This is a profoundly smart and insightful look at the tenuous relationships that Black men & white women have in faux interracial "friendships" that are really fantasies that mostly white directors and writers have used to extend delusions about societal progress (e.g., the disappearance or dwindling nature of virulent racism). This fantasy is, indeed, quite old. It is based on the idea that white protagonists in all stories are the default & the rest of us, as Toni Morrison has said, have to hyphenate. This apparently extends to our humanity. It's notable to me that there are generally few examples that aren't terribly done that include Black women and white women or men or people in this kind of dynamic; I suspect that comedy or the white fantasy of black men reimagined is simpler, particularly for creators with limited imaginations for the real trajectory of black capacity for emotion. The Mammy figure and Sapphire and Jezebel -- the sinister stereotypes that haunt black womanhood in the public sphere -- are consistently more fraught & have been stripped of their comedic value as it seems only other Black women seem to think we have the capacity for lighthearted fun. No complaints from me, after reading this great article -- this is one example of a time I'm happy Black women are not really in the equation, I suppose.
31
Spike Lee has the courage and skill to give us stories that are both educational and emotional about racial issues in America. Will the Academy look past the feel-good movies and honor this truly great director for BlackKKlansman?
21
What a masterful and artistic essay written in service to the wrong-headed idea that Hollywood movies exist to show it like it is. Those are called documentaries. And sometimes Spike Lee films (which have been ignored by awards seasons due to other factors - and Mr. Lee is not the only director to be so snubbed). I enjoyed Green Book and particularly enjoyed watching my children’s shock at the segregation prevalent at the time. It was unimaginable to them - and that is progress.
24
Looking forward to Mr. Morris' next article when he directly calls out Don Shirley and Morgan Freeman for accepting these roles and contributing to this "whitewashing" of history. Of course I'm being sarcastic. However, I regret Spike Lee did not win an Oscar for Do the Right Thing. If he did we wouldn't have to read for the next thirty years how he was snubbed. In reality not winning was probably the best thing for his career. By the way....Blackkklansman was excellent and deserving of an Oscar.
15
The upshot of Mr. Morris's article seems to be that whites should only make movies about whites, and blacks about blacks - and that all attempts otherwise, no matter how well-meant, are untruthful fantasies. But, if so, this would be contrary to what I've learned about the creative imagination, i.e., that it allows people of all backgrounds, and histories, to reach past their limits to some mutual understanding and humanity. Having a good motivation, a desire to reach past the narrowness of personal experience, to explore another's, and to reach a wide audience with a lesson about it, seems, according to Mr. Morris, to be suspect - and almost always wrong. If, in fact, it's coming to be somehow believed that only whites should make movies about whites, and blacks about blacks, wouldn't that be a form of censorship and segregation? Two of the very things socially aware artists are meant to fight against?
43
Mr. Morris makes a lot of valid and thought provoking points. However, why not see the movies you criticize as aspirational? They don't speak to the ways things are, but the way one might hope they could be. After all, it was said that Reverend King loved Nichelle Nichols on the original Star Trek TV series, a valuable crew member. You do rightly mention that many of those so called inter racial friendships were based on money. But, money has its uses. Broke English Aristocrats married 'vulgar' American heiresses, and they both enlightened each other. Old New York Society was closed to anyone who wasn't WASP. But, they finally opened their doors to the wealthy Nouveau Riche. Even in the film The Help, the maid wouldn't have worked for the racist white woman if she didn't need the money, but her poor neglected daughter learned to love herself from the loving care the maid gave her. The film Roma is meant to be an homage to the indigenous maid in Alfonso Cuaron's household growing up. Money and the need of it brings people in proximity to each other who might not have anything to do with each other otherwise. But great disparities are harmful, too. They give the rich a false sense of superiority and the poor a false sense of inferiority. If you want to speak of hypocrisy, you could have mentioned Downton Abbey. That mini series, while enjoyable in many ways, seemed to indulge in a deluded and wishful, but probably false view of most Master-Servant relations.
15
I have not seen "Green Book", but did see "Driving Miss Daisy" in the theater. A key plot point was that Miss Daisy was one of Alfred Uhry's characters who essentially didn't want to be Jews, but when the Temple in Atlanta was bombed, she had to realize that different forms of oppression fed on each other, which is exactly what a black Jewish activist in the Forward wanted white Jews to realize. So black/white does not entirely cover that movie. But Wesley Morris's point about the employment relationship is a good one. A movie about reconciliation between blacks and Jews today could not use that trope because one of the key obstacles to reconciliation is class.
5
This is the kind of grievance mentality that leads people who otherwise might be left-leaning to throw up their hands and embrace the other side. These movies are about someone overcoming their racism by meeting someone of a different race who is charming, kindly, and relatable. How can anyone have a problem with that? Maybe you would have written them a different way but Birth of a Nation they are not.
48
The psychology underlying white spectators’ appreciation of racial reconciliation films is, indeed, a form of aversion, the propensity to avoid members of racialized subcultures in the real world. The payoff lies in knowing that you are a good person, an unprejudiced liberal who vicariously enjoys representations of ethnic convergence at a safe distance—on screen. God forbid if you actually become immersed in this brave new world.
Groups, however, do not necessarily represent the individual, just as an individual does not embody the group. Portraits of individual grace and graciousness redeem examples of uncouth arrogance and bigotry, whether individual or communal.
Spike Lee’s films come across as racial propanda—introduction to ethnic studies—not cinema. His films predictably assimilate personal epiphany to group experience, foreclosing the possibility of imaginative, sympathetic growth.
“The Defiant Ones” (fantasy reconciliation), “Brian’s Song” (Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo), “Loving” (Richard and Mildred Loving’s real-life interracial marriage), “Black Panther” (comic book fantasy).
Most riveting film I have seen recently—Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” Incorporation rather than reconciliation, and anything but paternalistic.
4
Is not To Kill a Mockingbird in this same caliber wherein the hero is white rendering the black person passive? It can, also, be said that these films excuse white racism by never really questioning it but serving as a venue to ingrain it's continuance.
6
Transactions are what help white people face their racism. Integrating schools did not work because the white children still played with the white children, or humored the black children, or bullied them. But when educators figured out that transactions would break through the racism, amazing relationships developed. When school children were told that their grades depended on group activities in which they all had to help each other get things done, the white kids finally accepted their black counterparts and started to get to know them as people. Furthermore these new relationships lasted beyond the “experiment.”
I am a liberal white psychologist living in the white northwest. When I moved into a new house, four years ago, I was stunned to discover that I had moved into a hotbed of right wing Republican conservatism. I have been harassed constantly by most of neighbors. For example they reported me to animal control. They refuse to speak to me as I pass by. They send secret emails to each other complaining about me. I am not allowed to speak directly to HOA Board members. They file ridiculous complaints about me to the Board. I have stopped them from bullying me by hiring an attorney who scared the Board into backing off. However, there is no real integration of our lives. I am nearly 70 so I had hoped to live out my life in this home along the Columbia river, but I may sell. On the other hand where would an outspoken, single white woman, move to? At least I’m not black.
2
When I hear Mr. Morris praise the idea that "...proximity to whiteness is toxic..." I don't hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking of his dream of harmony between white and black. I hear George C. Wallace saying, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Racism, even if it backed by justifiable anger, is still a poisonous force.
36
Why did Mr Morris leave out the greatest buddy movie of all time, Shawshank Redemption?
11
@Barbara A Body
And how about 'Jerry Maguire'? My favorite movie. The relationship between the agent and the football player - who exploits whom? I love it nonetheless, exploitation be damned. That one is black and the other is white is not important - and yet, it is important.
I always break into tears when they embrace in the hallway outside the locker rooms. Pure buddy love!
8
Hollywood is too hopelessly lost in their own world to understand the world of the viewers. The article makes a very good chase that the racial reconciliation is typically one-sided, but I would add...stereotypical. Case in point: The new movie with Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston "The Upside". I haven't seen the movie, nor will I ever, but the commercial trailer sought to show a scene that I found...peculiar. When at a ballet, with a sea of white faces in clear view, when Cranston's character informed Hart's character the length of the performance, Hart reeled in apparent disbelief and disgust as if it would be a slow cruel ancient torture to be tolerated. I suppose some could see that as funny, not me. I personally love the performing arts, but the imagery conveyed blacks simply don't have the attention span, culture maturity or tolerance for anything outside of rap, sports or action movies. Hollywood's penchant for reinforcing stereotypes is without equal. If the best they can do is produce roles for Kevin Hart's of the world and the ever present overweight black women, it would almost be better to simply have an all white cast than to make matters worse by reinforcing negative and misleading stereotypes.
7
@David California.....have you ever been to the opera? Like it or not, it's generally a sea of white faces. As an old white guy, If I was dragged into a rap concert and told it was going to be three hours I'd probably react the same way. Sheesh....get real.
10
All should check out the actual Green Book, as the digitized editions are online via New York Public Library. Notice that said guide helped navigate ALL of the USA, not just the segregated South.
11
White guilt is a commodity in entertainment. These types of movies make white people feel better about the racist crimes that have been committed in the past even right up to the present. However, presently, they are sitting through a two hour movie in a nice safe theater, the popcorn is hot, and all they have to do is find the minority likable and have their white representative guide take them through the minority's world and do exactly what they long to do. Which is to fix it, in two hours, and then go home and be a good person and not have to worry about it ever again.
It is pretty egregious in these types of films, but it is even worse with white guilt films about Native Americans. Little Big Man, A Man Called Horse, Dances with Wolves, etc. These movies are made for white audiences and are designed to soothe a deep and persistent shame.
Do The Right Thing was a great antidote and call out to this type of movie. By the time that movie is ending the wound is wide open and you can't turn away from it. It is a real call for action, directed to white people, to get real. No movie can fix this. Put your popcorn down and get busy fixing it yourself.
16
Edited:
Fiction trumps reality every time. The ability and freedom to contort reality (set in a romanticized past) to extort a positive narrative and feel-good emotional high is, like an expensive, psychotropic drug, worth every penny we pay for it. With a trump careening through the national and international pathways, destroying everything he touches, many Americans need a comfortable drug. Need it.
