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Psychology in “Remember the Titans”

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Kyle Duffy PSY 341 Remember the Titans is a 2000 Walt Disney Film starring Denzel Washington. The film is based on the true story of a 1971 high school football team in Virginia during their first year of desegregation. Herman Boone, a black man, is picked to be the head coach of the team which causes uproar with members of the white community. When Boone named coach, the white players threaten to boycott the football program. Because of this, the previous coach Bill Yoast, a white man, decides that he will team up with Boone to coach the team.

Both the coaches and players have to go through many difficult trials and tribulations, most attributed to racism during this time period. There were many different social-psychological principles touched in this movie and in this paper I will explain three of them. First of all, the most obvious and evident social-psychological principle in this film is racism. Racism is defined as “an individual’s prejudicial attitudes toward people of a given race, or institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given race. There are countless examples of racism in the film Remember the Titans. In fact, it could be argued that the basis of the movie is racism and not football. The most extreme forms of racism in this movie are from white people directed at black people. For example, there is a scene where somebody throws a brick through Coach Boone’s window because he is black. This is an obvious sign of racism because one race is showing hatred towards another person just because they are a different color.

Another example of white on black racism in the movie is when an opposing team’s coach calls coach Boone “a monkey” and says that his players are going to “knock the chocolate out of them (Boone’s players). ” Again, this is another sign of obvious racism because the white man feels he is superior to the black people solely based on his race. While examples of racism such as this were very common in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the years the movie was based in, it is rare to find such blatant instances of racism in today’s world.

According to our text book, “In 1942 fewer than a third of all Whites (only 1 in 50 in the South) supported school integration; by 1980, support for it was 90 percent. Considering what a thin slice of history is covered by the years since 1942 or even since slavery was practiced, the changes are dramatic. ” As you can see based on these statistics, the racism depicted in Remember the Titans is accurate based on the time period the movie is set in. However, such severe racism would probably not be accurate if the film were based in today’s world.

The second main social-psychological principle illustrated in Remember the Titans is the idea of conformity. Conformity is defined as “a change in behavior or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure. ” Again, this social-psychological principle is a huge focus in the movie. In the beginning of the movie, the white players and black players would not even speak to one another. In fact, the white players threatened to boycott football entirely when they heard that their coach would be black. When the team goes to football camp before the season starts, they take two separate busses.

Originally, all the blacks sit on one bus while all they whites sit on another bus. However, Coach Boone calls everyone off the busses and makes one bus the defensive bus and one bus the offensive bus. He then makes sure each seat is shared between a white person and a black person; he also tells them that whoever they sit by will be their roommates at football camp. By forcing a white player to room with a black player, Coach Boone is already causing conformity between the team. He is changing their behaviors and beliefs toward the opposite race by putting pressure on the group.

He then takes it a step further and tells each player that they must learn something about one player of the opposite race. Failure to do so would result in extended practice time and harsher drills. This puts even more pressure on the team to conform because they will be penalized if they do not change their behaviors and beliefs toward their opposite race. Eventually, the team became very close with one another regardless of race. When they return home, the cohesion between the team dissolves after a little while. This is due to one of the predictors of conformity, public response.

When the team returns home from football camp, the public response is still negative. Everyone who did not go to football camp still has the same beliefs as before the team left. This meant that everyone who was not on the team still hated the members of the opposite race. Because of this public response, the team members who became so close with one another at football camp eventually begin to dissolve their relationships because of the public’s response. The black football players started to side with the black students because they frowned upon them for hanging out with white players.

They were called “uncle Tom’s” a derogatory term used towards blacks who sided with whites. The white players faced the same resentment when they hung out with blacks. In one instance a white student says to Gary, the white captain on the football team, “I see you found some friends at the zoo” after Gary stood up for one of his black teammates. However, the team was eventually able to overcome the public response and stick together regardless of race. The third and final social-psychological principle that was prominent in Remember the Titans is the idea of prejudice.

Prejudice is defined as “a preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members. ” Prejudice was a reoccurring theme in the film but one part of prejudice that really stood out to me was one of the motivational sources of prejudice, the realistic group conflict theory. The realistic group conflict theory is defined as “the theory that prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources. ” This is seen in the movie when the white players first find out that the school will become desegregated. They are all worried that the blacks will take their football positions and they won’t get any playing time.

This is seen again when the black players are meeting in the gym and all of the white players come in. They feel the same way and are worried that the white players will take their starting positions and limit their playing time. In both instances, the positions that the football players play are the “scarce resources. ” This causes competition between the whites and the blacks that would have not been there if it were not for these scarce resources. Later, when practice starts, some of the white players refuse to block for the black player.

They do this because they feel that this makes the black player look bad and gives their white friends an advantage to win that starting position, or the scarce resource. However, this backfires when the white player who refuses to block is thrown off the team by the team captain. As a result, he is the one who loses his starting position and gives the scarce resource over to another player. Overall, Remember the Titans has an abundance of social-psychological principles throughout the movie. The three that I felt were most prominent were racism, conformity, and prejudice, specifically the realistic group conflict theory.

Racism could be considered the entire center of the movie, even more so than football. Due to this racism, the players had to conform to one another in order to become a successful, winning football team. Their conformity is tested when they return home and face a negative public response. The realistic group conflict theory is shown when the players have to compete for scarce resources, or limited positions available on the football team. This film does a great job displaying social-psychological principles in real life situations.

Brandon Johnson
Author: Brandon Johnson
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