Blind Side: Race and Class all tied together in this Sandra bullock Film

Isn’t it funny that, during the reign of the democrats the republicans need and provides a feel good movie? Or rather is it ironic that it got realized after Bush was no longer president? The conspiracy seeker in all of us looks at this movie with scepticism especially when the lead female role is being played by Sandra Bullock and her husband is Tim McGraw. Bullock, a white lady takes in a black misfit and calls him son and we watch his steady advancement through high school. The young man becomes a star athlete with a social retardation. He is like a young pit bull protective of his owners yet timid and coward to the rest of the world. The young giant is seemingly resolute to remain inside his shell that has spared him the trauma of watching his mother’s wantonness and her “health problem” (dependency on drugs).

This Sarah Palin feeling movie manages to open and peek into issues of race and gender, as it struggles through the stereotypes of black men in the projects not knowing their way out, women who carry children and loose them to the foster care system and children who feel attached to drug addicted mothers as well as the difference between the upper and lower classes in Memphis. Although so much of the movie looks at the modern day experiment between man and the great ape examining how with an influx of money the silly black boy can become one of the America’s great NFL players, it also drives us through the two community erecting the stereotypes of hope and failure that permeates the lower community and parallels the affluence within the other.

Here in this aesthetically pleasing and well structured political feel good movie the young hero plays second fiddle to the white mother who creates a haven for a boy she meets in the rain and delivers a poignant heads up to the woman who gave birth to him his twelve siblings and could not provide for them or herself. Bullocks character labels herself a rebel who juggles an interior decorator job, many charity benefits, manages to be a soccer mom and a completely functioning wife assisted by a cup of coffee. But it is the rebel in her that provides a home for Big Mike played by Quinton Aaron adopts him so he can get a license and receive a scholarship to University of Mississippi.

But even throughout this Quaker like event I kept thinking to myself does this movie work if this real life story isn’t deemed as a political statement, albeit it is a success story about a black man in the U.S.A?

The movie posited that this talented black boy could not make it to this position in life if he had not been awarded/ granted the privileges of a change of social status. That the education he was receiving was in fact finding ways to get him through the system unto the streets and a part of the criminal fraction that lurks in the projects. His destiny was changed from dying too young by a woman with money and the right politics.

The movie’s scaffold is on the opposites of the American society and tells the tale of decrepit public school system that does not foster the development of the talented black man. This movie without exposing the school that the young football star attended holds the stereotype of bad teachers and a burdened system as the structure of the public school system in America. The All-American athlete cannot rise from these gutters unless he is removed pitied and hardened by a rebel Christian republican. Suddenly, the politics of this movie shrieks at reality, for although it is posited on stereotypes there is still an ounce of truth within this perfect idealistic movie. The education afforded the black talent in the projects is no guarantee of success. The success of any black man in the projects is based on luck or determination to avoid the choke hold of poverty and crime and the deviant behaviour associated with the lifestyle.

But why does this movie still leave that insipid taste lingering in mouth?

It is the way the black boy reminded me of King Kong. He was labelled as scoring in the lowest of percentile in most areas except that of protective instincts. He was either the white family’s monkey or a well trained pit bull. The image of this slow moving black spectacle in the white school brought there by a janitor to help his son and the boy’s friend (who just came for a ride) find their way out of the projects and became a career booster for the young coach as he lifted the football game of the team. Although the story could just as well have been the smaller boy, it became about the young giant. And it here that the reality begins to seems so primeval. Yet this is a true story. A true Jungle book story of a black man.

Now I must say that I am not all averse to the blacks receiving help from a white person or their family. But I am opposed to help becoming a story a tale a movie to show off this kind of goodness. a story that does not offer balance. This story says that had I not saved this boy, this docile creature who was somewhat of a recluse, he would have ended up on the street as a villain and soon a victim of the life of crime.

Here in Jamaica there are many athletes who have moved away from the slum of the garrisons to live in upper class homes to ensure that they attended the elite or at least a school with a good extra-curricular program. And I see the necessity of the program and its value but this movie looses it s value for me in its political agenda, especially since I am not watching any movies about Shelly-Ann Fraser.

This movie loses its value in its desire to present the situation from a republican Christian standpoint. It loses its value in the Madonna style it delivers the boys salvation. It seems as if its task is to propel like minded rebellious Christian couples to go into the projects and offer some kind of hope wrapped up in flannel and GMC trucks and football scholarship. “If you ever go there you will want to take one home”. Ah the voice of affluence. Isn’t kind of like the way the whites came to Africa offering salvation and brought with it a Christian mind that this the good thing to do and caused decades of trauma.