ARTS
24.09.2011
www.concrete-online.co.uk
Friday Night Lights - H.G. Bissinger
M
ost people in the UK are bewildered when they see the spectacle of American football on a television screen. A sport which involves teams of more than 50 heavily armoured players running for five seconds before stopping for a minute, all the while surrounded by thousands of screaming fans, cheerleaders and brass bands, is simultaneously awe inspiring and laughable. Somehow, H. G. Bissinger commits this maddening energy to the page and reveals that when compared with the swirling storm of the players’ lives, what we see on the field is a peaceful place. Friday Night Lights is H. G. Bissingers’ record of a year in the late 1980s spent in the small oil drilling town of Odessa, Texas; home to the Permian Panthers. Biassinger’s 17-yearold players might easily slip into obscurity in any other country. Here they are held up as the last surviving symbol of the town’s great achievements back in the days when Texas was the only place a decent man could get his oil from. Taking pride of place in front of each player’s house is a sign letting the whole world know where the likes of star running back Boobie Miles and team captain Brian Chavez live. Bissinger has a talent for describing
This Week... In Arts History Concrete Arts wishes Stephen King a Happy Birthday!
the players’ movements so that, while the intricacies may be murky to those uninitiated in football, a relative novice can picture the plays as if they were there under the blaring lights themselves. He moves elegantly from the frantic action of the football field to the unchanging turmoil around it. Racial segregation, the boom and bust of Texas’ oil industry and America’s skewed opinions on education and sporting legacy all play out. At one point a court hearing is held to determine the grade of Gary Edwards in Algebra II. The court room is packed and frothing because he is a star player for the championship contender team Dallas Carter and this grade determines whether he is eligible to continue playing. If he had been a concert pianist or ballet dancer, the room would have been empty. Bissinger’s greatest achievement is to create empathy for players without sacrificing any of his factual, journalistic integrity. He never glosses over offensive lineman Jerrod McDougal’s casual racism or Boobie Miles’ brash egotism. But when the former embraces his mother and cries after a hard-fought loss or the latter is callously relegated to the bench because he’s no longer a star player, we
S
eptember 21st marks the birthday of one of the most prolific writers in living memory. With forty nine published novels, nine short story collections and over one hundred film accreditations to his name, at sixty five Stephen King is both a lesson in productivity and a securely lodged pop cultural phenomenon. Born in 1947 King was raised by his mother alone, his father having left to ‘buy cigarettes’ when King was two years old and failing to return. His lucrative literary bent became evident at an early age, as he wrote and sold stories to classmates based on various films he had seen in Elementary school. Though discovered and forced to return his profits by his teachers, King continued to write and was first independently published at eighteen with I Was a Teenage Grave Robber. After graduating from the University of Maine with a B.A in English, King initially took to teaching, publishing his short stories in men’s magazines in order to make ends meet. Indeed, it was not until the publication of Carrie in 1974 that King was enabled to resign from his teaching job and take up writing as a full time profession. The novel today remains one of King’s most simultaneously popular and notorious works. Described by King as having a “surprising power to hurt and horrify”, it is currently one of the most frequently banned books in United States schools, a fact con sidered by some to be something of an approbation of the effectiveness of King’s writing ability. Publishing success followed and has stayed with King throughout his career. The Shining, King’s third published novel released
18
H.G. Bissinger, journalist and author of Friday Night Lights forgive their flaws thanks in part to Bissinger’s brutally honest writing style. In his own words, Bissinger uses “the clear eyes of a journalist” and, thanks to them, Friday Night Lights is still held in contempt by many in Odessa. Do not read this book to try and learn the game or feel uplifted because it does not deliver there. What it does portray is how the sport can bring out the best, and the worst, from those who live their lives around it. David Murphy in 1977, and the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film adaption are both considered classics of the horror genre, Kubrick’s adaption named the scariest film of all time by Channel Four. Adaptions of King’s work have since produced. Some of the most critically and commercially acclaimed films of all time, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile both consistently listed as some of the best loved films of the last two decades. King suffered his own personal horror in 1999 when he was struck from behind by a minivan; his resulting injuries caused him to announce his retirement in 2002, but has since resumed writing. His body of work is so extensive that it is near impossible to concisely summarise, and one that shows little sign of being complete. Sophie Witts
Stephen King’s infamous It, brought to life on screen by Tommy Lee Wallace in 1990