Helpless
- Thread starter MovieBob
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I'd wondered about that, thanksMovieBob said:
Out of curiosity, do you write reviews for all of the other movie you see as well? I've looked around the internet but never found any.
Huh, I've never looked for his written reviews. It would be nice to know if you could read up on all of his updates here and elsewhere. Though I suspect he isn't allowed to advertise his own site here due to the rules... It may be different for contributers but I'm not sure.Hungry Donner said:I'd wondered about that, thanksMovieBob said:
Out of curiosity, do you write reviews for all of the other movie you see as well? I've looked around the internet but never found any.
Oh and I loved that bit about The Help at the start XD
I cannot post in the morning, this should go in the Fright Night comments and not here >.<
[sub]That's totally how history happened.[/sub]
Speak the truth, this article does.
You know what really does give me white guilt. The fact that were all so keen to avoid making white people feel guilty that we'll only make a civil rights movie if it's about a white person standing up for black people as if to say 'Look, look! we're not all racist, honest.'
This is precisely why 'The Pursuit of Happiness' manages to be possibly the best 'black struggle' movie ever made even though the fact that the main characters are black isn't even supposed to be a central theme.
You know what really does give me white guilt. The fact that were all so keen to avoid making white people feel guilty that we'll only make a civil rights movie if it's about a white person standing up for black people as if to say 'Look, look! we're not all racist, honest.'
This is precisely why 'The Pursuit of Happiness' manages to be possibly the best 'black struggle' movie ever made even though the fact that the main characters are black isn't even supposed to be a central theme.
There's nothing on his blog, which suggests to me he doesn't publish reviews for all of the movies he sees, but I'm open to the fact that I may just be inept at finding such things.Redlin5 said:
The main issue I see with criticism towards how the movie follows conventional "White Saviour" logic is that, if I'm lead to believe, this convention is not something invented for the movie but is rather something from the book. Seeing as how the author was involved with the production of this movie (I forgot where I heard this, but I think the director was friends with the author and wanted to buy the movie rights when the bok came out), isn't it ultimately up to her to decide whether the convention sticks? I guess the argument is that they didn't have to make a movie version of this book, but can one really blame the convention on Hollywood tropes when the convention came from a source outside of Hollywood?
Well, yes. The fact remains that a lot of people beyond the author had to sign off on the idea that this book is worth being made into a movie and that this story was worth telling. There are dozens if not hundreds of stories - fictional and factual - from the civil rights era that could be made into movies that don't involve the white savior trope. Saying that this movie can't be criticized for this is like saying that the Twilight movies can't be criticized for flat characterization and poor examples for girls because the books are like that too.Eternal_Lament said:
I hear you. Well, not on The Pursuit of Happiness, I never saw it, but on the rest. It's interesting, though. My girlfriend is black, and until she started pointing this kind of stuff out to me, I never noticed. I mean, I noticed blatant stuff like the Blindside, but I never noticed it about hollywood in general. How there are NO black women except in Tyler Perry movies and a couple movies like this, but there's always one ambiguously brown woman, for example.NinjaDeathSlap said:
I guess it's like someone said (maybe it was Moviebob? I don't remember); our (that is, white people's) predominance in film is so monolithic that we don't even notice it's there.
Wow, it's not even a "White Savior" movie, it's a "smart, forward thinking girl" showing her backwards how cool it is to be smart and forward thinking disguised as a white savior movie.
Let's have a Jennifer's-Body-but-good kind of "what if" on this. What if they built the premise of this movie without the girl, or least make her the afterthought? The local maids got together after work one day, all mad and discouraged, and had the brilliant idea to make a book and got a white friend (say the daughter of one of their employers, who went to college and actually learned things) to act as the author so it would get printed?
Let's have a Jennifer's-Body-but-good kind of "what if" on this. What if they built the premise of this movie without the girl, or least make her the afterthought? The local maids got together after work one day, all mad and discouraged, and had the brilliant idea to make a book and got a white friend (say the daughter of one of their employers, who went to college and actually learned things) to act as the author so it would get printed?
I didn't really start noticing this stuff until The Blindside, but after that I started seeing it everywhere and it pisses me off no end. Look Hollywood, the you country has a black president now. Are you honestly so out of touch that you think we can't handle 1 movie about injustice towards black people unless the lead is a selfless white person and everyone else is either 'token black victim' or 'token white douche'?Avatar Roku said:
Also, It's been out a while now so I'm guessing you could get the DVD of The Pursuit of Happiness quite cheap off Amazon or something, and I really, REALLY recommend that you do. It's great.
