North Suran wrote:Methinks someone is struggling to defend white self-indulgence fluff on the tenuous basis that because the main character - and practically superflous throughout the course of the film, with Sandra "Oscar plz" Bullock hauling most of the screentime - is black, it cannot possibly be racist.
I'll not argue that the role was glorified Oscar-bait for Bullock, but I find myself wondering if you've actually seen the film, or just read the Huffington Post's Cliff Notes. I didn't really get the impression (either before, during, or after the film) that it was a vehicle by which to glorify Oher; and it seemed to me as if the screenplay was meant to be about the entire family--Oher included. But yes, I agree that Bullock was a tad over-exposed, and not in a good way!
Do most athletes need to be told that their team is their family and they must defend their family before they are able to do well on the football field?
That is outright condescension. According to The Blind Side, black people come only in three varieties; neglectful parents, street gangsters and dumb giants. But thank God for the white middle-class, ever eager to lend a helping hand to those silly negroes! Why, if it wasn't for us, they'd still be living in caves.
If you answer nothing else in this post, please let it be this: What would you do differently?
The characters were portrayed like that because that's how they are. Oher is not Socrates and his mother is not Susan B. Anthony; and inner city youths don't sit around reading Goethe. It's not like they made that shit up for the purposes of the movie--it's how things actually happened. Are we supposed to just gloss over or ignore his mother's problems? Do we turn Oher into something he's not for the purposes of the film? Do we not tell the story at all? If not, why?
If you actually watch the film it implies at the end (after one of Oher's acquaintances is shot in a gang dispute) that slums are potentially brimming with talented people who will likely never get a chance to display said talents. It's not about being "bossed around" by white people, it's about being put in an environment where it is physically possible to reach your full potential. Oher would probably never have gotten the chance he got were it not for the Tuohy family's intervention.
But yeah. I only think it's not racist because the 'main character' is black. Whatever.
