Remember the Titans

Remember the Titans is a very good movie. It meets my first criterion by being about something that matters to me. It isn’t football this time, although football does matter to me. It is about overcoming alienation and learning to belong together.

There are some very nice bonuses as well. The first is that it is true (mostly). The second is that the DVD has a commentary track by the two coaches, Herman Boone and Bill Yoast, who are the subjects of the movie. The third is that there are very good performances by the main characters. Boone is played by Denzel Washington; Yoast by Will Patten. Gerry is played by Ryan Hurst, Julius by Wood Harris. They are terrific.

How the Titans Came Together

I want to tell two stories. The first is the story the movie tells about the racial integration of T. C. Williams High School in Virginia. Neither the black players nor the white players wanted the school to be racially integrated, but it happened anyway and in their first year together, they won the state championship. The second is about my own quest to understand what the hell is going on in the two crucial scenes of this movie. I worked on that a long time so I really deserved to have something good happen, but the truth is, I got some very timely help and I want to tell about that as well.

What is “the event” in this movie? It isn’t the climax, in which The T. C. Williams Titans win the state championship on the final play of the game. “The event” is long before that. It is before the season starts. There is a sequence of three events that take place at training camp. They are bands 9 and 11 if you happen to have the DVD.[1] The first is an open confrontation between two defensive stars, Julius Campbell (black) and Gerry Bertier (white). The second, several nights later, is two repetitions of a running play to the right side of the offensive line. The first is bad. The second is good. That second play is “the event.” The state championship is an anticlimax.

We need to start with the first confrontation between Julius and Gerry. It takes place at all because Coach Boone seen the dislike of the white players for the black players and vice versa and assigns them to be roommates and to get to know each other. Some do, but Gerry and Julius do not. Coach Boone raises the pain level. Until you do confront each other, the whole team will be practicing three times a day. In mid-summer Pennsylvania heat and humidity.

That is what leads Gerry, ultimately, to engage Julius. Here is how that actually goes. Then I want to tell you how it would have to go for people like me to understand it.

Gerry: Honestly, I think you’re nothing. Nothing but a waste of God-given talent. You don’t listen to nobody, man—not even Doc or Boone. Shiver push [if you don’t know what that means, see section two: I didn’t either] on the line every time, man, and you blow right past‘em. Push ‘em. Pull ‘em. Do somethin’. You can’t run over everybody in this league, and every time you do, you leave one of your teammates hangin’ out to dry—me in particular.

Julius Why should I give a hoot about you, huh? Or anyone else out there.

Julius:You want to talk about waste, you’re the captain, right?

Gerry: Right.

Julius: You got a job?

Gerry: I’ve got a job.

Julius:You been doing your job?

Gerry: I’ve been doing my job.

Julius: Then why don’t you tell your white buddies toblock for Rev. (starting quarterback, black) better, ‘cause they have not blocked for him worth a plugged nickel and you know it. Nobody plays, yourself included. I’m supposed to wear myself out for the team? What team? No. No. What I’m going to do is, I’m going to look out for myself and I’m going to get mine.

That’s the confrontation. Julius wants to talk about racist football. Gerry wants to talk about stupid football. You can’t have both of those conversations at the same time, so let’s take Gerry’s first. Gerry’s criticism of Julius’s football goes like this:

Gerry: Shiver push on the line every time, man, and you blow right past ‘em. Push ‘em. Pull ‘em. Do somethin’. You can’t run over everybody in this league, and every time you do, you leave one of your teammates hangin’ out to dry—me in particular.

This is straight up football criticism. Let’s imagine Julius says this:

Julius: Yeah, you think you’re so hot. I have to try to get through the line because I know there’s no help at linebacker. That’s what you’re supposed to do and you’re not doing it.

But that’s not what Julius says because football isn’t what he wants to talk about. He wants to talk about racism and he takes an angle on Gerry that flummoxes him completely. Julius defines “fighting racism” as part of the captain’s job. Take a look at that dialogue again. Having established that Gerry is the captain and that he thinks he is doing his job—which, by the way Gerry defines completely in football terms—Julius says, essentially, “If you’re the captain, then you are implicated in the racism of your white friends on offense. Your complete failure to deal with that leaves me no choice but to freelance from my position on the line.”

So we see that the football issues and the racial issues are related, even when, as in this confrontation, they whiz past each other with not so much as a glance. We see no effect at all on anyone in that scene.

Bad Play, Good Play

There was an effect, though, and we see it in the two plays in the middle of the night practice. It is easy to call the two plays “doing it wrong” and “doing it right.” If we do that, we can ask the two useful questions: a) what is the difference between the plays, and b) why?

At this point, I introduce, tardily, Ray Budds. Ray is an old friend of Gerry’s. He is the right offensive end, so he plays opposite Julius. He is deeply racist, and having been humiliated in front of the whole team by Coach Boone has not improved his attitude. He has to play at a certain level in camp or he won’t be on the team, but he doesn’t have to play very well and he certainly doesn’t have to do the kind of blocking that will allow the black quarterback, Rev Harris, to run plays successfully.

