Friday Night Lights Movie Analysis

The film Friday Night Lights (2004) is based on the real-life story of the 1988 Permian Panthers football team in Odessa, Texas. The film is a more fictionalized account of the book it’s based on, written by author H.G. Bissinger and downplays the more intense issues that plagued Odessa when Bissinger followed the team during the 1988 season. (Briley 40) The film follows Coach Gary Gaines (portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton) as he coaches the Panthers in the football obsessed town. Stress is a common in everyday life, but there comes a time when it becomes too much and sports can present stress that means “any kind of threat or pressure experienced by an athlete as a result of competition, training, pain, illness, injuries, and conflicts with

A small town, such as Odessa, it is easy to assume that everyone knows everyone. Therefore, not only are these players submitted to the stresses placed on them by their own parents, but also almost ‘pseudo-parents’ in the form of the town members. They are pressured to succeed by all those around them; they overbearingly berate them when they lose and exuberantly praise them when they win. Leff states in his article that his research is done “by focusing on the child’s point-of-view” (Leff 190). The whole film, you can see just how this pressure is getting to the boys by the sole fact it focuses on them. You see Winchell telling Gaines that his “mind isn’t right.” You see Billingsley’s father berating him constantly in the film, include an argument that involves Charlie kicking out his son’s car windows as they drive after the Midland game. Charlie, drunk and angry, throws his Championship ring out the window, frustrated because his son was supposed to be “sent down here to play football” and in his opinion, isn’t living up to that. Even Gaines can’t escape from a similar sense of pressure. While at a dinner with other big shots in town, the talk is solely focused on the team, the others trying to give Gaines unsolicited advice about what he should do with his team. He’s often accosted in public (just like the boys are), sometimes even with his family in tow, about the team. Right before they go to State, he’s approached by two bigwigs outside of a Walmart who tell Gaines to “beat” their opponents, Dallas Carter, to which Gaines retorts, “Or