The Program

Jonathan Wolf

KIN278

Sports Related Film Paper

With present day societal norms football is perceived to be a middle/lower class animalistic physical activity . Even in current day Hollywood, the movies being made on football support this view. This is why movies such as Ð''Any Given Sunday', Ð''Varsity Blues', and Ð''The Program' can bring in such high revenue. The public needs to see the quarterback with an extremely gorgeous girlfriend, players going through their own trials and tribulations, and a happy ending championship game. If these common situations were not present in the plot line, the viewer would be left confused or dissatisfied (as in the feeling of disorder occurs when the featured team loses the championship game). While any of these movies can be broken down into how gender, social class, and race controls sports and physical activity, the 1993 film Ð''The Program", does a fantastic job of boldly emphasizing these interests. This featured film was yet another football classic where every hit was a bone jarring collision, every injury ended some stars career, and every yard earned was the difference between life and death.

Could there be anything worse then when someone tells you the end of a good movie? Well before hand I sincerely apologize. The featured football team in Ð''The Program', Eastern State University did in fact win their championship game at the end of the movie. What did you expect, them to lose? American ideologies and norms associate winners to being the hardest working people, while losers are not only considered to not work as hard but in fact lack the character to be successful. The major connection with this can be seen through the newly forming relationship between Darnell Jefferson (Omar Epps) and a smart student beauty named Autumn (Halle Berry). Although Autumn is black, she comes from an upper/middle class family that is wealthy and educated . Darnell, also black, fits more of the stereotypical definition, while being a talented freshman running back; he has little academic ability, which results in his failure to pass competency tests and leads to Autumn being his tutor. This is one example of how sports are connected to major spheres of social life, such as education. In the United States many sports programs at Ð''higher education' institutions are attracting more attention by the community and prospective students/athletes than the academic programs do . This integral process being used by sports programs could be diminishing the academic quality of applicants but improving the athletic department. Through historic American ideologies, the invisible effects they have to structure your everyday actions, and what we now call Ð''formula football movies' the love interest Autumn is paired and going steady with Darnell's top competitor for the halfback position, oh and by the way, did I mention he was pre-med? The only reason why Autumn and her current boyfriend are placed together is through their equality in social class and the overall acceptance of one another through their similar wealth, education, and race. Although Darnell and Autumn would be more compatible for each other based on personality (better human characteristic to base a relationship on), he will never be good enough to be accepted into Autumn's family. This notion is reinforced during a part in the movie when Darnell meets Autumn's father after one of the football games. The part of the movie took place when you could clearly see that Autumn had strong feelings for Darnell but the scene quickly faded in romance when the current boyfriend came over, and finally ended with the father making an arrogant remark on how a true man should not need a tutor. Although the relationship seemed to have no future, by the end of the film Autumn and Darnell lived happily ever after because that is supposed to be what happens, right?

If there were to be a movie where no players had misfortune, pain, or suffering no one would buy the ticket to see it. Another major part of this film is the character personas. The quarterback and captain of the team Joe Kane (Craig Sheffer) is not only a Heisman Trophy contender, but also a self-damaging alcoholic (father played QB for ESU with the same substance problem). Through even having a Ð''captain' position the team forms a hierarchy, which places continual pressure on Joe to maintain a dominant role over his team. He believes this

...