White Savior Movies Are Weird
- Thread starter Firefilm
- Start date
Frankly, I'm more offended at The Last Samurai's blatant misrepresentation of Japanese history and glorification of feudal warlords.
Consider: a newly formed government is attempting to develop its backward country, abolishing the medieval caste system, bringing in things like modern medicine, a system of national education for everyone, and a rail transport network. Fighting against them are backwards tyrants who wish to ensure they keep their hereditary privileges, like legally being able to carry lethal weapons around and kill those ranked below them. The government hires a foreigner to modernize their military, and he proceeds to defect to the side of the warlords and teach them improved tactics, making putting down the rebellion even bloodier than it should be, all so that they could satisfy their urge to "die with honour".
Now that's a reductionist interpretation of the movie and history, but it's still better than the viewpoint the movie itself is pushing, which is "wow samurai are so awesome exotic and badass don't kill them you meanies
."
Consider: a newly formed government is attempting to develop its backward country, abolishing the medieval caste system, bringing in things like modern medicine, a system of national education for everyone, and a rail transport network. Fighting against them are backwards tyrants who wish to ensure they keep their hereditary privileges, like legally being able to carry lethal weapons around and kill those ranked below them. The government hires a foreigner to modernize their military, and he proceeds to defect to the side of the warlords and teach them improved tactics, making putting down the rebellion even bloodier than it should be, all so that they could satisfy their urge to "die with honour".
Now that's a reductionist interpretation of the movie and history, but it's still better than the viewpoint the movie itself is pushing, which is "wow samurai are so awesome exotic and badass don't kill them you meanies
."
"and ends up fighting back his own kind better than the indigenous people ever could"
And how's that wrong? He was in the military and understand these machines. Are the Na'Vi expected to instinctively know about technologies and a species they had never seen before a few years before? To easily fight people who have the technology to travel from one star to another?
And how's that wrong? He was in the military and understand these machines. Are the Na'Vi expected to instinctively know about technologies and a species they had never seen before a few years before? To easily fight people who have the technology to travel from one star to another?
These movies didn't strike me as weird when I saw them. Identity Politics is strange as fuck though.
I'd say the implication is that all these "other cultures" are so superior to "white" culture that the white protagonists just fall all over themselves to join the other, better, culture. They're in fact saying that white people are the most evil and inferior culture ever. Look at the villains in these movies. Last Samurai - white people, fern gully - white people, dance with wolves - white people, avatar - white people, clearly all these movies are implicitly saying that white people are the devil and only by abandoning their culture and heritage can they be purified and redeemed.
You can read a lot into things if you try.
You can read a lot into things if you try.
There's no reason why they couldn't have the navii get their hands on guns and learn how to use them. That's what happened during the Indian wars which Avatar is taking its' cues from. You could have just as easily had a navii protagonist leading a guerrilla war rather than doing dances with wolves with more cgi.Czann said:
Does that imply Rising of Planet of the Apes is a Chimp Savior type?Grumpy Ginger said:
Also I don't understand how could the naviis really think they would win this war.
Humans have space domination. Something naviis will never get before centuries at best. Orbital bombing, atmospheric poisoning or plain guerilla-like abductions. In the end, and if the humans really push for it, naviis are history. Except through getting media attention, they were done for the second the earth army got their planet on their radar.
It's also interesting that most people see in the Avatar's story some native american vibes, while most of the setting could mirror Vietnam (jungle war) or Irak (securing vital resources). And the grey area just got greyer.
The Last Samurai
"First Tom is so brutal in the American civil war that the Japanese government hires him to train their troops to stop a samurai uprising."
If you're going to critique a movie, would it kill you to be accurate with it? Cruise's character wasn't fighting in the Civil War, it was the American Indian Wars.
Also, it's sort of weird to act like he was a "savior" of the Samurai, considering they still all died, and in fact he learned far more from them than they did from him.
What's funny too is that I could theoretically call these moves "white culture is terrible and awful and "Native" cultures are superior movies" and it basically still applies to the aforementioned films (except "Stargate", which was sort of a weird entry).
"First Tom is so brutal in the American civil war that the Japanese government hires him to train their troops to stop a samurai uprising."