Especially in a scary, depressing modern American social theatre where overt racism, bigotry and violence, believed in decline, has again ferociously reared its ugly head, fueling an extreme rise of the same bigotry, racism and violence throughout the world. Obviously there is much that needs to be done. If we learn anything from the reign of trump and his associates, it is that fantasy should never trump fact and that Americans, all Americans have not done as much progress as they imagine and that there is still so much work to do to create racial peace, much less racial reconciliation. As one elderly black man said to me, “How can we talk about racial reconciliation, when no one has ever yet admitted that we have had a problem?” We can’t. And we haven’t yet.
4
I totally agree with Mr. Morris' view on these "Racial Reconciliation Fantasies." Where I differ is that Spike Lee does nothing for me at all.
1
Thank you Mr Morris! This article needed to be written a long time ago.
8
Why do the Oscars keep falling for racial reconciliation fantasies?
You answered it yourself...
"I saw a long, sexy billboard of white Viggo Mortensen driving black Mahershala Ali "
I love both these actors and thought about going to see the film but ultimately balked because I knew it would be a racial reconciliation fantasy.
I'm just still shocked to find out that Spike Lee has never been nominated for best director. Not for "Do the Right Thing"? Yikes!
4
Fiction trumps reality every time. The ability and freedom to contort reality (set in a romanticized past) to extort a positive narrative and feel-good emotional high is, like an expensive, psychotropic drug, worth every penny we pay for it. With a trump careening through the national and international pathways, destroying everything he touches, many Americans need a comfortable drug. Need it.
Especially in a scary, depressing modern American social theatre where overt racism, bigotry and violence, believed in decline, has again ferociously reared its ugly head, fueling an extreme rise of the same bigotry, racism and violence throughout the world. Obviously there is much that needs to be done. If we learn anything from the reign of trump and his associates, it is that fantasy should never trump fiction and that Americans, all Americans have not done as much progress as they imagine and that there is still so much work to do to create racial peace, much less racial reconciliation. As one elderly black man said to me, “How can we talk about racial reconciliation, when no one has ever yet admitted that we have had a problem?” We can’t. And we haven’t yet.
1
Why? To remind us that racial reconciliation is possible? To help hold onto hope that such a thing is possible?
8
The workplace is where we are most exposed to different races, cultures, religions, genders and economic backgrounds. This is the place where we step outside the comforts of our friend choices and work with others we might not choose or be exposed. What we find are deep connections with some and not with others regardless of demographics.
11
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a film being aspirational in providing a vision of what we all wish were the state of race relationships in this country. Come on, it's a movie for God's sake!
It was pseudo-intellectual claptrap like this that convinced my wife we should not see "Green Book," and I still regret not having objected more forcefully to the self-imposed censorship.
12
My husband, my grandson and I saw "The Green Book" and found it very moving. As to "The Help" and "Les Intouchables," a most touching story with great actors, those were also excellent movies, a lot better than "The Upside," a farcical cliché.
5
Thank you for this excellent analysis that calls out white driven (I'm white) studio's continuing to simply not get it and infantalizing all us white people by intoxicating us with all that gooey warm fuzzy feeling of pseudo-goodness, in such a nice way. I always felt compromised by watching Driving Miss Daisy; actually l found it very disturbing and could never fully articulate why but the author has done it for me. The seduction of feel-good is powerful but absolutely inauthentic, one of the reasons l obsessively curate any film l watch. I appreciate the illustration of the fallacy of presenting contractual relationships as somehow facilitating an uncompromised bridging of the racial divide. The white-white version of this is Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in " Pretty Woman." It elevates an escapist feel good version of an essentially exploitive relationship. I also appreciated the subtleties, craft of top rate actors, and cinematography in Driving Miss Daisy, and really wanted to love it but couldn't. I kept thinking that by adhering to the truth of the role of the driver as servant it actually imprinted this white dominant relationship all over again in the collective white psyche, without any white person being aware of it. But the author points out redeeming features of the film as well as why l might want to see newer films by black filmmakers if l want a more enlightening, richer experience of learning about "the other" that diminish such artificial boundaries.
7
@MB
' It elevates an escapist feel good version of an essentially exploitive relationship.'
Yes!
2
That Jewish Miss Daisy is set in a time when women's finances were controlled and also released just over a decade after the protection of women's financial legal rights, and that the character is the token female among all of these films could make for another article. This article is about men as much as race. Or that what happens in "Do the Right Thing" has zero to do with setting, according to Mr. Morris, while other racial reconciliation fantasies have everything to do with their Southerness could also make for another article about the outsourcing of racism to the real Southern racists as opposed to the more complex ones living in the Northeast.
4
@M. Rose
'outsourcing racism' is interesting. 'real' racists vs 'more complex' racists is also strangely interesting.
While there is certainly a need for a critical perspective on interracial relationships that embed them in the larger realities of race relations and differences in power and resource distribution, there is also a need for art at multiple levels, including at the level of interpersonal transformation, which sometimes occurs in complex ways. There is a fair amount of research that suggests the interracial contact does make a difference, albeit more likely when there is status equality than not. I do not think that movies that show interpersonal interactions between whites and blacks, even if from a white perspective, should be uniformly condemned just because they do not show the full spectrum of the racial reality in the U.S. The fact that there is a broad audience for these types of movies is a good thing, not a bad thing. While it may not solve all racial problems and may sometimes oversimplify or substitute for real connection, people do change and learn, and seeing such possibilities is part of the process.
9
Mr Morris has caused me to ask myself why I like many of the movies he criticized. "Glory", "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Lilies of the Field", "A Time to Kill", "In the Heat of the Night", and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" would likely be on a list of my 200 favorite movies. I also have enjoyed "The Butler", "Trading Places", "Six Degrees of Separation", and yes, "Green Book". As a privileged white man, does this say something about my attitude toward race? Perhaps. But these movies are not only about race relations. They are often about bridging differences between individuals with differences - about not prejudging people you don't know. "Dances With Wolves", "Philadelphia", "Witness", "ET", "Transamerica", "Breakfast Club", "Milk", "Starman", and "The Station Agent" are other movies I enjoyed that spoke to a similar sentiment. By the way, I also include "Do the Right Thing" and "Boyz n the Hood" among my favorites. It is fair to ask whether race relations as depicted in Hollywood address the true issues preventing us from achieving an ideal of a color-blind society. But I don't know if it is fair to criticize the movie viewer who is inspired by a sentiment of getting to know people before you conclude they are not worth the effort. After all, isn't this at the heart of the political polarization that plagues this nation?
12
I know what the "Green Book" book is. When I heard the premise of the movie, my first thought was, "White Man Steals Movie Title."
I thought the movie would be about an African American family or families traveling about the country, using the Green Book. Is there no real story there? No white quasi hero in that?
I call it the "Dances With Wolves" syndrome. Take an important story and have it told through a white guy, because I couldn't relate if it was told by someone actually living it. (Please. No need to bring up the making money factor. I'll betcha that wasn't Spike's motivation when he made "Do the Right Thing.")
So we can all posture about the goods and bads of the movie. Fine. Maybe someone can make a real movie about the BOOK.
Years ago, traveling with a friend from Malaysia, we were refused service in Every restaurant we entered, tear gassed in our sleep (only once), cursed at and laughed at by passing cars, and met by every sheriff in every town we stopped in. (The sheriffs, to a man, were very respectful. They explained the situation. I thanked them. Bought some snacks for the road and we were on our way.) The thing is, all I had to do to stop this was not travel with my friend. Many people that live in this country do not have that option.
7
I see the Sunday newspaper title of this article is "Friendship or Fantasy?" Not sure both is so bad. Many people, like the Oscars, may be falling for racial reconciliation fantasies because of the distress witnessing the reverse. Whatever flaws "Green Book" may have, the public is learning some good history. Also, watching people being able to change their thinking/ways can be a good thing.
4
It's a big Hollywood movie. Watch it, maybe enjoy it.
This is not a documentary film. It is creative art.
6
Remember that the Oscars are judged mostly by old white men. In 2014 they were 94% white, 76% men, and an average age of 63. Two years later it was 91% white, 76% male.
2
Maybe I’m being overly optimistic but I think that it shows that if you put people together that wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to be together they find that they have more in common then they don’t. Race is an artificial construct. All people are homosapiens. We’re one species. Skin pigmentation is a ridiculous way to judge people.
18
I find these pseudo reviews so snobbish and condescending in and of themselves. I saw The Green Book today and in it I saw people changing inside and with each other. I didn't feel self-congratulatory as a white person, or that all was well in the world of race. Just because people have some moments of humanity together doesn't mean we white folks have to congratulate ourselves or think all is now okay.
It isn't. Racism is so alive and was never solved. However sometimes between human beings hatred is interrupted. I resent anyone telling me that my liking the movie makes me stupid, insipid. Racist? I know I am, I have gotten to know that part of me better over the past years and still have to work it. The movie didn't make me feel good about myself; it just made me equalize the playing field of life for a couple of hours, as happens in any good film, or good novel, or real authentic human encounter.
27
@Carol Smaldino
Agreed. "Snobbish and condescending" is exactly how I read this article as well. I would also add that it's ridiculously long, drowning in its own pretension and pseudo-intellectualism.
There is no way for people of different races to act in a movie (or in any public endeavor) that is okay in today's America. Perhaps people who find offense in everything would be happier if we all just ignored each other.
7
@Amanda
Maybe the article reads as snobbish and condescending. The writer of the article is an articulate black man. He's writing about something that I'm sure has bothered other people as well - it bothers me and I'm neither black nor a man. Stereotypes abound in Hollywood and in film. We still feel good when we see them in the context of a feel-good movie. Even 'The Blind Side' bothered me and I enjoyed it so much!
6
Because the American white majority is divided by condescending paternalistic liberal white pity and condescending paternalistic conservative white contempt. Neither of whom accept the diverse individual accountable humanity of black African Americans.
