by Mawil M.
As I was scrolling through my phone overwhelmed trying to find a post or any sort of media artifact, I remembered about this show I watched a few weeks ago. It was interesting to where it took me a couple of weeks to finish. I’m not aware of how many of you are familiar with the tight end football player Aaron Hernandez. Hernandez played for the New England Patriots but unfortunately committed suicide when he was in prison. The show was mainly about his life but I noticed different topics being brought up in this show, some of these topics really surprised me because I was not expecting them in a show like this. A few topics relevant to the class that were portrayed in this show were LGBTQ, media representation, diversity and discrimination in the workplace, masculinity and changing ideas about manhood, and gender norms. Although this seems like a lot, I will dive deeper into some of these topics and explain how they all relate to each other.
The former NFL star was taken into custody for a couple of crimes which involved the assassination of a couple of friends. I remember when I first saw this on the news and I have memories of how upset people were and how we all thought he was innocent. I didn’t know the trial results before watching the show, so even when watching the show I thought he was innocent too, until I found out he wasn’t. After analyzing this show I could identify some factors that made me realize the show wasn’t only about Hernandez’s life but about the issues this show makes people aware of. Later in the show the story narrates how Hernandez was sexually harassed and raped by a man in his early childhood another thing that is mentioned in the show is that because of this accident Hernandez was gay but always hid his homosexuality by living a normal life and never publicly came out. People up to this day don’t believe any of this and it’s unfortunate that he is no longer alive to clear it up. Although even if this is true or not, there were other former, and current NFL players that publicly came out and gave their testimony about how they felt being gay in the NFL. I can imagine how they felt faking every single thing they did and how much courage it took for them to do this publicly. This ties very well with some topics discussed in class such as: masculinity and changing ideas about manhood, and gender norms. Football is a contact sport and a sport in which a lot of people have expectations and sort of a mixed mindset regarding the players. When people think of football players they would think of a tall, heavy muscular, straight man. A lot of these players felt societal pressure to follow the norms that society had put on them. Many of the football players who came out as gay were deattached from their family because their family thought this was not right while other players’ families were supportive.
When it comes to gender norms, these football players felt the pressure of following a certain model, which was the one of a football player. In the TV show players confessed that often they felt as if they didn’t belong in the sport that they enjoy playing. They also said that they started playing football as teenagers to cover up because they were gay and mislead people this way. Many said it was a lot of pressure keeping up a fake identity through many years because their close friends and teammates would have expectations for them. They were asked about a girlfriend, they were often taken to parties they didn’t want to be at and perform in activities they didn’t initially want to. Their coaches would also do the same and they were many comments about gay people being made in the field and I imagine this would set them even steps backward because they knew how their team felt about that community. There was a lot of discrimnation in the workplace toward this players that came out, they said things weren’t the same and they were treated differently. They weren’t invited to social gatherings as they used to, their coaches and teammates would look at them differently; in a disapproving and disappointing way. As if they did anything wrong for just being the person they wanted to. The media also played a huge role in this situation, both positive and negative based on the news station and publication. The football players were either encouraged and used as role models or they were looked down upon and talked about in a negative connotation. Media representation also was in control of the entire show as they were the ones producing it, they had the opportunity to take this story wherever they wanted. After saying this I will also state that even if a lot of people didn’t like the way the show went, I love how that show brought up these issues to people and this could be used as an eye opener and bring awareness to situations of this matter.