jim Crow or disadvantaged black students or slavery, even really, because it has that whole Civil War battlefield scene, but it's all about just hate between your brother. It's not about slavery. But then there are little moments where, yeah, maybe Denzel Washington pushed for that, or maybe the script said we gotta make the white viewer at least understand that what the black characters in this movie are going through is qualitatively different from what the white characters. But the rest of the time that is pushed to the side and is just like, nope, it's two equal parties. They just need to get along. And the people that deserve the most credit for that are, you know, the white characters. Coach Yoast is the one who makes all he sacrifices his place in the Hall of Fame to look to make sure the game they play is honest, you know, and he deserves a medal for that according to the movie. LT, can you can you say why you like what for you was I I was curious to know how you felt about just like the movie's representation of your alma mater and like what are do people have at least some soft spot for this movie because it is sort of promoting TC Williams, or is it all like is there a mixed bag there in your attitude toward the movie?

What The Movie Gets Wrong

LT 25:49

Uh I'll answer your second question first. Most of the people I know actually love the movie, and I think because it's it's T C Williams, right? And they're they're clear it's T C Williams, it's not like T C Williams under a different name. And yes, the team did win. Those are by makes the fact that it was in Alexandria, TC won, those are the only facts, right? Everything else is really um made up for the for the most part. Um, so for me, like right from the beginning, it's jarring just hearing this accent that Hayden has. That's not how people talk in L. Um, it's Northern Virginia.

Sam 26:26

In Northern Virginia, oh so like literally across the river from DC.

LT 26:32

DC, come on now. So the way there's a way in which this movie wants it to be like the deep south in the 50s, but that's just Alexandria is just way more nuanced than that. Uh of course there are problems, of course, there's racism, but it's is more than that. Um, for me, it's also funny, Andrew, because um Coach Boone was my my PE coach, and so when I hear that there's this movie, um he's just like a regular guy to me, and there's the movie lionizes him completely, right? Um and he doesn't have a lot of inter interiority as well. So for me, it's just mostly frustrating with my mom. Um, we talked about the line in a movie where uh where they say so Boone comes in and um and the I forget who it was a black character says, You're the best thing that this this community has ever had, like the black community has ever had. This is Alexandria, Virginia, right? This is that is absolutely that's so far from the truth. This is the same city where the very first uh NBA player, professional player was drafted. Earl Lloyd is from Alexandria, Virginia. There's so many figures in Alexandria that have made not just local history but national history too. So when Boone comes in 71, it's like it's 1971. Like, come on, like um, uh it's just kind of disrespectful to all the the local and national history that's present in Alexandria. So for me, it just does it does not feel like my school or my or my hometown at all. Just feels just in a name only. That's how I feel about it.

Andrew 28:20

There's that little line where um at one point, I think it's in the maybe the championship game or one of the games right before, toward the end of the movie where uh Coach Boone has to uh get the replacement quarterback psyched up, and he says something like, you know, I I had 12 brothers and sisters, and and you know, they were looking to me to be the colonel, even though I was the youngest. And he says, So you got to get out there and be the colonel. And then the assistant coach says to you, You had 12 brothers and sisters, and he said, No, I had eight. And he says, You're right, 12 sounds better. And I feel like that was the movie. I was like, aha, that was a movie tipping its hand, that that is its approach. Print the legend, facts be damned, get the get the name of the school right and the name of the some of the key players. But other than that, we're we're doing what we want, you know.

LT 29:04

Yeah, um, yes, pretty much, and and also it does play with time in the sense that it's you know, it's not true that there were two schools that come together. TC had been long integrated. There were three active schools at the time, and there were varying degrees of black folks in them, basically. So Hammond was all white, um, GW had some black students, and TC actually had more of them, but that's not the story that the movie wants to tell, and that's not how the US likes to think about integration.

