Boobie Miles: Failure and Friday Night Lights. (August 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sheppard, Samantha N.
• Other Names: Sheppard Samantha N. guest-editor.; Sirvent Roberto D. guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of sport and social issues. Volume 43:Number 4(2019)
• Page Start: 319
• Page End: 340
• Publication Date: 2019-08
• Subjects: Friday Night Lights -- Boobie Miles -- racial icon -- sports -- film -- failure; Sports -- Periodicals; Sports -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 796.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0193723519840501
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0193-7235

Abstract

This essay examines the sporting failures and racial iconicity of James "Boobie" Miles, whose athletic performance of defeat on the gridiron is chronicled in H. G. Bissinger's bestselling nonfiction book Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, A Dream (1990), Peter Berg's film adaptation Friday Night Lights (2004), and Big K.R.I.T.'s songs and music videos "Hometown Hero" from his album K.R.I.T. Wuz Here (2010) and "Boobie Miles" from his album 4eva N a Day (2012). Examining how the film displaces defeat, locating its effects and affects in the injured running back, I unpack the ways (Black) popular culture reclaims Boobie's embodied failures on screen as a site of rhetorical agency and oppositional theorizing.