American Mythology and Ambivalent Rhetoric in Friday Night Lights

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article reads the television series Friday Night Lights as a rhetorical text that enacts and, at times, complicates the mythology of the American frontier. The analysis situates the show in the context of American political culture and focuses on images of masculine leadership and authority as embodied by quarterbacks and head coach Eric Taylor. The authors suggest that the show’s complexity shapes contemporary understandings of the “heartland” to create a rhetorical lens through which we may view contemporary contests over the meanings of the frontier. Friday Night Lights is neither wholly representative nor resistive to the frontier; rather, it is a vehicle of ambivalence through which Americans may continue to evaluate and revise their commitments to frontier mythology.