Andrew 29:43

Yeah, it seems sorry, Sam, if I'm cutting you off. I was just gonna say this. It seems like I was thinking the movie is very much wedded to the the need for TC Williams to be a white school at the start, and it integration is about black people coming into a white space and the whites, you know, it's very much the affirmative action discourse, like, oh, anti-affirmative action discourse. Oh, you you're taking my job, uh, you know, you're usurping my rightful place. We we deserve at least half the positions on the team as the white players, and you're coming in here and taking that away from us. And if you know, if it had been white players coming into a black school, the movie would not have been able to make that same argument, you know. And so I think I would I was so eager to hear from you like what the reality of TC Williams was in that sense, because that that doesn't surprise me to hear that it was not a hundred percent white when this new it sort of put you know resurgent push for integration happened.

LT 30:41

No, not at all. And what was what was weird too, like in my own family, literally my mother went to GW. There's another school that's never mentioned in the movie, by the way. Um, so my mom went to that school. Her brother, who's two years older, went to TC. They're in the same household. So the so the busing situation is way more complex. And then, like, my mom doesn't know why he got sent to TC and she went to GW. He's older than her. So um we discovered that as well, too. And there was resistance, like the black students. This is what when we talked to other folks, um, we learned too, black students didn't want to leave their home neighborhoods, right? TC is on on the west side, it's on the like far from where black people lived, even. So, do you consider this a buddy movie?

Buddy Movie Feelings And Colorblind Traps

Andrew 31:31

Yeah, I mean, it's it's a male, definitely an interracial male bonding movie. It it it's uh it there's coach Yost and Coach Boone are kind of the buddies, but I guess Bertier and um Julius, the Wood Harris and Ryan Hurst are the two, the the whole left side, strong side thing. Like that is probably the bit the the buddy movie. I I will say, like, in the in the interest of just allowing us to have all kinds of reactions to this movie, like I was like, all right, I'm just gonna let this movie do its work on me so I can so I can feel what it wants the viewer to feel. And and it is moving. I it feels totally dropped in out of left field when Bertier, you know, spoiler alert for people who haven't seen the movie, like you know, a tragic accident befalls Bertier. Yeah. Um, it's about the journey, it's not about the destinations. That's what I always say to people who obsess over spoilers. So um, but but I guess that's that really happened to him. So they they felt like they had to, you know, put that in. But you know, it increases the white martyrdom thing that Bertir literally is like his body is sacrificed for this larger cause. But that scene where you know they they uh express their antipathy towards each other, but then they they do that in the 3 a.m. practice, they do the left side, strong side thing, and after that they're kind of inseparable. And by the end, when uh Wood Harris comes into Bertier's hospital room and the nurse says, you know, there's only kin, and he's like, Can't you see this as my brother? You know, can't you see the family resemblance? I I can if I if I were like on zero sleep and feeling really sad about four other things, that could really like get me. And I know it's the peak of the movie's sort of colorblind manipulativeness, but I think it it can the what interracial bonding, male bonding movies at their best, you know, at their most effective, let's say, can do is sort of make you believe that, yeah, wow, it we could transcend racial differences through these relationships. And then that that hinges on ignoring all the structural complexities, all the history, the reality of slavery, the the fact that these two groups are not in equal positions, the whites and the blacks. You know, they're they're they're in a one-up, one-down position in this in the way the society operates at this time. So um, but I I think the movie is very good at putting forward just all those locker room scenes, all the bonding scenes. I think somebody even says at one point, there's too much male bonding going on here. And it it works on you if you're willing to let it, if you but you have to check a lot at the door, you know.

LT 34:13

I I like how you put that, and you made me think that moment, it's it's it's recalling Brian's song with um with uh Billy Dee Williams and um James Caan. James Caan, right? But not to be that person who's like, this wasn't factually true, but it's important to point out that while it is true that Bertier, a real person, did wasn't an accident, it didn't happen then. It was actually after the whole championship. But they but having it earlier, right? We were talking about we've been talking about narrative arcs, by having that moment then, then it like elicit, like you said, you're you're like it's you're two o'clock in the morning, you're watching this, you're like, oh my god, look at the brotherhood.

