If I think Sandra Bullock seems appealing in The Blind Side, does that mean I’m a racist?
Let’s watch the trailer, and then I’ll explain…
The Movie: The Blind Side (opening November 20)
The Buzz: None. I hadn’t even heard of this film, the latest volley in Sandra Bullock’s 2009 cineplex blitzkrieg, until I saw the trailer before The Informant!
The Trailer:
The Review: Oh, let’s dance around the obvious for a minute. Let’s start by saying that as a wealthy, no-nonsense Tennessee housewife named Leigh Anne Tuohy, Sandra Bullock looks like she’s giving one of the best performances of her career. She seems focused and specific, and there’s an exciting energy in her eyes.
And hey, there’s a good song by The Fray at the beginning of the trailer.
But that’s just it. The song is called “How to Save a Life,” a title that suggests the trailer’s breathtaking paternalism.
This is the story we’re told: A poor, ignorant, and “innocent” black teenager (IBT) stumbles into the privileged world of white society. Because he’s so “backwards,” the only white people he can communicate with are small children. And even they know better than he does. One little boy even has to teach the IBT how to smile at girls so they won’t be afraid of him.
And oh, thank god for the white boy’s kindness, because the IBT’s life is hard! He’s never had his own bed, he’s never gotten much schooling, and the other black people in his life are Mean and Scary and Probably Do Drugs. It’ll take a white kid’s mercy to get him out of this mess.
Except wait. No. It’s not the white kid who can help the IBT. It’s the white kid’s pretty white mother (PWM). When the PWM learns about the IBT’s hard knock life, she uses all of her rich white magic to make it better. She even helps him learn to play football. Yes! A skinny white lady teaches someone about football!
And you know what else? IBT’s simple-minded charm affects the PWM. When her rich whitelady friends compliment her good deeds, she says, with a small choke in her voice, that it’s really him who’s changing her.
So. Ahem. Yeah.
This movie is based on a true story. A rich white family really did adopt Michael Oher, a homeless black teenager, and eventually, he became an NFL star. In the real world, that’s very moving.
In the manipulated world of movie trailers, however, Oher’s story is a disturbing revival of the “benevolent white master” trope.
There are shots of Michael studying in the Tuohy kitchen and of Leigh Anne buying him clothes. There’s a scene of Leigh Anne facing down black people in the projects and calling Michael her son. There’s a voiceover of a character telling Leigh Anne, “I think what you’re doing is so great.” And it’s all underscored by feelgood power-pop.
In other words, the trailer begs us to feel sorry for black people and feel grateful that there are white people in the world who can take of them.
A story like that dehumanizes black and white people alike. It irons the complexity out of life and replaces it with a simplistic lie.
It’s possible that The Blind Side is much more sophisticated than this trailer, but if that’s true, then the trailer is even more unsettling. No matter what the film is like, someone decided that the best way to market it was to trot out the “inspiring” notion of helpless blacks being rescued by whites. Is that a story we should find entertaining?
18 responses so far ↓
1 heatherkay // Sep 21, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I haven’t seen the trailer, so this is based on what I know from the NYTimes story the book was based on. I can’t really comment on what the trailer is selling, but I wanted to pipe in that the true story is exactly the opposite of what you saw in the trailer. It’s about the act of a single person (or family) to help another single person, without trying to get all arm-wavy about race and class.
This family didn’t help this kid because of big picture concerns about race and class. They helped this kid because they were driving past him one day when he was walking to school in the winter without a coat, and the mother thought it was unconscionable to drive past a particular person that she could help in a particular way. What followed was compassion creep as the family realized they couldn’t think of one good reason not to help someone that they could help. All motivated out of their deeply held religious beliefs.
It’s what I call the Gospel of the Sandwich. You don’t tell someone who’s hungry “That’s a shame. I wish you well.” You give them a sandwich first. As a Christian, you are expected to give those in your immediate vicinity the help you can provide.
The family took a huge amount of shit from their neighbors and fellow “Christians,” not the least of which was rooted in the scary notion that this big black man would be sharing a house with their teenage daughter. The mother handed back a helping dose of “Bless your heart” (read as “fuck you” for any Yankees who may be reading) as only a well-bred Southern woman can.
So that’s all I had to say. This really is the story of the particular helping the particular. I hope the trailer doesn’t ruin that.
2 Linda // Sep 21, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Yeah, I can’t speak to the movie, but the book is terrific, and it’s not like this at all. In fact, as I recall, the family is really queasy about being made into heroes, kind of for this reason. He really HADN’T ever had a bed. Ever. And they weren’t trying to change the world; they moved the kid into the house because he had nowhere to live, and he just sort of … stayed.