If you're going to critique a movie, would it kill you to be accurate with it? Cruise's character wasn't fighting in the Civil War, it was the American Indian Wars.
Also, it's sort of weird to act like he was a "savior" of the Samurai, considering they still all died, and in fact he learned far more from them than they did from him.
What's funny too is that I could theoretically call these moves "white culture is terrible and awful and "Native" cultures are superior movies" and it basically still applies to the aforementioned films (except "Stargate", which was sort of a weird entry).
Ugh, can we put away the white guilt for a second and recognize that 'savior' movies are extremely common, and that there's a lot of cases where that character isn't white? Plus, a lot of these movies are about cultural exchange, which i guess white people are automatically evil for trying to do now, but also evil for not doing. Appropriation when we try, insensitivity if we don't. Damned either way.
Hell, one interpretation is that these movies are telling white people to abandon white culture. If we assume the protagonist is on some level an audience surrogate, and thing like avatar have them learning to hate white culture and move to a different culture, then it's less "white savior" and more "white person learns to have a better culture and reject their shit culture". Why's being a savior a bad thing anyway? If there's a problem, should i not try to help based on my race or sex? Would i be an evil white savior then? Or should i just resign myself to the fact that everything i could ever do is pure concentrated evil because i was born with light skin and a penis?
Hell, one interpretation is that these movies are telling white people to abandon white culture. If we assume the protagonist is on some level an audience surrogate, and thing like avatar have them learning to hate white culture and move to a different culture, then it's less "white savior" and more "white person learns to have a better culture and reject their shit culture". Why's being a savior a bad thing anyway? If there's a problem, should i not try to help based on my race or sex? Would i be an evil white savior then? Or should i just resign myself to the fact that everything i could ever do is pure concentrated evil because i was born with light skin and a penis?
The theme of "White guy feeling guilty about taking part in historical genocide - exonerates himself by saving another race of people from worse white people" is a common one throughout these. The writers don't want to shy away from the terrible things white Americans have done, but at the same time, they tend to end up distancing the protagonist (and the audience) from the bad things by showing they didn't have their heart in it, didn't want to do it, or weren't directly involved in the slaughter themselves. In the end, the white hero is the one who kills the far more evil white guys, thus letting them wash their (and the audience's) hands of any guilt.Combustion Kevin said:
In The Last Samurai, Tom Cruise shows himself to be equal to the samurai, initially by killing loads of them, later by drawing with one in a duel, later still by leading the rescue operation, being the second in command in the final battle, killing the big bad, and then outliving every other samurai in the battle.
The "White Savior" thing is not objectionable by itself, it's simply the overuse of it in Hollywood along with the misrepresentations of the cultures they "save" is the problem. Glory is technically a White Savior movie, but it is fairly accurate and based on real events that actually happened, and in addition, it spends quite a bit of time on focusing on the black characters' emotions and motivations and isn't all about Ferris Bueller. In other words, it's nuanced and accurate.Lightknight said:
Major Payne is a comedy (and not a great one if you're asking me), and not meant to be taken seriously, and wasn't. The fact that that of all movies is the only one you can think of to defend your point is actually quite telling. You could at least throw in some Sidney Poitier movies in there to make that point, even his movies were extremely controversial when they came out for the very reason that a black man was trying to teach white people something.
Meanwhile the list of White Savior movies is a mile long. Some are less objectionable than others, but the point stands. Even modern movies based on real things, like The Blind Side, rather than focusing on the subject of the black subject of the movie, focusing on how great and heroic the white people are. Movies like The Help simply make up white people to focus on.
How about creating a movie depicting a foreign war or conflict where a white person doesn't swoop in to save the day? One that actually focuses on the struggles of the people it affected the most in a historically accurate way? Clint Eastwood proved you could do it to moderate success with Letters From Iwo Jima, and few people would accuse him of being a progressive liberal.
Except maaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe for Ferngully, you... Have very shallow views of all the movies you claim to have seen.