Andrew 34:59

Yeah, yeah. And it makes that the that accident makes Bertir, you know, that it happens right around the time that Coach Yoast loses his Hall of Fame spot because he stands up to the racists who want to rig the game. And Bertier, even though his car accident has uh doesn't have anything to do with racism, you know, he has gotten his former friend, who's the sort of irid the one irredeemable racist on the team, gotten him kicked off. So he, it's like Bertier has to his sacrifice needs to be heightened. And that that allow that injury, that catastrophic, you know, getting paralyzed allows him to become even more of the martyr. That's that's what made me think of To Kill a Mockingbird, too. That you know, that's a book and a movie that's really about Atticus's heroism and his sacrifice instead of what Tom Robinson goes through, you know, famously. And I think that's like you said, Denzel's character has very little interiority. I mean, it's kind of a similar thing. The movie's not interested in what it's like for him, except in little glimmers here and there. It's interested in what it's like for Bertier and Yoast.

Sam 36:07

I just want to note for the record that both Ryan Gosling and Kate Bosworth figure out how to not be irredeemable racists. I think that's important. And we probably still don't take Donald Faison seriously enough. Right. These are my thoughts.

Andrew 36:28

There are a lot of those young actors, Gosling, Donald Faison, Kit Pardue, uh there's Wood Harris who goes on to be in the Ryan Hearst, yeah. Wood Harris goes on to be to play um is it Stringer Bell? A Avon Barksdale. Avon Barksdale and The Wire.

LT 36:47

Yeah.

Andrew 36:48

And that's like two years later. He's he's in The Wire, you know. It's wild.

LT 36:52

And I know Ryan Hurst from Sons of Anarchy. He's Opie.

Andrew 36:55

Yeah, that's right.

Sam 36:57

But I just want to say it's like six degrees of the notebook. Like Ryan Gosling's right there for us. He's right there for us. I'm building the syllabus. I'm building the syllabus.

Andrew 37:10

Sam, isn't it so funny to see him too in that role? Because he that whole role is kind of him being a little bit of a doofus and he gives up his spot to other people to see to know that just a couple of years later he's going to become this like one of the most like aura-having, like godlike just charisma guys ever. Total is in the last 25 years of movies. And in that movie, you can see some of it if you import it retroactively, but he's really Yeah.

Sam 37:39

This is not hey girl, Ryan Gosling. No, this is this is a different meme altogether. Yeah, this is like this is like a different era. I'm I'm I am with you.

LT 37:52

Any other any other lingering thoughts? About this movie.

Andrew 38:00

Um I well, I guess I I wanted to say like again, I mean, it's it's sort of I think it's important that it's a flashback movie, too. It it's sort of that's what a lot of these movies do. They like to kill a mockingbird, it again they it tells a story about racism in the past, you know, to sort of suggest that it it was, you know, the Titans solved racism. They they allow that racism might still exist, but there's a sense that you know we we don't have to worry about this anymore because this got this this kind of extreme racism got solved. Um and it, you know, it it lulls you into that sense of like how much we've improved since then. And I I feel like that's again very seductive uh and also very problematic. But I I think that's that's kind of where it came down in this movie. I I feel like you have to give it credit for its seductiveness, even as especially as like scholars and cultural critics were pushing back on it every step of the way. And I try to tell my students like it's okay to have the feelings about a movie that is trying to work on you, because that can be like illuminating for what the movie's trying to do to you. And if you can sort of have the feelings and then submit them to the light of day and like some scrutiny, you can learn more than if you're kind of like girded from the word go,

Teaching Film And African American Literature

Speaker 2 39:20

you know.

LT 39:20

Yeah. It's so funny that opening scene that really sets us up for I walked with Herman Boone, right? He's definitely King.

Andrew 39:31

Yeah.

LT 39:33

Well, we were talking um before we started recording about your, you know, you at Westchester, um, and you and as you were talking about your own professional journey um to being a faculty member, to working on um African American literature in particular. Can you tell us a little bit more about teaching AfAm studies and and film at West Chester? What's that like right now? How how what's the what are the vibes on campus, Andrew?