It’s a pretty great story. I’m not saying it won’t be exactly the kind of movie you fear it is, but the original story is not about a kid who is “backward” and can’t communicate. It’s about a kid who has shut down because he’s been shuttled from place to place and chooses not to communicate. He’s not dumb, and he’s not backward. He’s never been in school steadily, ever, at any time, at the time they start him out in the ninth grade. It doesn’t really have anything to do with being backward, as to the original story. It has to do with having been treated poorly, which … that particular kid was. It’s a fascinating book about how hard it is to even get a Social Security card for a kid when there’s basically very little paper evidence that he ever existed. They have to establish his identity before they can get him in school, etc.
Don’t give up on it, Mark. The mom comes off great in the book — very down-to-earth and likable. It could suck and be a travesty, but the source material is not this at all.
3 Madge // Sep 21, 2009 at 8:12 pm
That trailer looks so pandering and offensive. I haven’t read the book, so I have no introduction to the story other than the trailer… and it totally screams of Poor Black Soul Saved By Whitey. I mean, it’s great that in life this woman and family took in a destitute kid and gave him a home and a future. But if the movie is anything like the trailer, I have no interest whatsoever.
4 Mark Blankenship // Sep 21, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Hi Heather and Linda,
I’m really moved by what both of you say about the source material, and I hope the movie ends up honoring the spirit of what you describe.
Honestly, I feel like it could. It seems possible that a marketing team would believe they had to push the saccharine redemption angle in order to get people into theaters, even if the actual film isn’t nearly so sappy.
But if that is true, I still think it says something unsettling about how American audiences are perceived. Is this really the kind of thing that will get people into theaters? I mean, I like to be pandered to as much as anyone else—see: my tears at the preview for “The Time-Traveler’s Wife”—but I’ve got to believe that the national consciousness has been raised above this kind of elegant racism.
I do hope the actual film proves the trailer wrong. But even if it doesn’t, at least the real people involved in this story didn’t seem to get swallowed by the reductiveness that consumes the trailer.
5 Laura Mc. // Sep 21, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Thanks, Mark. Thought the same thing when I saw this trailer a few flicks back.
Yes, source material is a valuable consideration in the discussion.. but I also like to read your criticisms of the products as they stand in film, TV, or album form.
Bring on the snarky disdain about (mostly) white producers making a movie with a white actress in a plot which seems to glorify white generosity. I think it’s gross, and I am all kinds of ready to appreciate that you do too.
6 Linda // Sep 22, 2009 at 12:34 am
Don’t get me wrong — everything you’re all saying about the ick factor of this kind of story, I completely agree with. I’m not in any way disagreeing with Mark’s words about the trailer. I’m just talking about the relationship between the trailer and the story. I agree, Mark, that either way, the trailer may be very cynical.
All I’m trying to do is defend the source material in the hopes that the movie will be better than this. It’s a hell of a story, is all, and I really loved the book, and however they may present the movie, I want the movie to have a chance to be good.
7 Linda // Sep 22, 2009 at 12:42 am
Ooh, one more thing — the way this mom meets the kid in the first place is that he’s attending the largely white school where her husband is the football coach. And the way the kid gets into that school is via the efforts and advocacy of, if I am remembering properly, a friend’s father, who’s black and brings Michael along when trying to enroll the friend. Will that make it into the movie? I don’t know. But the ORIGINAL step on this kid’s journey, which involves getting him into this ritzy school in the first place, is not the doing of a white lady. He’s already enrolled in a mostly-white private school when she meets him, and that’s not because he met her. That’s because his buddy’s friend brought him and got him enrolled. (It’s been a couple of years since I read it, but that’s what I remember.)
8 meg // Sep 22, 2009 at 3:03 am
Oh good, I’m not the only one who had this response to the first trailer. I am a fan of the book who grew up in Memphis, so I’m a bit…sensitive to distortions of the source material. I can understand why a director might want to play up Sandra Bullock, but this isn’t a story about the transformation of a wealthy white woman’s life — it’s a story about a kid who survived total instability and grinding poverty, found a family who loved him, and happened to intersect with a trend in pro football that opened up an unbelievable future for him. It’s *his* story — his adoptive parents feature in it as his parents, not the focus of the story. (And his adoptive father plays just as important a role as his adoptive mother.) This is a real-life story that almost writes itself as a screenplay, complete with Oher’s last season at Ole Miss, in which his team beat eventual national champion Florida and engineered an upset at the Cotton Bowl.
If you want a redemption angle, I’d far prefer going with one focused on Ole Miss. If you go to the Ole Miss football stadium, you see these championship banners that just…stop a year or so after James Meredith, with only a sub-championship banner during an Eli Manning year. In terms of football, Ole Miss paid a (deservedly) heavy price for its treatment of James Meredith and would-be black students in general — and this was the school that a black son of a white alumnus decided to attend and, in fact, loved attending. A good director could do something with that.
I think one problem with this story is that it’s too multi-layered — the book weaves Michael Oher’s life in with a discussion of the evolution of the role of the left tackle in the NFL, for example. But I really hope that the actual movie can focus primarily on Oher. If I want to hear about the hopes and dreams of wealthy white women, I can go to the mall.
