The White Savior in Hollywood

Last night I got into a discussion about Sandra Bullock winning an Oscar(R) for her role in The Blind Side. The person with whom I had this argument railed against Sandra Bullock's win because she felt that it reinforced the idea of the "helpless black" waiting for a good white person to come and make their lives better.



Before I dive into any argument, I like Sandra Bullock and most of her work. I also liked her work in The Blind Side. That having been said, the movie, while based on a true story, does work to continue the stereotype that white people, and white people alone hold the power. The Touhy family, as depicted in the film, introduced Michael Oher to football (also perpetuating the myth that black people -- especially black men -- excel at sport, not academics) and gave him the tools to be able to succeed. In the film, he also came from a broken home where the father was not present and the mother was a drug addict. In fact, no black person was shown as being "upstanding" setting up what Herman Gray calls black exceptionalism as difference in his book Watching Race. "blackness is figured as cultural and personal qualities that transcend and, from the position of dominant spectatorship established... reinscribe whiteness as the normative site of everyday life... this exceptional blackness has to be harnessed and ultimately placed in the service of good (Gray, 168). In other words, in the cinematic adaptation of the story Michael Oher is made "good" by "white saviors" rather than by other blacks within the community from which he comes. And we must assume that the film largely gets it right as Michael Oher hasn't publicly said otherwise (at least not to my knowledge).

In movies like The Blind Side, blacks continue to be portrayed in ways that became ingrained in our cultural fabric during the Reagan era: uneducated, violent, and "welfare queens." That is certainly not to say that this is the only representation of black people in film, but with two of the most high profile movies of the year featuring black actors (Precious and The Blind Side) featuring the Reagan-ist depictions of blacks, it is worth paying attention to the images we are being shown and the ideology that is being reinforced by the film industry.