White people imagine that they are not racist prejudiced bigots. White people imagine that they have attained their status based upon some other merited qualification other than being white European Judeo- Christian American.
White folks favorite male heroes are Tarzan and Superman. Every white male misogynist patriarchal xenophobic bigoted film is a recycling and mixture of both myths. From John Wayne to Sylvester Stallone to Clint Eastwood to Kevin Costner to take your pick Bradley Cooper, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt etc..?
7
Morris’ piece is genius. Everyone who doesn’t think he’s a racist should read it, and everyone who doesn’t care about being a racist should read it, too. In short, everyone. It will move things around in your head and heart, and sting a little bit, too.
3
Maybe it is just a story about a white guy and black guy that became friends. Not that fictional, since it really happened, and happens all the time.
13
Hmm. So by this logic Huckleberry Finn should be tossed out along with any book or movie where a white and black person have any kind of positive relationship. Right? Because it's just a nefarious device to make white people feel good about themselves.
9
Oh wow Wesley Morris, that ending really brought the entire article together; somehow the vastness of your insights and cultural references still amaze me.
P.S. ❤️ Still Processing
3
In "Glory", the black troops have a white commander because that was how the Union army was organized during the Civil War. It was not done that way in the movie just to make a point, although that does not seem to impede the author in making his points.
7
The central character and protagonist in Glory is the white colonel, played by Matther Broderick, which is why Morris makes the point.
2
There has got to be a sweet spot between the need to show racial, gender, ethnic etc., disparity in films and the want to entertain and show hope.
I for one, go to movies to have a good time. The two hours I am there still leaves 22 that I can contemplate all that is bad with the world and how my straight, white, male status seems to be the common denominator for all of it.
Must we leave no time for feeling good and feeling like we have a chance?
5
@New Milford - the question isn't whether straight white males like yourself have the right to feel good; rather, it is whether, in the year 2019, it is fair for your good time to be predicated on telling a lie about the actual experience of black folks. I'll leave that to you to decide.
7
@Stephanie
That's exactly my point Stephanie. I am not talking about white-washing history. I am talking about simple entertainment that leaves you feeling like there is hope in the world. We must never forget the past, but we must all strive for a better future. Have we all become so angry that we can't find some common ground?
5
@New Milford - I appreciate your perspective. Thank you for the response.
1
We are, in the larger society, going through an era of "racial" engineering. Movies and television series not only reflect that, but are among the primary motivational tools being utilized to help bring it about. It's a copy-cat, commerce-driven movement even more than it is a cinematic phenomenon.
My friends are an interracial couple; they recently pointed out how every commercial on tv every news outlet, now has African Americans in it, equally represented, reflecting reality. They were very surprised when I pointed out that, according to the last census, African Americans comprise 12.3-12.7% of the US population.
Despite this statistic, for different reasons than my friends, I do think that the current trend reflects "reality". A mostly strategic, feel-good, pop-product reality, with some relationship to true life. Depending on who you are, who you know, where you work, who you like/don't like, and how you live.
Personally, I have always had friends and acquaintances from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. I taught at university for many years as well. I am open minded and curious. But I still choose my friends according to who I feel simpatico with, just like the rest of the human race. Different from the movies.
If larger point being made here is that exposure (of whites) to the"other" (blacks) leads to commonality and greater understanding, then, of course, I am glad. But i do think it is an empty exercise if the only people who gain enlightenment are white.
Because so many of the voters live behind bodyguards, doormen and gated communities. Their alibis, ideals and dogma are often as flimsy as film.
3
The theme is popular because so many of us recognize that peace and love between "the races" does not exist in America, but we want it to. We want to greet all our fellow Americans as part of this great experiment in which we unite around universal moral ideals, and not what supposedly sets us apart. It is a constant becoming. May we ultimately succeed. Amen.
9
There are probably some worthwhile take-away ideas buried somewhere in this article. Too bad the author and the New York Times decided a mini-Tolstoy novel was the best vehicle to express them. Less is more is still a good rule for art, including literature. And NYT commentaries.
7
In my humble opinion, the USA is lucky to own as one of theirs director Spike Lee. He is in a rarefied category of talented story tellers, coupled with his innate ability in choosing actors, music and cinematography. By sheer chance I saw his first full length feature film, "She's Gotta Have It", at the Edinburgh Film Festival way back in August 1986 and I have been a fan ever since.
It should not be forgotten that many actors and directors today stand on his shoulders. And it is quite distressing that Mr Lee has been often ignored by the powers that be in various award ceremonies, particularly the Academy Awards, but I hope he is more concerned about just getting his movies made. However, I am hoping for some awards at the end of February.
By the way, "Driving Miss Daisy" is not studied in film schools, but "Do The Right Thing" is and that should tell you everything.
7
@Anne
Spike Lee is a treasure. 'Crooklyn' is my fave. It may be one of the least known Spike Lee films (I'm not sure why).
Sweet and a bit autobiographical.
3
Brilliant analysis debunking the idea that an employee/employer relationship is ever a "friendship'. Same goes for marriage, if there is economic inequality involved. But keep in mind that few films are able to capture friendship or marriage or parenthood or war or work in authentic, nuanced or original ways; they are derivative of art and entertainment rather than life; they repeat marketable cliches. Spike Lee's many works are an exception. The film Roma is an exception.
4
Movies & shows that depict people of different races & economic classes spending time together need some reason for their continued interactions. Employment relationships provide that.
Yes, you could have, e.g., students overcome prejudice when studying at a newly integrated school, but that injects intentional social integration forced by external actors.
The adoption family sitcoms were a way of presenting a racially mixed family that would cause less offense to less “progressive” viewers. Yeah, it’s wrong to be offended by racially mixed families, but, if you want to change opinions, you can’t push too far too fast; you’ll either experience a backlash, or you won’t air your program at all.
Black characters could have been presented as more complex, and sometimes being more antagonistic, rather than as cheerily, stoically putting up with racism, but, that portrayal provides certain “progressive” ideals: whites were racist despite blacks not doing anything to cause offense; blacks not being racist (which isn’t necessarily true, but is “progressive”); whites being the ones who need to be less racist; non-violence & friendliness promoted as means of integration (MLK was much more successful at than the Black Panthers); etc.
If racial integration fantasies hadn’t been peddled in the manner that they had been, then our contemporary society would be much less integrated. They performed a valuable public service. And many were well made, despite not being realistic.
4
“Falling for” implies that contrary to the omniscient Wesley Morris, the makers of movies such as Driving Miss Daisy or Green Book don’t really understand reconciliation. For Morris, apparently, there is only one not ver clearly disclosed form of interaction between Whites and Blacks (or other visible minorities) that is authentic. Such a view can be maintained only by someone who is both pigheaded and limited in real world experience of reconciliation, one deficient in Real-world experience of the endlessly diverse, unpredictable and always imperfect course of inter-racial relationships. We are fortunate to have directors like Bruce Beresford and Peter Farrelly with the creativity and courage to share their take on reconciliation, imperfect as these inevitably must be. Meanwhile, we’ll just have to wait for Morris to produce the last word on the subject.
3
@Norman Dale
Is it the director or the writer who shares a take on reconciliation here? The writers of the films that Morris discuss are white - that is, until he talks about Spike Lee (writer and director). How is it that the stories go to a certain take on reconciliation? I think the discussion of THAT is really what the article is about. As a black man, Morris sees things differently - so it's worth hearing what he has to say.
3
Thank you, Mr Morris, for this smart, essential analysis. We needed somebody to name names and name delusions too. I hope the piece is widely reprinted.
5
Starting with Huck Finn and on to Atticus Finch up into our own day, this trope probably endures because it is important to our society for reasons both good and bad - every generation seems to need its own versions.
Bravo to the writer for bringing this phenomenon to our attention. Now we need the sociologists and film historians to delve a little deeper.
3
I'm puzzled by Mr. Morris' mocking claim that the movie "Les Intouchables" is not based on a true story. What is the basis for this claim? Philippe Pozzo di Borgo did indeed have a paragliding accident that left him a tetrapalegic. Abdel Sellou did indeed work for him for 10 years. Yes, although Mr. Sellou is Algerian the producers chose to cast Omar Sy because they wanted Mr. Sy in the movie. It's a movie based on a real life story; it's not a documentary. I find it laughable that Mr. Morris would take the original "Les Intouchables", a French film about a story based in France, and try to view it through the lens of race in America. While he may make other fine points in his article for other films he discusses, this does not help his overall argument.
11
@ranscoste
It may be the difference between 'inspired by a true story' and 'based on a true story.' I don't know the differences between the factual story and the movie that was made.
1
Sometimes characters are just people, not black people or white people. "The Toy" was a remake of the 1976 French comedy "Le Jouet," which starred Pierre Richard as the human toy purchased for the rich brat. So was the French film okay because Richard is white?
Likewise people who criticize Green Book don't seem to notice that the odd couple are not only of different races but of different classes. Dr Shirley is educated, brilliant, cultured, sophisticated, and financially well to do. Tony Lip is semi-literate and scrambling to support his family. From the beginning of their trip, Shirley mocks Tony for his limited world view (e.g., the "salty" review), corrects his diction & vocabulary, polices his behavior (the turquoise stone), lectures him on his tendency to solve problems with his fists, and even gives him instructions on how to write letters to his wife ("this is pathetic"). If the roles had been reversed, reviewers would have screamed bloody murder about the portrayal of the ignorant black man and the condescendingly superior white.
The film is as much about Dr Shirley learning to respect Tony as it is about Tony learning to respect Shirley. I enjoyed it, I loved both characters, and believe that both Ali and Mortensen were brilliant.
26
This headline has bugged me for 3 days now.
What is so wrong with racial reconciliation fantasies - that they are fantasies? that can be debatable but is it better NOT to have such fantasies or hopes?
I don't even want to read the article.
3
@brockse47 - what is wrong with them is that they appear to be the beginning and end of efforts in Hollywood to address the painful daily existence of people of color in this country.
3
Gotta tell you @brockse47 - You will NOT like reading this article. Sorry Mr Morris, but are you outta your ever Lovin' mind ? What Planet are you on ?
