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I love musicals when I was little. Two of my favorites were South Pacific and The King and I. I have rewatched both as an adult and.... yikes!
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My first thoughts were old Disney movies and The Help, as PPs have mentioned.
I also HATED the movie Freedom Writers with Hillary Swank--any movie where it's like, "Look at this smart white person, here to "save" the minorities!" is totally off-putting to me.
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Oh, another one... this is another Disney movie, but The Song of the South. It's a great movie and I loved it as a kid... but kiiiinda problematic. They don't even sell it in the US anymore. Honestly I don't think it's THAT bad, at least compared to other Disney movies. However, there is obviously a history with African-Americans here in the US that's a little different than other ethnicities, so I guess that's why.
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@DigAPony: Except Freedom Writers was based on a true story. That actually happened. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Gruwell
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@meredithNYC: completely. The subtle stuff is maybe the most insidious, it really affects people's thinking!
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Seeing Freedom Writers, The Blind Side, and other "white redemption" movies based on true stories makes me think of two things...
1.) Just because something follows a "trope" or a stereotype doesn't mean it's bad. White people can help black people and we can be uplifted, not offended, by it.
2.) On the same token, it's interesting that these are the true stories that get made into movies more than true stories of white people helping white people or black people helping black people or what have you. Maybe because it feels less ordinary / more remarkable? That's kind of sad. Or maybe it is playing into the stereotypes that we like to see...
I miss sociology classes.
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@daniellemybelle: I think whether it's a based on a true story or fictional, it goes back to the article that @meredithNYC: posted about the Oscars loving movies with a white savior...but it's not just the Oscars, it's Hollywood in general.
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@zippylef: Regardless of whether a story is fiction or non-fiction, I don't enjoy the "white savior" trope (see the "Oscar loves a white savior" article that a PP posted) and I thought that that film was heavy-handed and poorly done. (I was a teaching assistant in a classroom where the teacher made the kids watch Freedom Writers, otherwise I would not have seen it!)
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@daniellemybelle: you took the words right out of my mouth! My husband and i just rewatched the "what makes the red man red" song bc we were trying to remember the lyrics and were horrified.
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@daniellemybelle: @DigAPony: @silva:
oh wow.... those are two of my favorite movies EVER (Blind Side & Freedom Writers)... I never would have thought of them like that.
I am incredibly naive and unintentionally ignorant when it comes to this type of stuff... so I have probably seen so many and never even noticed.
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