Andrew 40:04

Yeah, that's such a good question. I mean, I would say there's reason for hope, and then there's reason for pessimism. I mean, I teach fewer classes in African American literature now than I did 10 years ago, and that is because of declines in students um that we have in our English in the English major. Um and I think in general, it is challenging to attract students from outside the major um because of just the feeling that that there's this false perception, as as you all know, that the English major somehow doesn't lead to a career, which we debunk thoroughly all the time. Um but I would I would say, you know, and that one of the things I do with a colleague is we have this, we inherited and now run this um what can you do with an English degree panel, which we have bring, we bring alums uh who were English majors and are established in their careers now back to talk to like our juniors and seniors. And you know, they're very optimistic. Like there are all kinds of things you can do with the English major. Um so, but I I guess from my, you know, we have a film minor and an African American, African and African American literature minor that I teach in. Um so I, you know, I teach a lot of like first-year writing and intro to lit classes for gen ed students, and I teach maybe one or two or three maybe a year, like a survey course in African American literature, or a deep dive course on you know the writings of Martin Luther King. Or I teach my uh this class I've been teaching several years in a row now on um cop films. Um and that that's a film class. And so you kind of you get to do sort of specialized stuff every once in a while now instead of all the time. I think that's a big shift. Um, but you know, you can bring a lot of your interest into the Gen Ed classes too, like, you know, the movie review in the right in the first year writing class. Um so you know, like I said, I think it's I think once you can get students excited about like the pleasures of cultural analysis and like becoming good analyzers of film and popular culture and literature, you can you you can sort of bring them into the fold, but I think it it's gotten a little bit more that that bit there are more barriers to entry now with students who want to major in like finance and business, you know.

Sam 42:31

So I just want to say that um uh when I transitioned to UT, uh I switched to teaching these giant gen ed lectures that went from 400 to 800 to 1100 during the pandemic. Um but I wanted to, and then I developed women's and gender studies intro as well into like a bigger lecture course from a tiny seminar. I I joked, like there's deep pleasures in teaching gen pop, like that I really adore and in some ways now prefer to teaching my specialty courses in the ways that you were just talking about. Remember the Titans, right? A kind of like you go in girded, right? Being like, I know I hate this movie and I already know all the reasons why. And that has its pleasures too, right? But there's a way that getting people to engage with what they love, right? And bring that out and through a critical analysis is a real joy to watch people figure out, especially if they were super scared of it from some English class they had taken before, right? And they're thinking, I don't think like this, but that's not how my brain works. And then they're like, oh wait, actually, I have lots to say about whatever it is, Game of Thrones, or about, you know, et cetera. And so um, I just wanted to. Just reflect back how much I think your approach, which is thinking about if I'm not teaching the specialty class, how does this work in gen ed and why does this work in gen ed fits with everything that you're saying, even about how you encounter Remember the Titans, um, as the male notebook and as these spaces for feeling, right? Well, but everyone who sits on admissions will tell you that like all the all the men and boys are writing about a sports game that they almost lost but then won, that it's like rampant in admissions essays, right? That this is the way, this is the culturally acceptable form to feel.

Andrew 44:45

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam 44:46

That's wild, y'all, to think about. And Andrew, you're giving us a language for that. You're giving your students a language for that. Um, it's incredible.

Andrew 44:55

That's really kind of I mean, that's really generous, Sam. Thank you. Yeah. I I heard Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman once being interviewed about shot the Shawshank Redemption, which is another male weepy movie. Shawshank.

Sam 45:07

Yeah.

Andrew 45:07

Yeah. They they asked the interviewer asked them why they think the movie has had this such an afterlife, as has Remember the Titans and other movies like it. And they said it's it gives men permission to cry in these sort of culturally acceptable spaces, you know. Maybe that maybe that will have a positive impact on our society, you know. Who knows?

Building A Cop Movie Syllabus

LT 45:28

Before we before we ask uh our final question, Andrew, I did want you to give us an idea. What's in the cop movie class? What are you teaching?