I could go on, but I'd much rather put this down, go outside and actually enjoy some Life without being told how to interpret it. My God & Sighhhhh ......
Ok I confess that I am white and I confess that I really enjoyed the movie Green Book. Stereotypes aside it was a very enjoyable, feel- good movie, despite having to suspend belief at various moments in the movie. Call it escapism if you like, but that is part of the movie going experience for me.
2
Not many major motion picture films with interracial casts have improved on developing the human complexity of a lead black character since ”Othello, the Tragic Moor” by Wm. Shakespeare in Elizabethan England. Shakespeare’s tragedy sells as much fantasy escape from our real lives as any contemporary movie about an inter-racial relationship today. The imagined human condition is surely the point and implicit in such interracial cast and thematic films as the British“A Taste of Honey,” or “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing,” and “Mississippi Masala.” But when nothing more is expected of interracial movies other than that they begin with racial tensions of strangers ending in their inter-racial harmony, or even ending with the same tensions, the movies are little more compelling as memorable than enacted sermons. Games where no side ever really loses or no one really wins after a loss are ones most people will not pay to watch. The same applies to movies.
Memorable interracial films, like other films, require no translation for audiences to identify with the main characters’s human dilemmas and their human resolutions. The enduring appeal of film classics (“Black Orpheus”-1959) or by Spike Lee( “She’s Gotta Have it”) have black actors but no racial thematic sermon or point. Their themes are universal.
2
@Bayou Houma
According to Wikipedia, Barack Obama had a problem with 'Black Orpheus.'
'Barack Obama notes in his memoir Dreams from My Father (1995) that it was his mother's favorite film. Obama, however, did not share his mother's preferences upon first watching the film during his first years at Columbia University: "I suddenly realized that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad's dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different.'
Hey, Barack! You're talking about 'simple fantasies.' What is wrong with fantasies? The Guardian newspaper is the source of the Wikipedia quote. And the title of the Guardian article is 'Why Obama is Wrong About Black Orpheus.' The author was Peter Bradshaw.I have not read that article but now I must.
1
Movies such as "Do the Right Thing" or a "I Am Not Your Negro," which end in fulsome black humanity, dignity, and anger, and that are void of white redemption profoundly unsettle and stoke fear in white America. A reason for the institutional and commercial success of "Daisy" and "Blindside" and "Mockingbird," is their insistent assurance that black victims of oppression can be saved by American whites -- ever providing opportunities that the newly huggable and grateful blacks would not have but for the white protagonist. Spike Lee's films, a "Fruitvale Station," "Moonlight," or even a "Black Panther," render whites irrelevant to black redemption and freedom. That, it seems, is a threat that is often assuaged by a Miss Daisy's dementia-clouded touch of a Hoke's hand -- aged and harmless.
7
I remember when I saw the previews for Sandra Bullock's "The Blind Side" back in 2009. I swear, I thought to myself "Finally someone is making a comedy parody of these types of films". But no. "The Blind Side" was yet another of these films where the (usually) well off white person "helps" some poor, unfortunate minority and said minority also "helps" the white folks get in touch with something: their humanity, their soul, their ability to dance. Ugh Whatever. It's not just formulaic. It's insulting to everyone. The material is ripe, it positively begs for a Wayons Brothers parody. I have had to suffer through a number of these films thanks to someone I used to be close to who fell for this dribble.
Despite the presence of a number of fine "minority" actors, the focus of these types of films is always on the white people (like "The Help" and the aforementioned "The Blind Side"). The film makers believe they're doing something noble but they're condescending. It's ignorance. It doesn't have to be this way. Films like "Sounder", "Eve's Bayou" and "Stand and Deliver" had African Americans and Latinos front and center and they are great films.
I hope that dreck like "Green Book" and "The Upside" will stop being made thanks to awareness from articles like this one.
Good job Wesley Morris and the NY Times.
8
These films (Green Book, Driving Miss Daisy etc.) are not pieces of White racial propaganda. Instead they are propaganda for capitalism (which Mr. Morris only mentions twice in his piece but which should have been at its center).
The films are meant to indoctrinate the viewer with the idea that instead of capitalism being the source of the evil of racism (or any other social ill), it is always the remedy. The message being that more capitalism will bring diverse people together and "friendship" will take hold through subservience to the power structure.
Of course, the relationships are all false and unequal in terms of power. Unity of class is never even remotely thought of an it is only the appearance of equality that matters in these films, never actual equality.
6
Webster and Diff’rent Strokes both postulate a world that inverts reality. Both shows offer us kindly white people caring for vulnerable African-Americans. Reality? Black (and Latino) caretakers offering assistance to Caucasians in need of housekeeping, babysitting, elder care, etc. Why the inversion? Because reality is too uncomfortable for most of us to live with, let alone recognize.
3
@Lanier I think part of the thing with Webster and Diff'rent Strokes was also the classic "fish out of water" trope, taking the most extreme of both ends and making them meet in the middle. The neat thing about "Trading Places" was that it did that to BOTH ends, took Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd and swapped them both into one another's environments, and showed how utterly incapable of surviving Aykroyd was in Murphy's character's environment. That was ... interesting for its time.
3
The film Roma. Reminded me of "Driving Miss Daisy". Though I haven't read anyone review it that way.
But the loyal brown Indian maid giving her life to the wealthy white Spanish colonialists. Uggh, I just really didn't like the story at all.
5
Racial reconciliation movies do a service of sorts—reminding us that racism in America is still a problem—certainly not as evil as during the time of slavery, but evil nonetheless. Hollywood’s sugar coating makes it more palatable. There’s a subtler theme in Green Book that is the strength of the film—the fact that a black virtuoso couldn’t make a living playing classical music in the 1950s, but had to play Jazz instead. Don Shirley certainly had the physical and musical skills to interpret Liszt Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev but had to play pop jazz to fill up a concert hall in the US. Remember this was back in a time when many white Anthropologists were still convinced that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. Blacks had only just integrated sports and few black scholars were attending elite schools. Hollywood may be a poor mirror of society, but at least it can help us overcome the most idiotic and hurtful stereotypes.
7
"You’re meant to laugh because how could this racist be better at being black than this black man who’s supposed to be better than him?" For what it's worth, I found the chicken scene enjoyable because of Tony Lip's excitement about getting KFC "in Ky", and because Don Shirley was so formal--it was fun to see him relax a little. The later lines about "blackness" seemed to be the movie's sign that Tony didn't really understand the racism that Don was facing--not as a sign that Tony knew more about blackness than Don.
7
Why was Mortenson nominated for Best Actor but Ali nominated for Best SUPPORTING actor?
@Bicycle Bob Because one character got to have a full and well-rounded arc (that would be Mortenson), and the other got to support him in his metamorphosis from racist to 'enlightened,' plus play Cyrano on the side to help him communicate with his wife, plus go to HIS house in the end and be 'embraced' by a table full of mostly reluctant white people, as opposed to having any window except the most teeny tiny one opened up onto his own potentially rich, complicated reality (and that would be Ali).
5
"Green Book" is Oscars-TV-Movie schlock. Simple-minded plot, easy emotions. I couldn't stand it. I'd substitute "Sorry to Bother You" for Best Picture in a second.
I love the "Do The Right Thing" lens on the hoary cliche of interracial friendship through employment. Perfect.
3
Thank you Mr. Morris for accurately and , although superficially at times, aggressively shining a light on these movies and how they creatively and comfortably and continually soothe (and i would agrue perpetuates and strengthens suppression and assimilation of blacks) whites (in most movie instances sited in the article- jews) need to feel superior even in the theater. Lee’s “Do” is a great movie and the only good movie Lee has directed, yet he has managed to pigeonhole himself into the same trap that award givers love. He has succumbed to the whites and will given an award for crying uncle. That is theme all these movies has in common and continues to bleed into reality.
4
I recently watched (again) "Do the Right Thing"- an excellent movie. The fact that Spike has never been nominated, until now, is typical academy. I believe these white/black reconciliation/we shall over come movies make white people feel good so the academy promotes them
2
I'm sorry but this is nothing but undisguised racial hatred. That it is black hatred of whites doesn't make it any better. Imagine a Times critic writing about "the actual emotional, psychological work of being white among black people. Here, the proximity to blackness is toxic, a danger, a threat."
We are not whites among blacks or blacks among whites, we are humans among humans. Human relations require work, for which we are not always paid, not in cash and sometime not always in reciprocal feelings. Sometime it even requires danger - stay home if you want to be safe at all time. If you view all interactions in the most superficial terms - literally in black and white, then you will miss out on what is really important in life.
9
@Jack D - no, my friend, you are not correct. We are not simply humans among humans when one racial group is continually singled out to be brutalized by another racial group. Your humanistic fantasy simply is not true. Please take the time to educate yourself on the history of white brutality against blacks, Asians, Native Americans and Mexicans in this beloved country of ours. If you know that 40% of all those incarcerated in the U.S. are black when the general population of blacks is only 13%, you cannot possibly sustain your fantasy. And in regard to your comments on "reverse" racism, this is not a "thing". Those who hold all the power cannot be oppressed by the very nature of their status as members of a privileged class.
6
Minor comment here: I find it fascinating that so many of these stories use the "brownest" possible white people to stand in for all white Americans: Jews and Italians. I'm not sure where this goes, but I just find that worth commenting on. In some ways it's just proximity -- Jews and Italian-Americans are the most urban of the sort-of-whites in the US where the tension is likely to be the most profound and crowded.
But it's also as if typing-paper white Americans still can't face up to their own racism without finding the least-white white people to blame for it. There's something weird going on there.
3
@Janis, I think that's because those two groups, even though we clearly classify them as white these days, in the past, there may have been some question as to how these peoples classifed themselves and how white america in general classified them. I've always thought it interesting and (very, very) appropriate that the two groups in Do The Right Thing were black people and Italian - Americans.
2
Mr. Morris, who to me is encyclopedic in his film knowledge, never points out in this article that Paul Haggis, Academy Award winner for the insipid Crash (2004) was also a writer on the insipid sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. Suggesting the issue is more than just the attitude persisting, it's literally the same people reinforcing it.