The production of this movie makes me feel worse than an actual movie about white people being awful.
And I can't believe that this was aimed it at the "liberal" side, which is exactly the side that would be open to a movie made for black people. I'd go see an epic about the civil rights movement. Where's Ridley Scott? Let's get him on that. NOW.
And I can't believe that this was aimed it at the "liberal" side, which is exactly the side that would be open to a movie made for black people. I'd go see an epic about the civil rights movement. Where's Ridley Scott? Let's get him on that. NOW.
So The Help is basically Twilight with black people taking the place of Vampires. Got it.
As offensive. As unrealistic. It'll be snapped up by the target audience.
As offensive. As unrealistic. It'll be snapped up by the target audience.
I really, really don't want to see this movie for a lot of the things mentioned, as someone who has tried for years to be socially aware of the privilege I get in America for being white, the fact that people are making these movies completely genuine just enrages and saddens me. But I also do want to see the actors who I hear are very good in their parts.
I am happy that attention is being called to how well... racist this genre of "white savior" movie is, and how it really shouldn't be thought of as progressive by a lot of the people making it. I think because White has become such a default, people seem to think including any Black characters is progressive, regardless of the implications of their roles.I do hope we can get movies about black people where they are treated as actual characters, not Black Sassy Female A or Nobel Black Person B.
I am happy that attention is being called to how well... racist this genre of "white savior" movie is, and how it really shouldn't be thought of as progressive by a lot of the people making it. I think because White has become such a default, people seem to think including any Black characters is progressive, regardless of the implications of their roles.I do hope we can get movies about black people where they are treated as actual characters, not Black Sassy Female A or Nobel Black Person B.
I was more refering to criticising it as a Hollywood trope rather than criticism in general, the point I was trying to make that since the trope existed prior to being a movie that it isn't really a trope that Hollywood made, rather one the author made. Perhaps its that trope that made Hollywood attracted enough to it to want it be made, but the point is that the trope existed BEFORE the studio got a hold of it. You can criticise the trope all you want, in fact I would criticise the movie because of the trope too (assuming of course that I would see it), I just wouldn't criticise it by saying that its proof of Hollywood creating a White Saviour when the White Saviour existed prior to the movie version, just as I would criticise Twilight for a bad female character, I just wouldn't criticise it by saying that its proof of Hollywood creating bad female characters when the bad female character existed prior to the movie version.Bobby Archer said:
Great review, Bob. As much as I like your reviews that you write and then read to us with pictures over the course of 5 minutes, this one was best served in article format - where you can take more time to get at the argument. As always, I appreciate you're incisive ability to get to the heart of the issues that movies do (or fail to) address.
In the 1992 film, Malcolm X, a young white girl comes up to Malcolm and asks what she can do to assist in the civil rights cause. He responded, "Nothing." This is supposedly based on an actual event, but there is contention on his actual reply. Some say he said "Nothing." Others say he said "Die, baby, die."
Hey, Bob. This may not be a horrible clip to lift for the feel good Hollywood Oscar bait that makes civil rights look like it was a white girl's idea that they come up with next year.
Hey, Bob. This may not be a horrible clip to lift for the feel good Hollywood Oscar bait that makes civil rights look like it was a white girl's idea that they come up with next year.
Needs more 'xplosions. To get that teenage demographic...Rect Pola said:
In all seriousness though, thats a pretty good premise, but I think it would be more suited for a television style drama...like HBO or FX...maybe even AMC since Mad Men kinda functions close to the same time period and has done pretty well...
Rosa Parks pre planned and carefully executed her act of social disobedeance. Look into the history of the freedom riders, those guys and gals took alot of knocks. The struggle for equal rights was not just one of words and ideas. Alotta great people got seriously hurt or killed. Thank goodness were a more enlightened society and dont have anything like that today, except of course our what our politians call illegal aliens, whom in any previous generation would have been naturalized.
Thank you sir for saying something I hadn't even thought of yet, and then completely winning me over. I would like to see predominantly black movies, rather than have to sit through another Michael Cera / Jesse Eisenberg / Andrew Garfield vehicle about that one skinny whiny white kid we should root for. I don't want to see myself from five years ago on screen. I hate myself and more than that, I hate who I used to be even more.
Maybe Tarantino's slave western movie will finally put a stop to this "make the audience comfortable" nonsense and show racism for what it really was and is. Probably not, though.
Maybe Tarantino's slave western movie will finally put a stop to this "make the audience comfortable" nonsense and show racism for what it really was and is. Probably not, though.