In the bad play, Rev pitches to running back Petey Jones. Here is where it gets hard to see what is going on. We know that Julius does not defend against this play the way he should, but we don’t see that. What we see is Ray not blocking for Petey—it is the merest charade of a block—but Petey makes a sizeable gain, nevertheless. Petey shouldn’t gain much, because Ray doesn’t block much, but Petey has to gain a lot so we will be ready to see the change in Julius’s game. I’m not being critical. You simply can’t show everything at once.

That’s the bad play. Before the next play, the good play, Gerry gets as close to face to face with Ray as their faceguards will allow and he chews Ray out in language that can be heard all over the field. Ray’s humiliation by Gerry is, in fact as prominent has his humiliation by Coach Boone at the beginning of camp. Here’s what it sounds like.

Gerry: What was that, Ray? Whatever it is, it ain’t blockin’.

Ray: Give me a break, Gerry. (“as an old and white friend,” I think, from the tone)

Gerry: You want a break? I’ll give you a break. If we get to Rev just one time, I’ll hit you so hard by the time you come to, boy, hey, you’re going to need a new haircut! Let’s play ball, fellas.

Before we look at the good play, let’s look at what is going on here. Remember that Julius challenged Gerry to “tell his white buddies to block for Rev better.” So the naïve viewer, that’s me in this case, expects to see “the white buddies,” that’s Ray in this case, blocking for Rev. My expectation that we are going to see some white players protect Rev is sharpened by Gerry’s language to Ray, “If we get to Rev just one time…” Of course they don’t get to Rev even one time because Rev is pitching the ball to Petey. So I still don’t see what I am looking for.

Here’s what I do see. They run the same play again. Ray ties Julius up in a block. Julius fights the block off and initiates a mammoth collision with the ball carrier in the backfield. Note: When I first wrote this, I had no idea what “shiver push” meant, but I could tell that whatever Gerry was telling Julius to do in Band 9 is what Julius actually does do in Band 11. Whatever “shiver push” is—you’re looking at it.

So the easy part is saying what is different between the bad play and the good play. Julius slips the block—a much better block than on the bad play, by the way—and stops the ball carrier. Now we come to why it is different. It isn’t different because Ray finally blocks better, although he does. It isn’t different because no one gets to Rev although they had been getting to him before. It is different because Julius has seen his question, “What team?” answered. He has seen “What don’t you tell your white buddies…?” performed. As a result, he has forsaken, “I’m going to get mine…” and has embraced “shiver push on the line.”

However confusing the development, the outcome could not be clearer. Julius had said to Gerry, “If you are serious about being captain—and that will require you to take responsibility for the racist laxity of your old friends—I will get serious about playing my position.” That’s the deal. In ripping up Ray, Gerry met his end of the implicit bargain. In stuffing Petey, Julius met his end. The state championship was, at that point, a foregone conclusion.

How I Figured It Out

First, I worked over these two bands, 9 and 11, year after year. I am sure that helped. Somehow. I followed the direction the words took me. They went nowhere, but I followed them anyway because that's what I know how to do. When I began to follow the visuals rather than the words, I got some help. The words, for instance, do not lead you to the understanding that Julius is waiting for Gerry to step up as captain before he, himself, will step up as a football player.

The words don’t, but the pictures do. If you look back up at Gerry’s rant at Ray, you will see a section in green. It is during that part of Gerry’s speech that the camera pulls away from Gerry and Ray entirely and focuses on Julius’s face. Julius is listening intently; he is focused on the confrontation. The guy who runs the camera is trying to tell us something. He is trying to tell us that this confrontation is not about Gerry and Ray. It is about Julius. There it is on the screen for anybody to see, but I’m a word guy, not a picture guy, and I didn’t see it.

However, it turns out that I have a couple of cards up my sleeve. I have a friend in Florida who is married to a football coach. Last week, my thrashing around about Remember the Titans reached my friend, Bonnie Klein, who was an English major and whose sense of how narratives are constructed is considerably better than mine. She took my lament about “shiver push” to her husband Bill, the football coach, who told her what it meant and why it actually made football sense as it was used in the movie.

Following Bill’s ideas about “shiver push” and Bonnie’s ideas about how the plot is shaped, I wound up where I am today. I’m a happy camper. I can put away Remember the Titans, which I have been carrying in my files all these years as a cold case. I know why they do what they do and I understand why they couldn’t do more. And there is always the chance that I will come to the next such dilemma just a little smarter.








[1] The speech which Coach Boone gives on the Gettysburg battlefield was, in fact, given by a park tour guide. Whoever that guide is, he’s not getting paid enough. My appreciation also to the people who gave that speech to Denzel Washington in the movie. It’s on band 10.