6
What Mr. Morris neglected to consider is that the movies he so gratuitously and ingeniously derides present stories of personal relationships that transcend race and deliver singular emotional experiences to those who watch them. The current obsession to judge artistic expression, and normal everyday interaction, in the context of racism is a fallback to the fascistic impulse to silence with intolerance those who dare to hold an idea that does not conform to their mindset. The US has made significant progress in attenuating racial prejudice in the last forty years, of which half have been under Democrat Presidents, and to deny this fact is to ignore reality, even though this does not fit into the story that Mr. Morris is so intent upon portraying.
9
A cogent response to Mr. Morris's opinion is a open letter from Harry Belafonte which I will quote.
"My wife Pamela and I just finished watching Green Book and although I don’t usually do this, I am compelled to drop this note to thank the filmmakers for having made this film for us all to see. I knew Don Shirley, and, in fact, had an office across the street from his at Carnegie Hall, and I experienced much of what he did at the same time. This movie is accurate, it is true, and it’s a wonderful movie that everyone should see.
The few people who appear to be objecting to the film’s depiction of the time and the man are dead wrong, and, if the basis of their resentment stems from it having been written and/or directed by someone who isn’t African American, I disagree with them even more. There are many perspectives from which to tell the same story and all can be true.
I personally thank the filmmakers for having told this important story from a very different lens, one no less compelling than any other.
So again, I say to the filmmakers, thank you, and congratulations."
Harry Belafonte
23
"And in his posture resides an entire history of national racial awkwardness: He has to mind his composure even as she’s losing her mind."
What a perfect characterization of our historical problem. In addition to romanticizing the past, "Green Book", "Driving Miss Daisy", and "The Upside", along with "The Help", further this idea of Black grace as something bordering martyrdom. Reconciliatory fantasies in this vein are dependent on a Black person being patient, conciliatory, and vitally deficient in some social or economic aspect.
It's interesting how, between "Green Book", "Black Panther", and "BlackKkKlansman", the only Oscar-nominated film firmly set in a version of the present is a superhero movie. If, in 2018, 'Do The Right Thing' was released, would it have been nominated? And if so, would it win? I think we're a long way from a film centered on fraught racial tension and animosity being lauded by the establishment. It would mean acknowledging a reality we haven't yet faced as a nation.
5
Perhaps one of the reasons why the Oscars, or most movies dealing with the racial divide strive to have a some kind of reconcilliation, is because chances are there's rarely such a thing as a happy ending in real life.
Of course those incidents taking place in a far less enlightened, or tolerant time in American history have the painful task of showing the barbarity of segregation and Jim Crow laws that were purposefully unsparing in their ability to denigrate people of color to a inhuman and subservient status.
It's fair to say that most white people have no idea of what it would be like to live like this.
Just like it's also fair to assume that many never heard about the Green Book before it recently became a movie.
But for those who are aware of what it was and why it came to be, are also not easily taken in by the way it ends onscreen because it was common knowledge that being Black while riding driving down a back road after dark in the South would have much grimmer consequences than merely spending a night in jail.
That said, if taken in the totalitarity of the lead performances by Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in this film, the story becomes more than some symbolic gesture to racial harmony after overcoming the odds above and below the Mason-Dixon line -- it becomes a testament to what true friendship, and yes, love can become in spite of it.
At least that is what I walked away with after seeing this film.
And I'm glad I did.
4
Mr. Morris, this is a much-needed examination of Hollywood’s resistance to telling stories which make white audiences uncomfortable. However, we must experience discomfort to truly grow and change; sometimes that can be as simple as seeing a story where whiteness is not centered or normed. As you can read from the comments, your article is another discomfort agent, and good will ultimately come from it.
8
Great article!
I would add that many whites don’t see employment portrayed as friendship as odd, since they obtain some of their friends that way. As a white middle-class person who has a small business serving mostly white wealthy people, I am frequently invited to dinner/ parties/events with clients. Events where I turn on the charm, and don’t mention my liberal politics, or have more than one drink, or engage in any conversation where I talk for more than 20% of the time. But I can tell that my clients think we are actually friends. They really don’t know that we aren’t.
14
@Dee I don't know that THEY consider you a genuine friend. I think they imagine YOU think that. Believe me, they are well aware that you aren't on their level -- but they like to imagine that you feel starry-eyed and noticed by them, like the scullery maid being invited to the ball. There are a lot of layers to that onion.
8
The rather obvious answer to Mr. Morris' political and moral question is economics. To wit DMD took in $145M; DTRT $37M. As 'society cum art' DTRT holds up much better DMD, as one is still more or less current and the other a dated tale even in 1990. Movies are short shelf life businesses, that's why most Hollywood product is predictable end of world catastrophes, and super heroes, regardless of race. Black Panther grossed $1.3B. It's also up for Best Picture with BlackkKlansman, which took in $89M. How could both be up for the same award? For many reasons, the Oscars seem to have lost real relevance long ago. Hollywood now sells to Shanghai, Moscow and lastly Peoria. Movies are part story telling, economics, art, and, politics, somewhat in that order. If you want real world politics to be your litmus test for Hollywood, documentaries are a better format to produce and follow.
92
You're making this too complicated.
Movies need to make money and thus they need to have white and black actors in them in order to appeal to white and black audiences.
How else are they going to get whites and blacks in the same movie ?
6
And don't forget another Beresford film, "Mr. Church." Eddie Murphy's character cooks, sews, helps bathe, and generally takes care of the white family. Of course, they grow to love him. Why wouldn't they?
3
Who need the romantic in our days? We need only the truth.
4
There seems to be more than enough hate to go around these days. I'm looking for positive stories of people who develop real friendships and care for each other across whatever divides them. I raised my children to treat everyone the same and had always thought that was a good goal. Today, all the conversations (and news coverage) seems to be focused on what divides us, instead of our shared humanity and struggles. Sit back and enjoy the movies and maybe they will give us greater insights about ourselves and others!
13
If you look at these movies solely through the lens of race relations, then you miss the main point being to encourage us to step outside of our comfort zones socially. The way we overcome bias is to have individual relationships with people who are not like us, whether they are of a different ethnicity, sexuality or socio-economic strata. Green Book covers all of these differences which is probably why it has been so well received despite having a tepid script.
When we take the time, which for many of us is only feasible in a work setting, to get to know another person, we can open our minds to an entire section of society we may have had little interaction with previously.
7
"Why Do the Oscars Keep Falling for Racial Reconciliation Fantasies?"
Because a large majority of Academy voters are white. Also true of the industry as a whole. That means that projects get green-lighted by people who can relate to the white person's point of view; and even "woke" white people want to believe that we would all get along just fine if we only got to know each other better, and are loath to embrace the idea that maybe no, not all of us can.
The same idea left me unconvinced about "As Good As It Gets," only then it was homophobia and misogyny. In real life, the idea that a middle-aged (or older) bigot could be reformed just by getting to know "the right gay" or "the right woman" is laughable.
7
And yet, not one word about the stereotyping of Italian-Americans.
11
@NanC Do you think Morris uses "Eye-talian" in earnest? Because that would be the one word you're looking for.
3
That's a lot of words showing how much race matters to the author and those who believe others should be as focused on racial matters to the finest degree.
4
Thank you. This is a finely written article. I've been extremely uncomfortable with the popularity of The Green Book. I'm grateful to have this discomfort eloquently spelled out.
2
These movie plot lines reflect White American's inability to grapple with White supremacy. Rather than reflect on their complicity in past and present injustices, they need to feel like heroes when they are not. White people know they aren't heroes, and Black people certainly know it but the lie must continue - just like White supremacy.
172
@professor Or they note that not all interactions are race-baited, hatred based, as your comments clearly are. The USA was instrumental in stopping global slave trade and was a quick adopter of racial equality that instead of allowed to get better as generational culture changes, is inflamed daily by those who receive a paycheck by being aggrieved.
29
Yes, the system is set up to soothe the cognitive dissonance of white people's discomfort. I was very happy to read this Review and to hear pushback more and more often.
29
@professor
I truly cannot believe that this kind of attack against people of any race is a NYT "Pick". This shows exactly where the NYT has gone. If the usage of white and black
were reversed the NYT would have squelched the comment rather than making it a "Pick".
18
The term "racial reconciliation fantasy" is so accurate and precise in describing the sickening white self-congratulatory feeling that I experience as when watching recent films like "Green Book" and "The Help". The Hollywood templates are unavoidable, however, as long as hundreds of millions of $$$ dollars are generated by them, especially in India and China where Hollywood media is also popular. The Spike Lee masterpiece "Do the Right Thing" is what should be promoted and watched abroad, but unfortunately, it seems like a very profitable cycle of the production and consumption of feel-good white self-congratulatory films will carry on, and continue to result in billions of Indian and Chinese millennials believing that life in the New York City resembles the sit-com "Friends" and life in the Southern U.S.A. is akin to the movies like "The Help" and "Green Book", rather then much more accurate visual narratives like "Do the Right Thing" and, more recently, "The Florida Project", respectively in regards to New York City and the Southern U.S.A.
104
@MONEY Maybe the world doesn't care what movies "you think should be promoted and watched abroad." That you have movies you like is great; and others can enjoy other movies. Free speech actually matters.
25
A mention of PASSION FISH (1992), by independent filmmaker extraordinaire John Sayles, would have been a welcome addition to this superb discussion.
Sayles wrote an Oscar contending screenplay where actresses Alfred Woodard and Mary MacDonald are forced to honestly face their co-dependent, economic racial dynamic.
They both do actually learn from each other. For a worthy, interracial unity movie, THAT is authentic closure.
86
@Valerie Wolf
Yes! Also worth mentioning that Mary MacDonald plays a woman who is paralyzed from the waist down. An early, and as you say, worthy, homage to inclusiveness, i.e. humanity.
9
@Valerie Wolf, The name is Mary McDonnell.
