Ghetto Fabulous Sunday School

Rating: Null/10 (7 June 2010)

"The Blind Side" finds a wealthy, white and paternalistic Christian family deciding to civilise a helpless, slow-witted, African American kid. The kid doesn't speak, is a kind, gentle bear, and spends the film literally doing whatever the white characters tell him to do, never once expression an opinion, thought or exhibiting any agency or free will.
As the film unfolds, we are shown black people who are unable to help themselves, learn that the white man's way is best, that blacks should be grateful of white aid and that success comes to those who "are good" and "don't do drugs". The film tries to say that privileged whites should help downtrodden blacks, but of course this is easy to say when the black kid being helped turns out to be a star sportsman who effortlessly succeeds on the field.
Strangely, "The Blind Side's" central character - Big Mike (Quinton Aaron) - is largely a non-entity. A giant mute kid, passive but obedient, Mike bumbles about like a tamed grizzly bear in a polo shirt. Elsewhere the film employs racist stereotypes, is condescending and has absolutely no concern for its black character, who plays second fiddle to actress Sandra Bullock, who plays a kindly matriarch with a hot-line to God. Through Bullock, white audiences pat themselves on the back, able to do what's right and decent by proxy.
During flashbacks, Big Mike is shown to have come from a supremely depressing black community. Drug addicts, prostitutes, gangsters, junkies with hopeless lives....the kid's past is but an amalgamation of clichés, a one-dimensional horror-show cynically designed to make his transition into white-hood smooth and frictionless. A better film would have perhaps shown the troubles the kid has fitting into his new white life. Would have really examined the causes of poverty and abandonment. Would show how Bullock's very privilege relies on an unspoken social agreement which essentially perpetuates and sanctions an underclass. Would show how Big Mike feels being the only black kid in school. Would have given him a personality. Would have examined the way sports exploits impoverished black kids. Would have examined the downsides of the white family's Christian fundamentalism. Would have portrayed its characters in a less one-dimensional light (though the Aryan Brotherhood must be pleased to see the black mute gentle giant stereotype making a return).
But perhaps such a film would have made no money. Afterall, "Blind" made a staggering 400 million dollars and counting at the box office, proving that people love its very Christian world-view. This is the wholesome view of smiley-faced missionaries who go out to Africa to help god's impoverished children with an open heart. A view which ignores the church's brutal history, its continuing negative effect on the continent (see the rise of brutal church sanctioned homophobia), ignores that for every dollar of western "aid" sent to Africa a dollar fifty and more comes back in debt repayment, ignores the way western "Christian" nations control trade policies and the lives of peoples in the developing world, never-mind how privilege at home in America relies upon a class system. And all the while, with demented irony, Jesus Christ's supposed home land of Israel, the site every crazy politician believes the Second Coming will occur, receives more western aid than all of Latin America, Africa and the West Indies combined. Hooray for a little Christian compassion.
A more moral film would have probably had Big Mike beat the crap out of Bullock, embrace every racist cliché, get their daughter pregnant, rob their house and steal their car. I'm sure there's something in the Bible which advocates that. Thou shall enact vengeance on hypocritical women or something. Proverbs 21:19 I think. Or maybe not.
7/10 – The always likable Sandra Bullock would win an Oscar for her performance in this film.