Theme Of Prejudice In Remember The Titans

Register to read the introduction… Discriminatory/prejudicial behaviour can be further broken down into direct and indirect discrimination against a particular group. The three most notable prejudices and associated behaviours within Remember the Titans are racism, sexism and homophobia and harassment, name calling and gender stereotyping. An example of racism and harassment from the film comes in the scene where Coach Boones house gets damaged by a brick thrown by a passer-by as they call out “Coach Coon”. This direct discrimination can also be related back to the ‘ego-defence’ mechanism wherein a real or perceived threat causes feelings of anxiety (moral anxiety – fear of violating societal codes) and in order to reduce these negative emotions, we fall back into certain defence mechanisms. I.E. displacement – where you take out impulses on a less threatening target. The scene where Ronnie Bass makes his first appearance is an example of homophobia and name calling as he is immediately nicknamed “fruit-cake” and “sunshine” by other members of the team due to the preconceived notion that all Californians are homosexual. Homophobia is conceptualised as having a broad ego-defensive function, thereby protecting one's unconscious anxiety about experiencing homosexual impulses. The final example of prejudicial behaviours and attitudes witnessed within Remember the Titans is when Coach Boone says to Coach Yoast “Why don’t you get this little girl, some pretty dolls or something coach?” (referring to Sheryl Yoast) and is a clear example of sexism and gender stereotyping. The attitude presented above can be related back to conformity to familial and societal expectations and ambivalent sexism wherein girls feel the need to adopt the behaviours and attitude of …show more content…
The three strategies presented within the movie are all closely interwoven with one another and are not largely effective when only one is implemented without the others. Intergroup contact is the sustained contact between the prejudicial group and the targets of the prejudice where meetings require equal status participation and mutual interdependence. Mutual interdependence is where people from separate groups must depend on one another to meet their own separate goals; this differs from superordinate goals which is one main objective shared by both groups that cannot be achieved with equal participation from everyone. All three of these strategies are clearly employed by various characters within the movie, right from the beginning and ultimately culminate in reducing an entire towns bias toward the integration of African-American people. Intergroup contact and mutual interdependence is first noticeable when both groups of students are forced to attend a rigorous two week camp with each other; they are all competing for spots on the football team but cannot reach this goal without working together and learning to get along. This however is not entirely successful as hostility between the groups returns when they return from camp and are re-subjected to societal and familial expectations. Superordinate goals are most clearly observed in the high-schools football matches where the shared goal is to win the championship; the success of the team supercedes the individuals goals of the team and cannot be achieved without the genuine participation of every team member, regardless of their race or sexual