6
The writer misses the truth that an appealing story line about people communicating across a racial and age divide is inherently good in our times of Twitter-spun hatred. More importantly, The Green Book was really a thing as recently as the 1970s. Too many white people don't realize how hard it was (and is) for families of color to do normal things, and a story that teaches that in a way that reaches many is important. "A little bit of sugar..." can help people learn and maybe be moved by the unpleasant truth about the plight of life as a person of color.
232
@Esther Lee, I think the "truth" the author points to (and an important one, IMO) it that transactional relationships, where one party is being paid to be present, is not conducive to meaningful communication, but is more likely to result in a relationship still based upon stereotypes – only positive rather than negative ones. Or, in the Spike Lee example, where the repressed feelings explode in a confrontational way. Of course it's hard to get away from that design when we live in a country where the "American dream" has become to get sufficiently wealthy enough that your bigotry can be exhibited with impunity.
20
@Esther Lee good for who though and at what cost? When these movies center these transactional friendships/acquaintances from the white POV, it's their voice and perspective (and their relation to actual history) that is actually being conveyed; so when people walk away from the movie and feel like they've seen the "truth" or "history"; they're only get one version and that then affects how people feel like they understand history. They don't realize that their feelings about actual race is muted for the very fact that the black POV is not equally expressed in these movies. It's like that African proverb of if hunters only tell the stories, it skews the actual story of the lion.
25
@Esther Lee
The National Building Museum in DC had an exhibit on automobile travel in the US that featured the Green Book and the difficulties blacks experienced while traveling. When I first heard of the Green Book movie, I thought it would cover a black family traveling in the south or cross country. I was disappointed to learn the actual premise. Oh well, that’s Hollywood.
23
Well maybe they keep falling for these movies because they are good entertainment, which is after all, what the awards are supposed to highlight.
93
Excuse me...”good entertainment.” But my point stands.
1
I think that one reason these plot lines come up is that for many people, (defacto) neighborhood segregation makes it difficult for interracial friendships to develop in social settings. Work often brings people from different cultural backgrounds together and interracial friendships can grow from familiarity and camaraderie.
185
If Do The Right Thing was released today it would, hands down, win best picture, and Lee best director. Didn't appreciate it at the time, but I do now.
70
I think that you have it right. I am a Spike Lee fan and have always loved his ability to make you really uncomfortable about race relations between people and groups. Certainly, our current reality is not a feel good story about white and black people finally getting along. Charlottesville (and our President's response) showed how bad things are. My fingers are crossed for him and BlackKKlansman.
69
Bravo. While it's depressing to see the number of comments (probably 90%) that are immediately defensive and completely missing the point (and somehow are garnering NYT picks) of this article, I'm glad that you are naming this sorry state of affairs. This is why I hated Driving Miss Daisy, why (even though I love Marhershala Ali) I will not see Green Book, and why movies like The Blind Side are so tired and awful. One of the most exciting developments in story telling and movie making is when people who haven't had a voice or agency over their story finally start telling it. It will always be different than the story that the dominant culture tells about them. I wish more of the people who read this article would stop reacting and instead get curious and start asking questions - who is making these movies? why might Black people not like them? What if Morris' critique is valid? What does it tell us about structural racism and oppression in this country? Like, to actually be inquisitive and curious rather than defensive and reactive. You can do it folks.
18
Another thoughtful, probing piece by Mr. Morris who should be permitted to more often write about movies that are concerned with issues other than race. In any case, I'm wondering whether he's copacetic with Oscar's placement of Mahershala Ali in the supporting actor category while Viggo Mortensen gets a lead actor nod. Their roles of are of equivalent size and importance and, whereas it frequently happens that such decisions are made by the studios involved to prevent two actors in the same movie from splitting the vote between them, it just seemed a foregone conclusion here that it would be the white actor who'd be regarded as the solitary lead. Anyway, I'll revisit "Driving Ms. Daisy" (a movie I found less than compelling in 1989) on Mr. Morris' recommendation provided that he takes a look at Richard Fleischer's antebellum potboiler, "Mandingo" from 1975 which I had regarded as utter trash until I saw it again recently only to discover that it's actually a scathing satire of the lives, loves and "values" of southern plantation owners of the old Confederacy. The movie's black characters are perhaps a bit too docile up until the bloody climax but its degenerate slave-owners could have come out of a tome by Jonathan Swift.
40
@stu freeman I'm not in agreement that the nominations are racist. I don't think that the two roles are of equal size and importance. The movie revolves around the character that Viggo Mortensen portrays - his views, his family, his career. It wasn't a bio about Doc Shirley - he was a catalyst for someone, namely Tony, changing.
16
@stu freeman, studios will usually put forward their most well-known co-star as the the lead actor. Mortensen is "bankable." If Denzel Washington was playing Shirley, he probably would have gotten the nomination. In Hollywood it's always about money.
4
@stu freeman The story is told from the perspective of Tony Lip. Ergo, the actor who plays Tony Lip gets more screen time, and the nomination in the lead actor category. Both actors could arguably have been nominated for lead actor, but then they would be competing against each other, reducing the chance that either would win.
10
Excellent analysis. But I wonder why no one ever, ever comments on the blatant stereotyping of Italian-Americans in the movies.
160
@Nicky Given that the story is supposed to be from his son's recollection, you'd think he'd have pushed back on this.
6
@Nicky. Answer: because the misrepresentation of Italian-Americans on the screen does *not* affect the real lives of Italian-Americans. Do you think that your Italian-American neighbor is really a Tony Soprano in disguise?
10
Obviously the author supports Black Klansman. Spike Lee is a master storyteller and at times fearless. He has spoken truth to power in a candid fashion for several decades. It is right and fitting he has been given the best director nomination. Driving Miss Daisy was set in the mid 20th-century in Georgia. It took a far less confrontational approach to fostering insight and understanding. The same can be said of The Green Book. Racism and bigotry are on the rise throughout the world. Obviously there is much that needs to be done. If we learn anything from Donald Trump and his leadership through chaos and confrontation is that it builds resentment. For lasting change to occur it will take a personal and perhaps more gentle approach. I don't believe it's dishonest or patronizing but recognizing what opportunities for common ground maybe found by what opportunities maybe available.
59
I hope people take some time to learn about the real Dr. Shirley because his life (and his family's) was amazing. there's a lot of merit to his family's complaints about this movie- they weren't consulted about it or told about it until it was finished. There's a great movie to be made about Dr. Shirley. The Green Book ain't it.
74
@AndrewYes, there is a great movie to be made about Dr. Shirley. So someone should make it. Don't blame Green Book for it not being made: Green Book is a buddy movie about two guys who get to know each other and who learn to move toward each other, recognizing what the other has to offer him.
21
@Ms
Actually, those who knew Dr. Shirley well--I count myself among them because I was good friend as well as his piano student--are over the moon with his portrayal in the movie. Even seeing him through the eyes of Tony Lip, the movie's protagonist, the dignity, wariness, grace and anger in his character are exactly as we knew him. It is at once a mystery and an achievement how Mahershala Ali got so close. Green Book, apart from so many other winning aspects, is a gift to his legacy.
48
@Ms Not ONLY is it not a movie about Dr Shirley it is ONLY a film about two guys on a two month road trip. PERIOD. How many time does it need to be repeated. It is NOT a bio-pic. It is a MOVIE
5
The idea that art must forward your political narrative to be praiseworthy or enjoyable is absurd. It has a long and terrifying history, from Nazi Germany to Stalin’s USSR. You can like or dislike Green Book, but seeking to shame those who make moving, beautiful art because it doesn’t pull your ideological sled is deplorable. It is Mr. Morris’ right to do so in our free society. But let’s recognize what it is; an effort to discredit artists or art he dislikes, irrespective of the quality of the art. All this for ideological reasons. By all means let’s have stories from many, many artists. But let’s stop using politics to attack art. It never ends well.
139
@Kevin Johnson, there is also a tendency, among those who are sensitive to such things, to evaluate critical opinion as having a political agenda. I cannot find fault with this critique on political grounds, and am surprised to see a comment doing so. All critics have their opinions, and this one is more thoughtful, and thought provoking than many I have seen on these pages. Are you sure the agenda is not yours?
38
@Kevin Johnson
We like works of art for different reasons: Cinderella tells a good story, Nine to Five tells a more true, and therefore many would say, better story.
This article isn't so much about 'politics' as it's about expression and the moral question at the heart of every narrative: who gets to tell a story, who's listening, and what did we all learn?
35
I have read more than one of these well-written and wrongheaded analysis of the “Green Book”. They generally ignore the structure of the story, the complete character arcs of both main characters, the reality of life for those of us who were and are the integrating pioneers and had to learn to navigate multiple worlds (in none of which we truly fit), and relationships between folks who don’t look like one another. Such relationships happen and some flourish because some folks, through trial and error, see the humanity in their fellow human beings. I do hope that those who abhor the “Green Book” or consider it cliche, Choose to abandon their keyboards from time to time, and live amongst the rest of us who develop meaningful relationships even in transactional settings.
426
@left coast finch, when in the USA, Houston, TX, is still part of the USA, I'll write and speak like Idris Elba and not some pretentious cowboy.
@Kenneth Barrett Hmmm...so those of us who call out a fraud - Don Shirley's family has dubbed the Green Book travesty precisely that - cannot "develop meaningful relationships." It's quite obvious that your version of meaningful interracial relationships are those wherein persons of color play supporting roles (better yet if subservient) to white men, regardless of their station in life.
11
@Kenneth Barrett, Great comment. Thank you. Breaking down barriers often happens when people come together through work, music, school...whatever circumstance. That's not a fantasy, and some of us realize that even those movies "based on a true story" are not documentaries.
I loved The Help...because I get a kick out of watching people who are loathsome get their just deserts. I didn't like Driving Miss Daisy. I love Spike Lee's work. It would be wonderful if he would win this year and that we don't have to wait for him to get a Lifetime Achievement Award. As he said himself, he's a dark horse in this race. And I still like Green Book.
11
This article is way too long and too boring. I saw "Green Book" in Memphis (where MLK was assassinated) in a sold-out theatre with about 50% white and 50% black audiences. The black audience members were the first to applaud at the end of the movie. I hope they don't read this article.