Andrew 45:39

Yeah, so this is a class that so I s I s teach about a dozen films, and we start with uh this essay that I cannot recommend highly enough. It's very short and very readable, very readable. Um, it is by a writer named Katherine Van Arendonk, and it she writes for Vulture, which is a uh you know, New York magazine's like big culture website. And she wrote an essay um during the George Floyd protest summer 2020 called Cops Are Always the Main Characters. And it was about how even no matter what kind of we always tell stories about crime in American pop culture through the perspective of the police. Now, there's like a few exceptions here and there, you know, like the wire focuses on the the the drug cartel as much as it does on the cops. Orange is the new black, maybe is a is a is an exception, but cops have this enormous uh like um control over the kinds of stories that get told. And so that's that's kind of where we start. And I guess in some ways my class reinforces that because we we go through several cop movies, like dirty, hairy, lethal weapon, deep covers in there. We try to see how the cop movie reinforces this very conservative politics, the the violent vigilante policing, and then the way that shapes perceptions of of the police in real life, often catastrophically. Um we we also look at um Fruit vale Station uh toward the end of the semester, which is uh, you know, it challenges the whole idea of the police versus the police and whose humanity gets gets showcased in a movie. And um, you know, another film that's interesting, I think, uh, for the class is the Netflix short um Two Distant Strangers that came out in 2020. It it uses this sort of time loop Groundhog's Day device where a black man comes out of an apartment and encounters a white cop and he keeps getting stopped and it keeps ending with the black man's death. It, you know, there's a lot of it's almost kind of like reinforcing a kind of black trauma a little bit, but it's trying to challenge this idea that, oh, if you just comply, everything will be fine. Because he tries like a hundred different ways of adjusting the encounter and like changing his behavior, and it keeps um leading to the same outcome. And then there's this great scene to circle back to our buddy cop thing. He decides he's gonna try to make friends with the white cop. Um, Carter is the black character's name, and the they get to know each other a little bit. Carter gets to share some of his take on like white privilege and police brutality and racism. And I I don't want to share now. I feel like I have to watch out for spoilers, but the movie has this ingenious twist on the expectations we bring when we've seen so many buddy cop movies that go from like sort of enemies to friends, the way Remember the Titans does. The movie sort of refuses that and is trying to show how no amount of behavior adjustment or compliance or whatever it might be called is gonna um is gonna solve the problem of like systemic racism and policing. So that that film sits side by side with like Dirty Harry, you know, which is like the signature or white vigilante, you know, silent majority kind of um conservative cop movie. Um and we try to just make sense of that all of these are like screen representations of the police. Um it's it's I think it's a class that really has evolved and is challenging for the students, and I I really enjoy teaching it, you know.

LT 49:12

That sounds incredible. I'm looking, I'm looking this movie up right now.

Andrew 49:16

Yeah, it's it's on Netflix. It's and it's like 28 minutes long, so you can you can check it out pretty easily. Thanks for that.

Sam 49:24

Are you doing the reboot of 21 Jump Street? That's my real question.

Andrew 49:29

I haven't you mean the one with um Jonah.

Sam 49:31

And Tatum.

Andrew 49:33

I have I've seen that in its sequel, but I haven't included it in the the comedy we do is called The Heat that has um Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, which is sort of an interesting because we look at um a Jamie Lee Curtis movie called uh Blue Steel, directed by Catherine Bigelow, and then Silence of the Lambs with Jodie Foster, and those are two like female cop protagonist movies. Um and then we look at the heat and see like what's changed between like the 90s and that came out in like 2013.

LT 50:03

So fun fact real quick, Sam. Fun fact about Silence of the Lambs, uh Jodie Foster's character is first gen to college. It it's like you get a little bit of her backstory, but just enough to know that she's a first gen student, like that's what's driving her, right? Is um trying to get away from her family history and all that type of stuff.

Andrew 50:26

Yeah, and Lecter tries to press that, uh uh like exploit that as a weakness when he says, you know, you're just one generation away from poor white track. That's right. He comments on her clothes and and her effort to lose the accent. Yeah.

LT 50:39

Yep.

Andrew 50:40

That's a great connection.

Sam 50:41

Yep. Love it. Well, we you've already given us so many texts, but uh, we will ask this.

Sports Watches That Still Hit Hard

Sam 50:49

What should we be watching, Andrew? Give us some fave sports movies or TV shows that we should be watching.

