The Blind Side: The Problems of the White Savior Narrative

The Blind Side (2009) is based on a true story, a nonfiction book by Michael Lewis about the sport of football. The film focuses specifically on a notable real life incident that Lewis talks about in detail, in which the former foster adolescent Michael Oher is shown being recruited by the NCAA and eventually playing with the NFL. The film shows Ohers fate as the direct result of the fact that Leigh Anne Tuohy, whose son goes to the same preparatory school where Oher had won a sports scholarship, decided to take an interest in Oher and foster him. Although the family the story may have been based on may have been commendable in their actions, the film is problematic in the degree to which it focuses on Leigh Annes desire to save Oher, and how she is contrasted with his inadequate parents. The film denies Oher agency by focusing on only the Caucasian figures, without exploring Ohers own psychology. He is merely portrayed as a helpless victim of his family situation and society.

The segmentation of the film is fairly traditional, beginning with a scene (Oher being recruited by a NCAA representative), and then flashing back into a sharply contrasting scene in which Oher is shown how he was before he met the Tuohy familysleeping on the couch, unhappy and a runaway. Immediately, the coach of Wingate Christian School is shown as kindly reaching out to help Oher because of the young mans extraordinary football ability, gaining him a scholarship to the school. Leigh Annes husband Bill is wealthy, but the couple is immediately interested in reaching out to help the young man with an altruistic impulse. The contrast between Ohers life of poverty and the overwhelmingly wealthy, white world is stark.

There is clearly prejudice in the social circle in which Leigh Anne inhabits. In one of the most striking scenes, Leigh Anne is shown passionately defending her relationship with Oher and her decision to ultimately take him into the family home. Although Leigh Anne is a somewhat overdressed Southern belle, an interior designer who wears beautiful, fashionable...…idea that is essentially a historical banner of colonialism: People of color need white people to save them (Roisin, 2017, par.3). It denies both the real and the fictional Michael Oher the ability to articulate his own story, and frame his own narrative of struggle from poverty to success. Even if it may be technically true that he was in foster care and was taken care of by a white family while he went to prep school, this is only one facet of his success. The choice to solely focus upon the white foster family seems to pander to a presumably white audience (Ash, 2015). Although it was commercially successful, this does not mean it is ethically successful.

Thus, The Blind Side is a very problematic film, in terms of the way it frames the discourse on race. The film presents the world of its white characters as far more appealing and attractive than the one in which its real life Black protagonist comes from, and as necessary for him to move forward in life. Finally, it denies him the ability to tell his…