The Native american parallels are more due to how the Navii are depicted as being the space equivalent of the stereotypical native american noble savage. With bows and arrows, war paint, a tribal system and down the the fact that when they do the rallying for the big battle they even have a plains tribes equivalent who are all horsemen.Also I thought though I have yet to see it that apes was a more morally grey story while Avatar was more black and white.mtarzaim02 said:
Well that's the thing, isn't it? The Na'vi don't have to win the war at all. They simply have to make it impossible to maintain a commercially viable outpost on the planet. Remember the European settlers didn't wipe out the native tribes by sheer force of arms - they turned one against another. They allied with one Central American kingdom to destabilise another, then annexed them both while they were weak. The Na'vi had an advantage no indigenous people have had in history - they were united.mtarzaim02 said:
Sure, the humans could burn their forests and bomb their villages. The Na'vi don't need either. They could build a mine to get their precious metals, and the Na'vi would emerge from the forests under the cover of night, wreck machinery and slaughter workers and melt into the wilderness again before the humans could mount a counter-attack. Before long, the human and economic cost of mining this planet will take its toll and the human corporation will be forced to withdraw. It's also important to remember that every retaliatory strike would put pressure on the corporation from its home governments - the ones who sanction their weaponry and subsidise their operations. Permits get revoked, pressure from rights groups takes effect and sure enough, the Na'vi's world is just too much of a pain in the dick to mine anymore.
That is, in theory, how the Na'vi could win. Anyway - there's a few problems with the film's 'White Savior' approach and it's mostly that it suffers from the exact same issues other white savior movies do. The natives "don't understand technology." Are they intelligent enough to observe and extrapolate information? God no, they think it's voodoo magic from the gods. Do they get curious, try to capture some technology to take it apart (like humans typically do)? Also no. Because they're not clever enough, on account of not being the White Saviour.
I don't like White Saviour movies much purely because the saviour is usually American. Not being American, I don't relate to this dude any more than I'd relate to a 'native.' The thing about stories is that they typically rely on human emotions. Things that everyone has. A man fighting for his freedom and country and family doesn't have to be white so we'd relate to him.
And I guess the most annoying part is everyone who justifies the White Saviour trope will do so using in-fiction reasons. No, he wasn't better at it because he was white, he was better at it because he was a notorious colonel in some other war and and he's actually on a quest to find meaning in his life because the only thing he is good at is cruelty! Weren't you paying attention?!
This right here is stupid logic. The White Saviour is not a real person. You are not explaining a series of events that happened. You are fabricating a series of events from the ground up. You made him a white American man in a different cultural setting and then justified it afterwards. What message are you trying to send with your film? Are you telling a story about a guy who sets out to find meaning in his shitty life or are you telling a story about a civil war in a far-off country? If you're doing neither, and just want some cool set pieces and historical drama, it begs the exact same question. You wrote the white guy. You cast the white guy. Then you realised you'd have to explain how the white guy got there, so you made some shit up.
This is basically the creative process in a nutshell. You get your basic plot, some scenes you really like, maybe a dramatic speech you thought up in the shower and decided was really cool, then you work everything else out to justify it all. This is why movies based on true stories end up butchering their source material. They take what they consider important from the source, then they cut bits and add bits that they think would carry over better to film.
EDIT- As a really minor example of the backwards justification, take In Bruges. In that, Ken and Ray were originally from London. They were Londoners. It was only after Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson got the roles that McDonagh changed their backstory to be from Dublin, because their accents are really quite prominent. Now the film is about two Irish hitmen hiding out in Bruges, rather than two English ones. A very minor difference, but the editing happened because the characters had inexplicable Irish accents that needed to be retroactively justified.
A movie being "white savior" is irrelevant of whether or not a culture is depicted accurately. For example, Fern Gully and Avatar. Hence the problem is with the protagonist being white and nothing else.hentropy said:
If a movie's problem is that they depicted a culture incorrectly then that would be a separate complaint. Keep in mind too that some people confuse negative depictions of a culture with inherently being incorrect depictions. Sometimes a culture really does have a problem that needs to be depicted (see The Help's depiction of whites for a less arguable example of racism within the culture of the time towards black employees). It would sometimes help to have people explain ways that cultures are being mis-represented.