Andrew 50:56

Okay, this is a hard one.

Sam 50:58

I I it's not a judgment on your absolute favorite, but but give us some options.

Andrew 51:05

Okay, I'm glad you're let letting it me give options because I I this was when you were kind enough to give to me in advance, and I so I I did a little ruminating on this, but okay, I will I will give you three different things here. One is that I have this, you know, for when we are feeling down, you know, I have this tab on my YouTube account called Uplifting Vids, and it is so they're all I just was looking at them and I noticed how many of them are sports related. So these are not works of fiction, these are just like just videos of actual athletes. And the two that really I go to, if I need a pick-me-up, like I'm talking about like my uh happiness level, uh, are Steph Curry in the 2024 men's Olympics gold medal game when the last two and a half minutes of that game. Do you do you know what I'm talking about? The the US France gold medal game curry hit four three pointers in two minutes, and just the the announcer, the way it's just the most pleasurable thing to watch. LT, do you know what I'm talking about?

LT 52:10

Do you I I know it, I know it just from watching it in real time, but I I should have known there was like like a compilation, like a like a its own video.

Andrew 52:19

Yeah, it's just the you can you can get it on YouTube. It's and and I just I find it just so that it's like those videos that say, uh, okay, a guy does like a long job, but they get increasingly crazy, you know, like uh but this happened in real time. Like Curry's three-pointers got increasingly crazy and to the the final like golden dagger where he he puts the game away. Yeah, that's the announcers. He says a golden dagger, it's really just exhilarating. And then the other one I've shared. If Molly and Lars ever listened to this, Molly will appreciate this. I my favorite like tennis, I'm I'm a former tennis player, and my favorite uh tennis set to watch is Roger. I love Nadal and Federer both. Um, but I I kind of rooted for Federer in this match because he had lost to Nadal so many times. It's the men's 2017 Australian Open Final. Federer is down 3-1 in the fifth against, you know, force of nature, Rafa Nadal. And he comes back and wins five straight games with just an epic display of like backhand winners and just incredible. As the announcer said, he outraffed Rafa in this match. And it is just, I watch these two things and I just it always makes me feel even now talking about it. I'm on I'm I'm already on a high in this conversation, but this adds. Okay, the other the other two things I was gonna share. One, the this is in the problematic kind of Titans territory, but Hoosier's I have to give a little shout out as an Indiana boy.

LT 53:49

Is I mean, you have to.

Andrew 53:52

It's definitely in a when it comes to race in a bubble.

Sam 53:55

Um, but oh my god, yes, but I could see drunk Dennis, whatever,

Andrew 54:00

Dennis Hopper, yeah,

Sam 54:01

In my head right now. Yeah.

Andrew 54:04

Yeah. Uh it's it's I watched it with my sister in the theater in like 1988 or whenever it came out, and it was a big deal in Indiana. Um, and I I was getting Hoosier's vibes from Remember the Titans, you know, just it's sort of that mythology, mythologizing that the movie does. Um, okay, and then the last one, LT, this is for you. Oh. This is uh you you've talked a lot about Dawson's Creek, and I know you're a pay, I know you're a pacey person and not a Dawson's person, but it this is in honor of that, plus in honor of the fact that I know you were sad, it was very sad that James Vanderbeek died. Uh, I mean that was a real blow. Yeah, uh he's still in his 40s, I think he's 48 when he died. Um and uh so varsity blues. Oh my god, it's not comedy, it's not defensible on any level. It's like a complete raunchy, R-rated sexist movie, but it is surprisingly watchable in from the perspective of his performance because he he's in the middle of that Dawson's Creek, like season two, season three, and he he plays this like macho but sensitive and thoughtful football quarterback. And at the end of the movie, he you learn in a voiceover because he narrates the movie, he goes to Brown University and he never plays football again after they win this the title. And it was just such a to me, it was such a like smart girl-ish thing where like he's just following his own intellectual path and kind of leaving uh you know a chapter of his life behind. I just I didn't know if you'd ever seen this movie or if you sort of steered away from it because it's yeah, but Sam, what that might have to be our transition into season three, Sam.

