It took me a forever and a half to see The Blind Side. Wasn’t the sort of thing I cared anything about seeing on the big screen. I’ve never been a big Sandra Bullock fan. Eventually I heard enough about it to have watched it by osmosis, more or less. So what was the hurry?
Well, Lea and I finally got to it last night. It hit me mostly levelly. I expected to find it touching, funny, and treacly in places. Check, check, and check. Bullock won an Oscar, so she must leave her soul on the screen acting. Check. No surprises so far.
More than anything else, though, I think what I’m appreciating the morning after are its skillful and authentic depictions of how the characters navigated the occasional issue of race relations. It would have been easy to err to one side or the other here, either papering over the pockets of actual discomfort some people feel; or making the Tuohys, and Leigh Anne in particular, such angels in a cauldron of white devils, defending their decisions at every turn against the racist rage that still seethes almost wholly unchecked in some pockets of the Confederacy South.
Instead, it’s just genuine. The buzzing relative calling to inform the Tuohys that there’s a huge colored boy on their Christmas card is funny because it rings true. Fellow wouldn’t say a word at a luncheon, and has no evil thought in his body, but a few beers lubricate just enough for him to give voice to the fact that he “noticed.” Leigh Anne’s ceaselessly civil but unambiguously fierce rhetoric with her pack of doyennes at lunch was a perfect depiction of a furious Southern matron.
Do you know how many of both of these people I know? Filmmakers blow this all the time. I think The Blind Side gets it right.
Of course, depressingly, you don’t have to look far to find an evisceration of the film for its supposed insidious racism, i.e. where would poor black kids be without nice white folks and so forth. Two quick thoughts on that:
- Taking a look at the typical complainants, see if you can write a plausible narrative for how they’d want the world to be. Are they agitating to an end? Or just agitating?
- This film portrays a Southern Christian conservative in a positive light. If you don’t think that’s enough all by itself to draw fury, you’re simply not paying attention.
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