5
The backlash on 'Green Book" mystifies me. The story is basically true though no doubt embellished which is par for the course for most films taken from real life. The incidents portrayed dramatically show the bravery and determination of the pianist Don Shirley as he and his chauffeur traveled into the deep South, where Shirley had to contend with constant prejudice and sometime threats to his well being. The movie, superbly directed by Peter Farrelly and brilliantly brought to life by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali , is vivid recreation of another time and place. It's a story of two people, poles apart in every way, who by chance come together and over a period of time become friends and both are the better for it. I guess that comes under a genre now becoming popularly categorized as 'Reconciliation Fantasy' but this coined term seems to include putting down perfectly good movies as 'cliche ridden', etc. All I know is a liked 'Green Book' immensely. I think it deserves its Oscar nods and that Mr. Farrelly should have been nominated for Director along with it.
8
I had to honestly ask myself if I could have as hot of a love fantasy affair with Mahershala Ali as I do with Denzel Washington. This question of white black relationships and racial reconciliation will perplex us in America until we face the cost of slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynching, 30 acres and a mule, segregation, and red-lining neighborhoods. The fear of the black man is a horrible, denigrating injustice to every single black boy born in America. Why do you think the school to prison pipeline exists. it is time for the American soul to admit its terror, and genocide against the black race and come to see that yes, in Hollywood the story can change, I hope Blackkklansmen wins Oscar for best picture because the shock at the end of the film is a wake up call for us all.
8
@Juliana James, Amen! Whites would do well to investigate the current focus on white privilege to understand that our country’s won’t make progress forward until we all not just understand what the history and impact of slavery has meant in where we are socially and culturally today between blacks and whites, but we need to FEEL what life is like for even the most successful blacks who must still worry about whether their child will be the next victim of someone “standing their ground” or shooting first and asking questions later. We have no idea...
2
Or...why do they keep falling for movies with a message?
2
Although I’m not always a big fan of Mr. Morris’ columns, this is a good one and I’m not sure why folks don’t see it. Movies like Driving Miss Daisy, Green Book, etc. are supposed to make whites (and I am white) feel good about getting along with black people by papering over the problems between the races. They’re a kind of “everything will come out all right in the end” kind of movies, with a “can’t we just get along” kind of message and feel.
Americans have a view of relations and history that things get better and will work out in the end. It’s Pollyannaish. Sorry to say but more often than not they don’t.
Do the Right Thing addresses black white relations head on and lets you know it’s not that easy. It’s more realistic and true to life.
13
Really? We can’t like ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ anymore?
Isn’t it exhausting to be this upset about everything, all the time? Take a breath. Enjoy a movie for what it is, not for everything it fails to be. It’s two hours of your life.
17
No one said that. You're mad over nothing.
2
I agree - To Kill a Mockingbird is a great movie with great actors. We need to enjoy a movie for what it is and for the time it was made.
2
Perhaps a lack of imagination among voters?
Perhaps a lack of diversity among voters?
Those movies bore me.
Excellent article.
It is of course perfectly natural that shameful and painful stuff must be put in a humorous and light context for mass audience.
But It is a fair question to ask if this really changes the world? I am inclined to think no.
And I don't think I am a pessimist either. I think people can change. But this sort of change has to come from the real truth, the ugliest truth.
3
As an accomplished at large film critic for the NYT, Wesley Morris has to pick through a movie to clarify his points and motivations. He would not be paid for an article if it did not share his witticisms of racial injustices in film today. How boring.
I have seen these movies to understand some historical perspective of segregation and how these protagonists bond by confronting conflicts as a united front.
America has come far and there is still more to accomplish, but Morris' comments do little reduce the racial divides with he admonishments of movies' efforts to educate and entertain.
4
You've got to start somewhere. Starting with showing a friendship between two people from different races or backgrounds isn't such a bad way to start. The more children of all races and backgrounds see such a thing, the more it becomes totally the norm. Gay people have learned that lesson. The offensively-stereotyped depictions of gays in 60s movies (psychotic killers, flighty cowards and suicides) at least let people know that we exist. A few decades later we'd made it to being the straight star's friend who is killed off by the psychotic killer. Hey, it's progress. Much slower than any of us would want, but the needle is moving, for all of us.
7
@Bob G.
"we'd made it to the straight star's friend who is killed off by the psychotic killer."
Thank you for the first (rueful) smile of the day. I'm with you. It's progress, however tiny. Keeping the conversation stuttering along.
4
Why does Hollywood continue to glamorize guns and violence ? They need to put the public interest before their financial interest .
3
Because the movies allow them to imagine themselves better than they are... and the Oscars and Hollywood have been among the worst. These films are little more than fantasies about a catharsis that few white people will ever experience, or even seek.
3
The only lie bigger than Green Book is notion that Hollywood - America's greatest creator of social control narratives - is a liberal institution.
2
In the movies, Black people have always been used to demonstrate - without words - that the White character is "good people," who needs only the understanding pat on the head of the Black person to show that, by the end of the movie, the White character is redeemed. One need only look at Mae West movies (Beulah the maid), The Carpetbaggers, where Elizabeth Ashley approaches the (very cold) George Peppard's valet, Jonas, begging to understand George's aloof, prickly nature.
There is nothing new to these stories, which are little more than a way of saying to White America, "You is good, you is kind, you is im-PORTANT.'
The reality is that White America knows this is not true and will not be for at least another century. But the movies hold out the hope to White America that their collective guilt will one day be wiped away by the ongoing flood of movies acknowledging the guilt they (should) have over their (ever-present) ill treatment of Blacks.
But the movies themselves? Without them, White America will founder if not reminded - periodically - that they are, essentially, "good people," despite their racist history. If that's what will get them there, I'm all for it. And as a 70 year old Black man, who never believed in that absurd "Post-Racial America" nonsense after Barack Obama was elected, it will take more than White-washing movies acknowledging Blacks' moral superiority to remove the stain of racism. Only time will remove the stain by removing the stain-ers.
4
Coming from a multiracial family and surrounded by people in interracial marriages, I honestly feel bad for Wesley and all the POC commenters so bothered by these kinds of movies—especially after a banner year for non-“problematic” representation in media. It’s like they’re living in a different world from me or have chosen to self-segregate.
7
I have no idea what you mean by "non-problematic" representation. As one of those POC's you refer to, I see plenty of problems with the way black people are portrayed in art and media and that has nothing to do with my choosing to "self-segregate". (Whatever that even means.) If your preference is for fantasy over truth at least be honest about it.
2
I think they just have different experiences from you. People have to speak to what they know.
1
My goodness. The anger permeates the page. Makes me feel kind of hopeless. It’s only a movie, the character and the story aren’t (exactly) real. Yet the author seethes. And seethes.
7
Forgotten is a mention of the relationship between Sidney Pointer as police detective Virgil Tibbs and Rod Steiner playing the racist police chief Gillespie +in In the Heat of the Night. They develop, begrudgingly , a relationship that requires them to mutually put aside their differences and work together. Tibbs has to overcome his arrogance and disgust working with the overtly racist Gillespie..What results is a working relationship and the beginnings of mutual respect.
5
Well Tibbs had to initially overcome being wrongfully jailed by the white cop.
1
The Left absolutely hates true stories of positive interracial friendships, such as The Green Book. But they love made-up stories of hate, racism and division, such as KKKlansman. Pretty much sums up all you need to know about the current state of the Left.
1
BlackKKKlansman is based on a true story and historical fact. Your comment tells me everything I need to know about your own politics.
4
The Blackkklansman is based on a true story though...
THIS phenomenon could of course be contrasted with the cinema verite of the average rom-com... or not.
3
This article explains why I wanted Michael B. Jordan’s black panther to take over Wakanda and on screen make a giant mess of the established order.
2
That's like asking why do Oscar bait movies always have gay content.
That's just where we are now.
3
Yes, by all means, let's condemn movies that suggest that people of different races might be able to grow and learn to get a long! What a horrible "fantasy"! Instead, let's celebrate directors like Spike Lee, whose (almost universally boring) movies reinforce the "truth" that all white people are evil and somehow responsible for slavery that ended more than a century before they were born. Pathetic tripe. But par for the NYT course.
6
I am a white southerner by birth. I am not a ‘professional’ movie critic or scholar, Perhaps a lifelong ‘student’ of the motion picture arts and sciences. By ‘lifelong’ I mean I took the bus downtown to see ‘The Pawnbroker’ when I was about eleven. Later on I scraped up nickels and dimes for a pilgrimage to Cinecitta and even lived in the East Village. Such are my ‘credentials.’
As the wheel of awards season began to spin this year, I noted various commentaries and reviews of Green Book, particularly the expressions of outrage by Mr. Shirley’s actual family about the film’s mischaracterizing his ‘blackness’. Also the inevitable compare and contrast with Miss Daisy. I probably would’ve skipped a first-run viewing had not my friend Anthony, a black southerner, recommended it so strongly. In fact he pretty much insisted, in his way, and that’s enough for me. Anthony is a mentor to me, himself a graduate of a prestigious continental film school. We have delicious times together chewing cinematic chicken bones, down to sucking the marrow.
I won’t attempt to speak for him about his view of the film and even confess we did not see It together, given we live in different cities. But when I’m back down south I often stay with Anthony. He’s a great cook, I reciprocate by buying dinners out. Sometimes he drives me and sometimes I drive him. But I’m really at a loss and wondering if any cinephile might suggest which cinematic cliche we best exemplify. I’m dying to know.
8
I think what the author is trying to point out is that these relationships always involve one person working for the other, making it more transactional and in some ways paternalistic. I think they should've brought up Remember the Titans or In the Heat of the Night, though I'm not sure if they were Oscar winners or nominees. I think both of those movies touched on race relations in a less patronizing way, and at least one of them was based on a true story. I've heard good things about Green Book from both black and white people, but I'm sure there is some truth to the criticism here.
1
This article incorrectly lumps every single European-American into a single monolithic culture.