Sam 55:48

Oh my gosh, of course it is.

LT 55:50

Yes, we will watch and discuss Varsity Blues.

Andrew 55:55

It is not one to go to for progressive representations of women. It is it is yeah, but it but it it's a bit of a big life. That's right. I don't want your laugh, is how he says it.

Sam 56:08

Yeah, I am dying because I'm just looking at the cast, right? Which I have forgotten. Uh, because this uh it and it's Paul Walker is in it. Yeah, this is 1999, so this is actually the year before Remember the Titans.

Andrew 56:24

Yeah, Paul Walker. Paul Walker plays the the star quarterback who then goes down to injury, not only what happens to Titans, and then and then uh Mox, James Vanderbeek's character, cut fills in and takes them to the the title.

Sam 56:38

Yeah, this is this is everything, and we need to go back and full circle Brian 's song Scott Caan is in it. So next generation of cons. Um Jon Voight is in it, too, but let's not talk about that. Yeah, um, this is amazing, and it's a Texas movie, so perfect.

Andrew 56:59

It's kind of an also ran um, but like Friday Night Lights pretty much eclipsed this movie. I think there's some others, like We Are Marshall, that's in there that are just like these football Texas movies, but um you know, varsity blues has its little footnote spot there, and Jesse Plemons, apparently, who I don't remember in the movie, but was I don't.

Sam 57:20

Wow, that's Friday Night Lights, as well.

LT 57:22

Friday Night Lights, and I mean him and Michelle Williams, my goodness.

Sam 57:28

Right, right, which is like just again fascinating. I really appreciated you bringing the like the production and reception lens to that last part, which is thinking about who Vanderbeek was like at that moment and what that vehicle was for him in that season two, three spot.

Andrew 57:53

Um I can remember seeing the movie in the Westwood, the man, the man Westwood, the no, the the Westwood Bruin, the one, the one in Westwood Village with the big tower. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, that was one of the places where they had a lot of premieres. And I remember I don't remember what movie I was seeing in that theater, but it was probably like 99, 1999 or so, and Dawson's was a phenomenon. And then that the trailer for this movie came on, and I remember some people laughed at this prospect of Vanderbeek trying to play this like macho quarterback, but he totally he totally sold it.

LT 58:27

Yeah, I I remember that uh very distinctly. This is amazing.

Sam 58:32

Oh, like every fix of circle. Maybe what we need is a watch party where we all watch it and live stream our reactions while we're watching it. That would be fun, and then that's the um that's the transition. So I love this. You're amazing, Andrew. Thank you for all of this. Like, so smart and also just like so thoughtful and kind, which is exactly as I remember you in my whippersnapper days.

Andrew 59:02

Yeah, Sam, you're incredibly kind to say that. Thank you.

LT 59:06

Uh so so great to to hang out with you. It's almost seriously, it's like no time at all has has passed. Um, so we appreciate you being here today, Andrew.

Andrew 59:15

Thank you. And I really appreciate you, LT. And can I just say again, I I don't want to get sentimental. I just thank you for creating this opportunity. You just you are the reason this is all happening. And Sam, you're an amazing host and guide for these podcasts. I've listened to some of the other episodes and I just marvel at your that you're like a natural at this. And LT, I just the way you include people, as I said earlier with the Jerry Maguire thing. You this is like we'll do this again in 25 years. No, we'll do this soon. We'll do this sooner than 25 years from now. But I just I it's great that you're able to make these you're you're you make things happen, you know.

Gratitude And Closing Shout Outs

LT 59:51

Oh, well, thanks so much. Um, before we go, we also want to give a shout out to Daisy, uh my Daisy intern who is headed off to the University of Virginia in this fall, who's been a little shadowed uh during this particular episode. But Daisy, do you want to come off the mic and say hello as we close out?

Daisy 1:00:15

Yeah, thank you. I'm just so grateful to have the opportunity to do my externship with you guys. It's been a great experience, and like Andrew said, you're so inclusive, and I just love the community here.

LT 1:00:29

Well, I will just close on that note. No way to top that. Daisy, thank you for being a part of the My Tribe Media family and community.