The Pinnacle of Respectability Politics, Reactionary Myths, and Bourgeois Humanism

Rating: 4/10 (30 January 2019)

There is nothing new in Green Book. The same story has been told many times by the Hollywood propaganda machine - improbable interracial friendships where the black man has to do all the emotional heavylifting in order to make our white protagonist slightly less racist. This "friendship" is ultimately portrayed as a mutual exchange of perspectives, where both sides manage to find common grounds with each other and come to understand their shared humanity.
This is the archetype of the liberal humanist narrative, where power structures are conveniently ignored, and where political oppression and economic exploitation is reframed as nothing more than differences in culture and perspectives. As a result, according to this ideological narrative, the purpose of (liberal democratic) politics is reconciliation and compromise, as opposed to struggling for emancipation. The problems of structural violence and economic exploitation is reframed as individual prejudice and actions, which can be changed by respectability politics ("they go low, we go high") and this bland humanist appeal to the oppressor's conscience.
This is the deeply ideological narrative of Green Book and countless other stories, from Driving Miss Daisy (1989) to The Green Mile (1999) to Gran Torino (2008) to The Help (2011), where the real problem - the irreducibly structural problem - is always erased in favor of a feel-good humanist drama that appeals primarily to middle-class white guilt. Year after year, middle-class white audience can walk out of these Hollywood films with a smug face, complacently declaring that they're glad that "racism is finally over."
Many people defend this film by saying that there's nothing inherently wrong with a comedic and light-hearted approach to serious social and historical problems. What they're saying is not wrong. In fact, some of the greatest works of cinema (and art in general) is about people finding humor and spirit in extreme positions of subjugation and poverty. Yet these artworks depict poverty and oppression with acute social awareness and compassion, instead of flattening them into bland archetypes or straight-up ignoring them, which is what Green Book is guilty of.
Here we have two characters - an educated upper-class black man who is completely isolated from the culture and social conditions of his people, and a racist working-class white man who is portrayed as a misguided good-hearted person. The class dimension is never explicitly challenged or fully confronted, especially Don's bourgeois sensibility. Instead, the film focuses on how the two can learn from each other and become better persons - Don becoming more down-to-earth and in touch with black popular music, and Tony becoming less racist. Yet the film never backs down from its pedagogy of respectability politics and never challenges its narrative of black exceptionalism. What does the film ultimately show about Don and Tony's friendship? It shows that only an exceptional, upper-class, respectable, talented black man can change the racist attitude of a white working-class man, and the film invites the audience to participate in its complacency, its classism, and its outrageous reductionism.
The problem is not the humorous approach, but the absolutely reactionary myths about racism and racists that are perpetuated in this film, and the bourgeois complacency that this film engenders, which does nothing but reinforce the continued whitewashing and cooptation of the civil rights strategy, and the perpetuation of assimilationism, respectability politics, and reconciliationism.