The Great Debaters: A Coach's Review - 12/22/2007
You may think debate as exciting as Study Hall: bookworm nerds detached from reality finding thrills in research and education. Truth be known, Academic Debate is the most adrenaline-flowing sport a young person can be involved in. It’s nice to see a major motion picture give the activity its proper prominence in The Great Debaters.
Denzel Washington stars as Debate Coach Henry Tolson, a poet and professor of all-black Wiley College in Texas (Washington also directs). Tolson recruits four students to excel as the college’s 1935 champion debaters. More than coaching debate, Tolson teaches his students to “find and keep [their] righteous mind,” particularly in response to the trials of the segregated South. The Great Debaters walks in the footsteps of Dead Poets Society: against-the-grain teacher stretching his pupils to their academic limits in the face of opposition from the school, the community, and even the local sheriff.
But The Great Debaters follows another template that makes it all the more delightful: that of a sports popcorn flick. I have been laboring for 15 years to convince people that debate resembles sports more than “extracurricular activities.” The Great Debaters vindicates my pitch. Tolson’s debate team learns quickly the strategic demands of the debater and the anxious rush of taking the podium. The camera focuses on shaking knees and lock-jaw as debaters approach the stage, and viewers can’t help but share the angst of the public speaker. Coach and students alike do the same soul searching as the football athletes in Facing the Giants. The competitive spirit thrives in the Wiley Debate Team, eventually finishing the year at prestigious (and all-white) Harvard University. A golden trophy awaits the winning team!
As a debate coach, there is much I love about The Great Debaters. The activity itself is not the divisive separator some may think. Quite the contrary: Debate brings the most polarized people together under the banner of truth. The movie, in fact, opens with the contrast between the truth-seeking sermon of James Farmer (played by Forest Whitaker) and the risky night life of back-woods bootleggers. Later, at a social celebration of a debate victory, Farmer, who is the father of Tolson’s prize researcher, takes issue with Tolson’s left-wing politics, and the two opinionated professors spar their own round of debate. The two come from totally opposite spiritual spectrums, too. Farmer is an evangelical preacher concerned about negative influences on his son. Tolson is a union organizer who substitutes his suit for rags in order to “be with the people.” Regardless of their differences, their uncompromising love for justice and academics make their “parlor parley” all the more enjoyable.
As with every sport, competitors must free themselves from the grip of fear. They say most people fear public speaking more than they fear death. Viewers won’t be disappointed to see competitors in The Great Debaters grapple with complex spiritual issues of life. The undertones were spellbinding. Black spirituals sang through the movie. Tolson makes his students recite over and over a Wiley Debate Chant: “Who is the Judge? The judge is God. Why is He God? Because He decides who wins or loses.” Other subplots wrap the movie in spirituality, like the Harvard butler who knows more about Satyagraha than the debaters, the doctrine of truth and fairness practiced by Mahatma Ghandi.
Fear is explored in gory detail. A Negro is beat into submission in a local crackdown on labor unions. On the way to a tournament, the debate team gets lost and drives up on a lynching. The camera slowly pans the lynched man lit on fire, and the students (and theater goers) struggle to get the visual out of their minds. These shocking scenes do more than just keep young viewers out of the theaters (this earns a PG-13 rating); they make strong points about the power of fear and manipulation, especially in the segregated South. I saw the screening twice, once as a guest of film critic Paul Asay of Plugged In and once with my wife the next day. The first time I came away disappointed with the heavy subplots of racism and segregation, feeling like they were too much, sort of forced on the viewers. The second time I grew a deeper appreciation for the heavy reality of African American history, a story of great emotional and intellectual magnitude. Just the kind of conflict for academic debaters to handle.
You see, academic debate presses young people to open their minds to the most challenging truths of the day. Tolson recognizes that he is training up a group of students who will become advocates for justice in the future, but he also struggles to keep balance between what he can and can’t do as a black teacher. He begins his class writing “REVOLUTION” on the chalkboard while reciting Harlem Renaissance poets, but later in the movie he insists on taking “one step at a time” when told his team must debate a white team on an off-campus facility. You get the sense that all the black men and women in the movie are fighting a common enemy: racial injustice. After James Farmer Jr., 14, witnesses the horrific and evil lynching, he cries to his teammate, “We’re just a bunch of Negroes who argue on things we all agree about!” He is emotionally challenged, “No, you can’t say such things! Not you, James!” Few movies capture the personal and cultural value conflicts of injustice like The Great Debaters.
The graphic portrayal of fear will likely turn people off, as will a sexual encounter between two debaters. My wife and I were disappointed to see Henry Lowe, clearly a slick-talking womanizer who starts the movie making out with someone’s wife, convince the debate team’s only female debater to sleep with him. Hollywood often belittles love making to one-night stands, but this fling doesn’t continue without natural consequences. [Spoiler Warning] Most realistically, this sexual escapade ends with broken hearts, embarrassing apologies, and even a slap across Henry’s face (which brought theater applause in both audiences). I’m pleased with how this mature situation (also a PG-13 maker) ends up.
I rest to know that most viewers will not be debate coaches like myself. However, I cannot help but comment on the disappointing debate round in the end. A typical team-policy debate round lasts 1-1/2 hours, but the Denzel/Oprah machine cut it down to a quick 10 minutes. The ending speeches were pure appeals-to-sympathy full of fallacies and dropped arguments, and the Harvard debaters were just as guilty as the underdogs from Wiley College. I cringed at the speeches and especially the fact that no one was flowing (note taking) during the rounds. Our chant at Training Minds Debate Camps is “Flow every time, that, my friend, is the bottom line.” I would have been tempted to give the Harvard/Wiley round a double-loss. But, with the help of symphonic background music, viewers will surely applaud the climactic ending.
I walked out of the theater feeling great about The Great Debaters. Not only did I resonate with Tolson’s debate coaching, I admired the handling of the movie's confrontational issues. It comes as a surprise to the viewers that these debaters in real life became great leaders after their college debate careers were over: a minister, a female lawyer, a civil rights leader, and a poet/activist. It does not surprise me, though. I know first hand that students who take on the challenging sport of debate become policy makers and culture shapers of the future.
More about The Great Debaters:
Chris Jeub is president of Training Minds Ministry, an educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose goal is to train young people to think, speak and persuade. He and a team of coaches host the nation's largest debate camps where hundreds of students train to compete in academic debate.
Mr. Jeub is taking comments about the movie and this review on his family website at http://jeubfamily.com/2007/12/22/the-great-debaters/.
