Queering Street: Homosociality, Masculinity, and Disability in<i>Friday Night Lights</i>

Abstract

Gender and ability are integral to the cultural significance of sport, but contemporary media depictions of high school athletes rarely direct attention to the interaction of these issues. In contrast, the critically acclaimed television series Friday Night Lights (FNL) presents a complex and problematic portrayal of masculinity, disability, and sport. Our analysis explores how its disability imagery and themes obscure displays that inform a subtext of homoerotics. Bringing queer and disability theory together, we craft a lens for reading the show's coordination of compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory heterosexuality. Using Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's analysis of homosociality to discuss specific erotic triangles in FNL's first season, we examine how its displays of homosocial desire and disability interact. Erotic triangles appear throughout the series and generate much of the show's dramatic appeal. A central plotline of the first season revolves around high school quarterback Jason Street, who becomes quadriplegic after a football injury in the pilot episode. Street's disability changes his relationships with the other main characters and dramatically transforms his place in the show's erotic triangles. Reading Street's disability story as a queer narrative, we emphasize the series’ display of contests between homosociality and homoerotics, emasculation and rehabilitation, and athletics and disability.