Despite the praise given to both the television series and the movie, "Friday Night Lights" is an awful representation of the real Permian Panthers from Odessa, Texas. Although the television series is a spin off of the original tale, it still overshadows the social and political truths that the story attempted to bring into the public’s view. Obviously movies generally take a different creative path when adapted from books, but this film’s message reshapes everything the book tried to stand for.
Published in 1990, H.G. Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream” follows the 1988 season of the Permian High School Panthers’ football team. Bissinger’s writing encapsulates the paralleling issues that players encountered during gameplay on the field as well as their problems physically, socially, racially, economically and politically off the field. Most of the issues that players met off the field were subject to their environment: a bigoted, ruthless, dead-end Texas town.
Permian High School is located in Odessa, Texas, where football drives disillusioned hope into the masses. Football is a wonderful way to bring people together, however, in Odessa, it puts the detrimental weight of stress on the backs of the Permian Panthers. One player, Don Billingsley, is overwhelmed with pressure due to his father’s empowering history as a state champion football player for Permian back in the 1960s. The movie touches on this briefly depicting the rough father-son relationship which eventually is healed through the game of football. In reality, this wasn’t the case. The book attempted to explain the difficult relationship as a paralleling issue of getting stuck in a dead-end town while only living positively through one’s past, which includes high school football. The film mulls over this key symbol without much emphasis or negativity, retelling the tale as positive.
Another player, James “Boobie” Miles, was a running back with utmost potential to escape the grasps of Odessa with a scholarship to play college football. However, before obtaining any sort of offer, Boobie Miles acquires a knee injury, affecting his senior season, and potential for success. Though the movie rides on this issue as a way to inspire the other players to “play for Bobbie Miles, since he can’t play anymore,” the truths are much more unsettling. After Miles’ ultimate demise, the coaches referred to him as useless and even used racial slurs while talking about him as a person. In no way does the movie relay this piece of the story correctly, ultimately depicting Miles as being just as much a part of the team as any other player, which was obviously not the case after his injury.
Football was everything that these players had. In the movie it shows football as being an inspiring format to live one’s life, especially in a small town. But Odessa belittled any opportunities or aspirations these boys had off the field, giving them purpose only on the gridiron. Although this may seem inspiring, the sport that this small town praises ravishes the lives of young men by telling them that football is the only important aspect of the world around them.
Football is by no means a terrible thing. In fact, it is in -- my opinion -- the greatest sport on Earth. But in the situation that the Permian Panthers’ were in, they lost their chances to be free minds and souls in their adolescent years due to the overpowering pressure of the town they were tied to. Anything they wanted to be or do became overshadowed by football. And that is something the movie cut out entirely, stripping any and all of Bissinger’s meanings for the sake of building a blockbuster hit.