I'm sorry, are we or are we not commenting on an article that included Fern Gully as a "White Savior" movie or the Avatar which had a fictional group of aliens as the culture?
I hadn't given it any thought. Just mentioned the first example I could think of. Am I surprised that minorities don't make up a significant proportion of savior films? Not really and neither should you.
But at what point do we call such a film a "Black Savior" film when the regular population is white. Is something like Beverly Hills Cop going to fall in that category just because Eddie Murphy is black and is in a largely white area? Sounds silly to me and yet we are doing the opposite.
Yes, they are very popular and amazingly profitable.
Do... do we believe that movie makers are making films for shits and giggles? We (You, me, the author of the article) are talking about race here, the only color they're (movie producers) talking about is green.
Have you considered that in America whites are so widely proliferated that defining their culture is nearly impossible since they make up the norm to the point where they have several stereotyped sub-cultures? Minorities are then defined by their distinctions from the norm or any idiosyncrasy that stands out from the norm. This is natural in situations of such extreme population differences. So a generic mainstream protagonist makes sense to smash up against a more defined and unique culture. Two unique cultures don't seem to mix up that well or perform that well with audiences and a minority going into the majority culture doesn't typically come across as a black savior film so much as just a film that takes place in America with a black protagonist. It basically becomes hard to see the forest for the trees in one scenario and the trees for the forest in the other.
Take something as simple as Dr. Suess' "The Butter Battle Book". You have two equivalent forces where one side does butter one way with the other side doing the opposite. If the vast majority of the population buttered their toast butter side up then the only population with defining characteristics would become the minority buttering their toast with the butter side down. It's all relative perception and not anyone's fault that it would be harder for an audience to grasp that the person is going into another culture if that culture wasn't seen as distinct regular ol' society.
OoT: That "minorities" comparison doesn't make sense to me. Those two groups are completely separated as pretty much two different nations, divided by a very well defined border, each with their own govermenent, armament (both sides in constant development) and border patrol. There is no "butter-side-down" people living among the "butter-side-up" residents (or viceversa); so there is no equivalent of minorities in the book's context, no matter the difference in population. Any power than one nation exerts towards the other in there isn't being determined by their population, but by their weapons.Lightknight said:
Well, that's sort of the problem, isn't it? Even if Producers and Directors were foaming-at-the-mouth racist, it wouldn't matter much if no one liked their movies and they made no money. Similarly, them being not racist at all personally would not affect this particular issue much.Lightknight said:
The problem is partially that white people can't seem to get enough of stories depicting white people saving other peoples or cultures from the "bad" white people. Regressives like to talk about "white guilt" a lot, but in many ways these types of movies are the purest manifestation of it. Rather than wanting to see movies about black people fighting for their own freedoms/rights or Indians fighting to keep their own land, they want to hear about (often fictional) brave white people who enabled them in some way. Which is, you know, kinda sorta racist. And yes, this is apparent even in Avatar and FernGully (which were both rather naked metaphors about the colonization of indigenous peoples). Both of those movies were fantastical but they also had that warm-fuzzy "real world" message. Not that these movies don't have other likable features (like space dragons), but it is possible to like something while also criticizing aspects of it.
However, I don't blame your average American movie-goer entirely, they can only see movies that actually get made. Like video games, movies are often made according to "conventional wisdom", and the "conventional wisdom" is to infantilize or underestimate average movie-goers by assuming that they are unable or unwilling to relate to non-white or non-male characters. A movie documenting the interesting tumultuous time of Japan's rapid modernization and disposal of their old feudal system might have been interesting to people without having to shoehorn a fictional American in it and making the movie all about them.
Eddie Murphy's older movies aren't bad examples of how you do "clash of cultures" with a bit of grace and nuance. Axel Foley didn't go the Beverly Hills to reform some kind of backward or corrupt system. He wasn't just some black guy, he was a black guy with his own character and unique motivations. Trading Places kinda flips the whole concept on its head, starting out as White Savior but then turning into what could be called a "Black Savior", and it's enjoyable at least partially because of the novelty. If whatshisface from Avatar or Tom Cruise had half the personality and character as any of Murphy's characters from those movies, the White Savior stuff would at least be easier to overlook.