Thursday, December 10, 2009

White Walls and the "Blindside"




For me, the most significant part in the movie The Blindside was the poem that Michael wrote about his school. He described how he only saw white walls, white people, and white everything. He was the black speck in the white environment that he found himself residing. After taken in by a white Southern lady, Michael finds himself at the center of a rich woman's charity project. However, what turned out as a charity project quickly became a deep relationship between a mother and her adopted son. Their relationship quickly becomes blind of color as their race and gender are hazed as a wonderful story unfolds. My favorite relationship is between S.J. and Michael. S.J. is completely loving and thinks nothing about the color of his big brother's skin. S.J is also Michael's motivation to tackle his opponents in football. Michael is a protector and does not show the stereotypical violent behavior usually associated with his race. Mrs. Tuohy helps him find his inner strength and be a valuable memeber of the football team by reminding him of his loving heart and protective nature. After she tells him that the football is his family, Michael becomes a revolutionary member of the team and goes on to earn a scholarship and a spot playing pro-ball. I cannot read the story about Ferdinand the bulls the same way again. Michael really is the gentle bull.


I found this movie to be a delightful spin on a true movie as it combined a football heart warmer and crossing the racial boundary story. Was it predictable, yes. None-the-less it was a heartwarming story that made me tear up during the trailer.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

This unsettling whitness

As I read through Dryer's chapter on white representation in the media and Lott's chapter on white cross-dressing in America, I could not help feeling attacked because I was the demographic in question. For the other readings regarding people of other races, I sat back and analyzed their representation in the media. Because race is a subject I am not comfortable with, I took more of a back seat approach than with gender. However, when my skin color was being analyzed, I suddenly felt like a bug under a microscope. Is this how people of other races feel when they go to the movies? I hated the feeling and often found myself offended on the minute details. Reading the article was like being stung by bees - the first two pinched a little, but then it became overwhelming.
Many times it was difficult to completely understand what Dryer was talking about since I have not seen any of the films he referenced. However, I ran into some arguments about negative stereotypes of white people in my research for my race paper on Pocahontas. On critic described the Native Americans as beautiful people while Disney portrayed the white settlers as grotesque, slothful creatures with disproportional physical features. I observed this myself throughout the cartoon, but for some reason a cartoon seemed more innocent than the portrayals described by Dryer. (Or this could be the assumed 'innocence' of any Disney production). Regardless of the mask of cartoons, white representation is glaringly present in the media, but in a more subtle and at times a more complex depth.