Glory Road: Racial Identity, Essay Example

Introduction

The film selected is an American film entitled   ” The Glory Road”, directed by James Gartner and released on January 13th 2006.  The film was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and written by Chris Cleveland.  It starred the actors Josh Lucas, Derek Luje and John Voight.  It was distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.  The story follows a Men’s Basketball coach and their road to glory and the 1966 NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball championship.  The coach had the extraordinary challenge of bringing together a team of champions, regardless of race or creed, and welding them into a team despite racial tensions between the players.  Glory Road was inspired by a true story. This paper examines the concept of racism in the basketball team, how this develops, the steps that the coach made in order to counteract this problem, how this ultimately gets resolved and the end result.

The Plot

Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) was the newly appointed coach of the Texas Western College in El Paso.  He is responsible for putting together a new basketball team.  With a limited financial budget he has to consider how he can bring together a talented top performing team. So they cast a wide net and look for good High School athletes from across the States.  In the end he manages to bring together  7 Black and 5 White athletes.  Recognizing these to be of mixed ability he puts them through a gruelling training program.  His objective being to forge a mixed racial group of athletes to work as a single integrated team withy a common purpose.  In order to achieve this he has to set aside bigotry and racial hatred for the glory of the team.

In the first instance the Coach selects three black and two white players in the team.  It becomes immediately clear that the black players need much more freedom of movement on the court.  This sees an early success with the showmanship performances of the black players as they produce continued victories.  The lack of team unity sees the racial tensions rise and includes threats to the Coach’s family, the mugging of a player on the road and the destruction of the teams motel rooms by racist elements whilst the team were away on a game.  The continued intimidation leads to the black players feeling of insecurity and subsequently they lose the love and passion for the game.  This results in losing the last important game of the season. They ultimately end up 3rd in the league.

They later face the University of Kentucky under the famous coach of Adolf Rupp (John Voight) . This is a well drilled, more experienced and all round better all white team.  The Texas Western College team are given no chance of succeeding.  On the eve of the important game Coach Haskins calls the entire squad to tell them he is commencing with an all black line up. The remaining white players support the decision as the best team move.  After just a few minutes of play the team Captain drops out with a foot injury and despite being behind at half time the Texas team manage to gain a victory 72-65 with a fast paced second half game comprising  great steals, defensive stops and a showmanship display.   The film ends with the players arriving back at El Paso to a rousing reception from an appreciative crowd.

The Controversy of Racism

There was considerable controversy over Disney Studios depicting the Texas State and the East Texas State University as being racially intolerant, particularly scenes in the movie depicting violence, racial slurs and slogans and wrecking hotel rooms.  Disney never directly apologized for this portrayal and stated that it was never to be intended as a documentary. Further the film producers stated that they had to consolidate many events into shorter scenes in order to capture the main essence of the movie.  This prompted a somewhat extreme reaction from the Texas State Senate to propose a bill that would restrict financial assistance provided by the state for any future films that portray the State of Texas in a negative light.

The build up of racism started out as follows ” On a road trip in the South, one of the players is jumped and badly beaten in a diner bathroom. At another stop one of their motel rooms is defaced with “nigger” and “coon” written in blood on their walls. In the next game, feeling under siege, the black players on the team turn on the white players and refuse to pass them the ball. Divided, the team loses.” (Terry).   Another situation occurs when the team sneak over the border to Mexico and enter a bar filled with Hispanics and white people. Here the black people are treated as an uncomfortable minority. Later the situation is reversed when the white players take their black colleagues to a party and there is a terrible atmosphere until one of the girls asks one of the white players to dance.  Towards the end of the season  a white player makes the comment “I hate being in a racial minority in my own team” , he later begins to realize that this is the position how the black players are treated all the time and starts to empathize. This later results in the team bonding and ultimately the white players supporting the coach in the selection of an all black team.  ” Being in the minority in some situations is a life-changing experience for the white men. The theme is that enough exposure and bonding can defeat racism.” (Terry)

Building Of the Team

The story focuses upon the Coach (Haskins) and how he moulded together a team out of nothing.  Despite his emphasis on just wanting to play good basketball, there was a certain hypocritical nature about him in his dealings with the team.  ” Haskins himself is little more than a two-dimensional figure who stalks back and forth shouting orders. He makes grandiose speeches about how he isn’t here to make a social statement; he just wants to play good basketball. “I don’t see color!” he exclaims before intentionally benching all of his white players in the final game of the year to make exactly the social statement he claims he wasn’t interested in making. He chooses to endanger the life of a black player with a heart condition, rather than allow one of his white players on the court. ” (Tyler)

The main team building comes from the growth and understanding between both black and whites. The racial intolerance projected towards both sides, particularly that from external elements, enlightens both sides to see the others points of view.  The coach somehow capitalizes on this by pushing both sides through a punishing schedule of training. If anything the white players come off worse here as the coach is quick to recognize the talents of the black players and that he is able to push them that much further in order to gain the competitive edge required.

On the positive side for Don Haskins was his love of the game (basketball), his determination to win with guts, positive thinking and team spirit.  He tried hard to engender comradeship into his players and push the message of  the “team first” as opposed to individual thoughts and views.  He stepped up the training to try and weld them into a unified team putting aside racial bigotry.  He tried to make them comrades but with some degree of naivety as the team had to first experience the others point of view in order to both understand and grow as individuals.

The End Result

Despite the insurmountable odds the Texas Western team ultimately won the Championship and became the local heroes of El Paso. The film brewed up a huge amount of controversy at the time and many of the “racist elements depicted in the film” were said not to have happened inn real life.  This prompted the Texas A & M University in El Paso to demand an apology from the Disney Corporation ” EL PASO, Texas — Officials at Texas A&M University-Commerce want Walt Disney Co. and the makers of “Glory Road” to apologize for inaccurately linking their school to some of the film’s most racially charged scenes. The movie chronicled the history-making Texas Western Miners, who won the 1966 NCAA title with the first all-black starting line-up in a championship game. It included a “completely false” depiction of a game against East Texas State University, the name of Texas A&M-Commerce at the time, spokeswoman Lorraine Pace said Friday. (Associated Press).

The critics were generally less than kind to the movie considering it uninspired and not a true reflection of the great events and historical importance of the time.  ” Glory Road takes its pages on every successful film on athletics ever to have found its way onto theatres.”  (Osbourne)

Works Cited

Associated Press. ESFTI. 10 2 2006. 11 12 2009 <http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=ncb&id=2326293>.

Osbourne, Sam. Killer Movies. 7 12 2005. 11 12 2009 <http://www.killermovies.com/g/gloryroad/reviews/n6d.html>.

Terry. Racism & Sexism Glory Road Review. 28 2 2009. 11 12 2012.

Tyler, Joshua. Glory Road Review. 14 1 2006. 11 12 2009 <http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Glory-Road-1329.html>.