Remember The Titans, is a movie based on actual events that occurred in 1971. Remember the Titans is about how a black high school and a white high school were closed, and the students from both were forced to attend the same school under federal mandate to integrate. In the movie the football team is the main focus because a black man is hired to coach the team over a successful white coach. The team becomes one as the players and parents learn to trust each other, and get along.
The reason I Remember The Titans is because I absolutely love sports, I love the movie, and I felt that this movie was a great fit for the topics we have covered. Remember the Titans shows many different interpersonal communication concepts such as, interdependence, disconfirming messages, defensiveness, supportiveness, and power. Remember the Titans displays several different forms of interpersonal communication concepts. As stated by Kory Floyd (2009), interdependence is “a state in which each person’s behaviors affect everyone else in the relationship. ” (Floyd, 2009).
The movie reflects this concept in the scene where two high school boys, one being black, and one colored boy becoming best friends and seeing each other for who they truly are, this made the other segregated boys to follow their lead. Another scene from Remember the Titans that reflects an interpersonal communication concept is when, a fight breaks out between the whites and the blacks in the halls at the new school. They were verbally abusing each other and not saying degrading words to each other. Which, stated in Floyd (2009) is called disconfirming messages, and verbal abuse (Floyd, 2009).
One Interpersonal communication concept that is displayed greatly all throughout the movie is defensiveness. “Defensiveness is the excessive concern with guarding oneself against the threat of criticism” (Floyd, 340). In the scene when the whites and blacks schools join together and the new school hired an African American football coach. This caused the white football players to stand up for their previous coach and defend him for the different things they had accomplished together. Another scene from the movie that showed defensiveness is when a white guy and a black boy get into a fight, each of their friends are there to back
them up and be there for them. By the friends jumping in and helping their buddies, it shows that they were being defensive. “In contrast, supportiveness is a person’s feeling of assurance that others care about and will protect him or him” (Floyd, 340). In most of the same scenes that show defensiveness, there is supportiveness. Supportiveness occurs throughout the movie also. One scene that really sticks out to me when I think about supportiveness is when, one of the boys got into a car accident, he was still supporting his friends that were playing football, even though he could not be there.
His teammates would also come see him before and after games, to show their support to him for a fast recovery. The final interpersonal communication concept that was shown throughout the movie Remember the Titans is power. Power is the “ability to manipulate, influence, or control people or events” (Floyd, 363). Power is displayed all throughout the movie in many different ways, even though power is said to be context specific. When the schools are split and they are integrated into one high school, the movie displays power by each school showing how they feel about the situation.
Another example is when the integrated football team is finally getting along, and they are huddled up at practice shouting what each teammates strengths are. I felt that both scenes displayed power because it took power within each and every person to react the way they did, and it also took power for the football team to finally come together as one and be accepting of one another. Even though there are many different concepts of interpersonal communication performed throughout the movie, the concepts that I chose to discuss were all very important, and helped me further understand each concept.
The concepts, interdependence, disconfirming messages, defensiveness, supportiveness, and power, have not only been displayed throughout the movie Remember the Titans, but have also been displayed in many different ways throughout my life. I have witnessed interdependence in my life in many different ways. One way that I have really noticed interdependence in my life is when I had the opportunity to go to college away from home, but I did not take the opportunity to do so because I did not want to be away from my family and friends. They mean too much to me, to ruin or lose my relationship with them.
When I was in high school I witnessed a lot of disconfirming messages, often this happened during sporting events, students would often yell these messages to the athletes that were playing. Also, at sporting events I witnessed a lot of supportiveness and defensiveness. Being at the events and cheering for our fellow classmates was being supportive. Defensiveness was displayed at sporting events when referees, or umpires would make “bad” calls, the students would defend our team in many different ways. Power is a concept that I have seen throughout my life in many different ways also.
Power to me is the will to accomplish something important to you. I have displayed, and witnessed power in school, in sports, and in personal experiences in life. No matter what comes along in life, power is a very important interpersonal communication concept to display. Throughout life, interpersonal communication concepts occur all the time, even though you may not realize it. Just like how I did not realize all of the different concepts that were displayed in Remember the Titans. References Floyd, Kory. (2009). Interpersonal Communication. 314-345.
