Precious And The Blind Side Movie Analysis
Every year a must-see film comes out starring some of the most popular members of black Hollywood. Selling out box offices, these black films gradually generate Oscar buzz and become subject matter for a handful of online thinkpieces that are shared within seconds throughout the Twitterverse.
Although the presence of more black films is praised by many as a sign of progress, recent hits such as The Help, Django and 12 Years a Slave all share a striking similarity — they are what Roxanne Gay coined as “struggle narratives” in her book, Bad Feminist. Struggle narratives are typically set in a historical time period and tell the story of a black protagonist who experiences extreme oppression. Surprisingly, however, even those black Oscar contenders …show more content…
The protagonists of Precious and The Blind Side both come from impoverished homes characterized by their weak family ties and histories of abuse. The protagonist of The Blind Side, however is able to turn his life around, attend college and eventually become a professional football player... but only with the intervention of a white family.
Despite the popularity of these films, what does it say about our society when the majority of critically-acclaimed films starring blacks are either historical narratives in which African Americans face the most grotesque forms of oppression or contemporary stories of depraved urban life?
The inundation of period pieces can surely impact our ability as audiences to understand and empathize with current race inequalities. By constantly looking to the past, it's easy to convince ourselves that we have made immense racial progress. Although such dramas educate us about our history and might have even been created with the intent of asking “how far have we come?” the answer becomes distorted when there are so few films that highlight where we currently are. The absence of these stories forces us to use these period pieces — which often involve unfathomable violence — as a barometer against which it is difficult to understand the more subtle gravity of our current racial …show more content…
Although the majority touch upon serious subject matter or took place in other time periods, the range of genres and themes in these films is immense. Taken together, these films depict all aspects of the human condition with characters that are both enemies and heroes, intelligent and dim-witted, successful and downtrodden.
Wildly unrealistic lifestyles such as those depicted in the dark comedy Wolf of Wall Street balance out the simple family life represented in The Kids Are Alright. Sci-fi films such as Inception take us to other dimensions, while biographical dramas such as Moneyball ground us back on the baseball field.
All of these stories are extraordinary in their own ways, but the wide array of characters and narratives that they depict creates the sense that white people are multi-dimensional. This normalizes the white experience and provides the public with a multi-faceted understanding of white people that can easily be translated into real
Although the presence of more black films is praised by many as a sign of progress, recent hits such as The Help, Django and 12 Years a Slave all share a striking similarity — they are what Roxanne Gay coined as “struggle narratives” in her book, Bad Feminist. Struggle narratives are typically set in a historical time period and tell the story of a black protagonist who experiences extreme oppression. Surprisingly, however, even those black Oscar contenders …show more content…
The protagonists of Precious and The Blind Side both come from impoverished homes characterized by their weak family ties and histories of abuse. The protagonist of The Blind Side, however is able to turn his life around, attend college and eventually become a professional football player... but only with the intervention of a white family.
Despite the popularity of these films, what does it say about our society when the majority of critically-acclaimed films starring blacks are either historical narratives in which African Americans face the most grotesque forms of oppression or contemporary stories of depraved urban life?
The inundation of period pieces can surely impact our ability as audiences to understand and empathize with current race inequalities. By constantly looking to the past, it's easy to convince ourselves that we have made immense racial progress. Although such dramas educate us about our history and might have even been created with the intent of asking “how far have we come?” the answer becomes distorted when there are so few films that highlight where we currently are. The absence of these stories forces us to use these period pieces — which often involve unfathomable violence — as a barometer against which it is difficult to understand the more subtle gravity of our current racial …show more content…
Although the majority touch upon serious subject matter or took place in other time periods, the range of genres and themes in these films is immense. Taken together, these films depict all aspects of the human condition with characters that are both enemies and heroes, intelligent and dim-witted, successful and downtrodden.
Wildly unrealistic lifestyles such as those depicted in the dark comedy Wolf of Wall Street balance out the simple family life represented in The Kids Are Alright. Sci-fi films such as Inception take us to other dimensions, while biographical dramas such as Moneyball ground us back on the baseball field.
All of these stories are extraordinary in their own ways, but the wide array of characters and narratives that they depict creates the sense that white people are multi-dimensional. This normalizes the white experience and provides the public with a multi-faceted understanding of white people that can easily be translated into real