Short version: Read the book. It is a fascinating discussion of sports, race, class and love. I hope the movie is more like the book than the trailer would cause one to expect.
9 Christy // Sep 22, 2009 at 5:13 am
The thing that threw me off with this trailer was… Why is this large man attending elementary school? I didn’t understand. Was it a Billy Madison sort of thing? Did he not “graduate” from 5th grade? What was the deal with that?
Beyond that, though… and perhaps this shows my naivety or “rose colored glasses”… I don’t see the black/ white thing. I don’t see it because, as I was watching it, it never entered my mind.
Of course, I’m of the belief that people are people… black, white, brown, yellow, purple, whatever. Again… rose colored glasses, I’m sure.
I suppose, though, that the mere fact that it’s set in Tennessee should tell me that there is indeed an intended racial element.
Oh well. I’ll probably see it when it’s one of the free On Demand movies on Comcast.
10 Mark Blankenship // Sep 22, 2009 at 10:16 am
Hey Linda — I think we’re both on the same page, in terms of trying to parse the differences between the source material, the trailer, and the eventual film. It’s a sticky, but important set of distinctions.
@Everyone — This is a great discussion that’s also teaching me a lot about the actual events that occurred. Thanks!
11 Kristina // Sep 22, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I’m dying to know whether they’re going to market this to the black community (certainly not with this trailer) and if so, how they’ll go about doing so. I bet that trailer’s going to be the polar opposite to this one. I love Sandra Bullock, and I like her all sassy in here, but I remember reading the original article, so I hope the movie in general is far more faithful to the source material than the trailer makes it out to be.
12 Anonymous // Sep 23, 2009 at 10:54 pm
It is to bad that peoples kindnesses have to come underfire as a race issue. They are just people who helped a kid who needed help. It is sick to read more into it …….black and white have nothing to do with it.
13 meg // Sep 25, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Christy, I don’t think he’s supposed to be going to elementary school. In the book, he’s going to high school at a K-12 school. Of course, in the book Oher befriends Sean Jr. only after he meets Sean’s parents, so obviously the movie is playing around with the details.
Kristina, I wonder that too. Oher really *should* be the focus of this story — maybe he will be in other marketing.
14 vee // Sep 28, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I keep asking myself why I would even entertain a response to such an article you wrote. But that is what people like you want is for someone like me to tell you you are a moron. Based on the comments and your comments back, you apparently knew nothing about the story before ranting. But I am guessing it was too easy to get on your soap box and bash about something good to make it look bad.
You know nothing about this family but at the end of the day, one can only hope you realize, it would have been a better story if you had cared enough to know the facts. AND any good writer would know Hollywood never depicts a movie exactly the way it should be.
15 Lakita Garth // Oct 8, 2009 at 10:59 am
Mark, as an African-American female I couldn’t agree with you more. Your review of this white paternalist trailer was an honest and accurate view of how Hollywood constantly portrays blacks and whites in film. I saw the trailer weeks ago with an all black group who were asked to screen the movie. At the end of the trailer we looked at each other said, “you got to be joking! For real? You want us to promote this? Why don’t you just ask us to promote Uncle Remus and ‘The Song of the South?’” Weeks later we reluctantly screened the movie and were pleasantly surprised that the trailer was nothing like the movie! It was actually the story of the Good Samaritan, and really provokes the question, “how much do we really care about other people?” After seeing the trailer we said, “you couldn’t us to watch this.” But after having to watch the movie, I would definitely pay to see it. and maybe take a few people with me.
16 rammerjammer // Oct 26, 2009 at 9:07 pm
This whole story is completely fabricated to begin with. Just a wealthy Ole Miss alumnus and booster with a grand idea to use Oher as a cash cow, plug his beloved university on an epic scale, and help to vanquish the stigma of racism that is pinned on Ole Miss.
I’m sure there’s hundreds of homeless guys wandering in and around the Memphis area at the moment. No grand athletic abilities? Sean gives less than a damn about you. He sure didn’t give a crap about Oher’s siblings, did he?
You guys have fun. Later.
17 Jee // Nov 4, 2009 at 10:34 pm
there we go again some irritating obamaniac politically correct movie
18 Linda // Nov 14, 2009 at 10:15 pm
I have seen the entire movie, at a pre-screening in Las Vegas last Thursday, so I can speak to something the rest of you can’t. You should all know from past experience that you can’t judge a movie by its trailer. The movie was fantastic! It’s about human compassion ~ the fact is that it just HAPPENS to be a white family helping someone who just HAPPENS to be a black teenager. Why can’t you people just be color-blind as we all should be, what difference does it make what color they all are? There are rich black folks and poor white folks. It’s a TRUE story, which means they didn’t make it up to be racist. The movie is smart, funny, and skillfully written. Don’t judge it before you see it. Geez ~ it’s people like you all who perpetuate and accentuate the difference between races and people. GET A GRIP PEOPLE!! It’s a movie about kindness and compassion and success and triumph and the human spirit. Get over it!!!
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