10
@Mons - there is a difference between individual European-Americans and structures/cultures that privilege European-Americans. Individuals may be lovely people, but they can still benefit from and perpetuate harmful cultural behaviors without realizing it.
Some comic relief is sorely needed after reading this depression inducing horror. Why do I bother?
Perfect time to rewatch “Booty Call”.
4
Mr. Morris' essay reminds me of James Baldwin's essays about other films: "The Defiant Ones", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", and "The Heat of the Night".
If things change, they change very slowly.
6
@Marc
I want to read those essays. Thanks for the info.
Good reveal regarding how a part of the film world and viewing public prefers racially themed films that find hope and positive feelings in phantasy (Daisy/Green...) as opposed to more acute and harsher portrayals of racial life (Do The Right/Black...). Both portrayals have their romantic appeal, neither touching reality. This is what makes them art. We all are prisoners in Plato's cave. Fact is as a white southerner seeing these films from a black perspective is impossible. I can confess that both perspectives touch me emotionally with the base emotion being guilt. White guilt over the racist world that imprisons us and keeps the races apart.
2
Reconciliation is a big theme in Hollywood movies. Not just across the racial and ethnic divide but between alienated family members, warring friends, and former enemies in war. Sociologically speaking, such stories may be fantasies, but they also have an aspirational quality. They raise the possibility of people getting along, as people sometimes do in individual relationships. Apparently, the real-life versions of the characters in "Green Book" remained friends. Their relationship didn't solve the racial problems in this country, but it wasn't nothing, either.
10
Green Book: A movie where the person being highlighted, Shirley, is the supporting character and the white service provider (servant) is elevated to leading man while the title subject (the Green Book) is barely mentioned.
This article is on point. Hollywood is hard pressed to give recognition to films that portray the true experiences of blacks in this country.
4
Oh please, please lighten up. The Green Book is first and foremost a comedy and like most comedies it often veers from pure reality.
And while the film does focus more on the white character, that's an artistic and business choice of the director and studio, not a racist plot. Just 12% of the country is black, which means there is a large potential audience for films about interracial relationships from the perspective of the non-black person. At the same time, Black Panther showed that non-black audiences also love movies focusing on the POVs of black characters.
But what most concerns me about the abstruse argumentation of this article is that it supports the fears of many non-black folks that every interracial interaction is fraught with the overwhelming likelihood of unintended insult. Here, even an optimistic comedy about a developing interracial friendship featuring a smart, dignified, talented black man and an ignorant white boor - a movie that also reminds/educates its audience about the horrors of Jim Crow - is still criticized as somehow insulting to blacks in subtle and non-obvious ways (never mind the depiction of racist, dumb, boorish, Mafia-prone Italian-Americans, who do not appear to be rising up in indignation).
Or ... we can just lighten up and enjoy a funny, and at times moving, film about a white guy and a black guy, where each learns something from the other and the white guy in particular learns some bitter truths about black lives in the 1960s.
21
I was surprised that Wesley Morris, a superb critic, didn't mention "Get Out", a clear-eyed view of racism of the liberal elites (of which I am one). True, it was marketed as a horror movie, but oh, that first scene of a young black man walking down a leafy suburban street was accurately chilling.
4
Dear Wesley Morris:
I agree with your critique but only as a general observation. White folks are indeed looking for ways to rationalize their own racism, and employment relationships are one vehicle to do this without committing emotionally -- at least until they get to know each other.
But it seems to me you are ignoring that this same plot device is used to bridge many, many different boundaries, not just race.
Old and young, country and city, rich and poor, male and female, gay and straight -- getting to know someone even through a work arrangement always ends in a hug or a smile.
I think you are projecting a racial deus ex machina to a plot structure -- the happy ending -- that is as old as Hollywood. O suspect we will continue to see these Driving Miss Daisy glimpses into the "other" world for as long as people want to believe we can overcome our differences -- if we just got to know one another.
And maybe racial alienation is not as absolute as you presume. Maybe, as Mookie's girlfriend urged, he should knock the chip off his shoulder, assume responsibility for his own life (and kid), and treat people like fellow humans, instead of racial stereotypes -- whether oppressor or oppressed?
Maybe that's what he was doing at the end, when he stooped yo pick up the few extra bills on the pavement?
9
This is bleak . . might that it get better, if only by one act or instance of kindness at a time
2
Green Book is the best movie I have seen in years. More than that it is based on a real story. Obviously the author does not approve to real life because he feels it is not enlightening enough. What he wants is something one can find in a lecture at any institute of whatever making this a better world. Go there but don't try to downtalk brilliant entertainment.
8
@Obsession
Respectfully, if you read anything about the background of this movie - it leads one to question whose "true" story it wants to tell and what about it is "real." Whatever the merits of this movie might be-- and I side with Morris on this, citing that is "based on a real story" is dubious. The "truth", in this case, is dependent on who gets to tell the story and in this case it is, uh, Tony's son, co-writer Nick Vallelonga - so I would take issue with your alleging that Morris "does not approve of real life." Whose life? whose reality?
1
"Shindler's List" received criticism for not portraying Nazis as more heinous, even though that wasn't the point of the film. People apparently have their opinions as to what makes a film acceptable, and often make social or political judgments on something that is just as much the expression of the filmmaker as is a painting the expression of a painter, or a symphony the expression of a composer.
That being said, the idea of a movie based on the symbiotic relationship between a black person and a white person is boring and cliche. A good story is much better. I think those kind of movies are made for white people to make them feel good, or make them "woke" (which is cliche, too). Black people certainly don't need to be schooled in the racism that is part of the fabric of our society.
4
The point of Greenbook is that most white people had never heard of it before. The Help illustrates much of the dynamic between white people and their “colored” help. I never knew they couldn’t use the same household bathrooms, for instance. I don’t know about Miss Daisy because I haven’t seen it. I understand the complaints but there are other factors to consider.
1
Seems to me the takeaway of the movie Green Book was the terrible discrimination and horrible treatment of African Americans, and Mr. Shirley’s incredible talent, courage and dignity.
The “friendship” was just a seconday storyline.
Enjoyed the movie and thought it clearly depicted the era and terrible treatment/discrimination.
9
It's a nice little movie, nothing earth-shaking, but has some good stuff in it. Not the tissue of lies Wesley Morris claims it is, and the snit he has over it here is overwrought to the point of childishness. Direct political action is essential; trying to stop people from selling middle-brow entertainments is pointless.
11
So why does Wesley Morris erase or omit Dr. Don Shirley’s sexuality? He was black and gay. Is it not possible that Dr. Shirley might have felt isolated from his community and possibly even his family because he was gay? And is it not possible that same community could have rejected him? Sexuality can alienate a person even in this day and age. So what was it like back then? You might want to do a little research on that and give a complete picture of this man.
7
I just want to bring out one point here--a bit of a digression--Jim, in Huckleberry Finn is not portrayed as amusingly dimwitted. Huck is not a reliable narrator. Jim is obviously the more mature and realistic one in the pair. Jim has to jolly along the white teenagers who don't understand the gravity of the situation. To Tom it's all a lark, and Huck is only beginning to understand that Jim is a real person. Neither Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn are stand-ins for Clemens.
14
I certainly can’t argue with any of the points in this finely written and observed essay. But the basic premise, and conclusion, is bleak and defeatist: there can be no redemption for America’s racism, therefore any movie which depicts reconciliation or even friendship between blacks and whites must always be pernicious fantasy. Certainly we may not have fully acknowledged the sins of our past, and racist power structures stubbornly persist today. But believing there can be no redemption only assures that nothing will change.
9
This is a great article, and I couldn´t agree more with its message.
All these movies are made to make white people feel good about themselves. Usually there is only one black man in the movie, usually in a subordinate role, in an otherwise completely white environment. Never two or more black men, as this could be frightening.
I never understood how people can say the original French version of "The Upside" is a good movie because it is not. It is paternalistic, condescending and confirming stereotypes.
5
These are not “fantasy” movies. We as living creatures are all about survival first. You can take any two traditional adversaries and put them in a situation where they must rely on each other for survival and you will see a one-on-one relationship form between the two. This forced relationship allows an understanding and appreciation for the other. It’s touching to observe but by no means does it means there is hope for a general future of widespread harmony. Unfortunately it is our nature to segregate for what we are programmed to believe is for our survival. Only higher intelligence or desperation allows for a situation where two differing creatures can come together in harmony.
4
Quinton Tarrentino's, Django Unchained, is a movie that has the white buddy aspect but with a twist. Jaime Fox is the destroyer and Samuel L. Jackson brilliantly portrays a diabolical black butler who sadistically relishes his role as head black. The ultimate outcome is the complete obliteration of Candyland.
1
"[A] style of American storytelling in which the wheels of interracial friendship are greased by employment." I'm struck by how "the wheels of interracial friendship" are greased by, well, wheels. So many of these stories are driven by (the puns are impossible to avoid) the US auto industry. Who drives what, whom, and where are at the heart of these American stories. Driving signifies agency, crossing (color) lines, entering spaces, proscribed and otherwise. And there is always a price to pay for the transgressor.
This is a wonderful piece, wonderfully written, even though I had to skip the summaries of some of the films which I haven't seen yet. One last comment: I saw the French movie, The Intouchables, and cringed my way through it.
2
As usual, Morris tells the truth and is on point. As usual, the comments are inane and predictable. Shame. Of course, it was foolish of me to expect the comments to rise to the caliber of the essay.
3
This editorial is spot on, but some of the comments are disheartening. Being mindful of distinguishing between books that give voice to people of color vs. "feel good" books about racisim when I'm selecting books for the media center doesn't mean I don't have hope for the future.
3
What is wrong with fantasies? Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech is famous for the hope of racial reconciliation. In 2019 my dream is reconciliation of the factions which are tearing this country apart. These films give us hope. Right now we can sure use it.
9
Here's the movie I saw:
-A guy takes a job he doesn't want because he needs money. This "school of hard knocks" type has a talent for "smoothing out" difficult situations.
-The boss hires him because the job the boss took on has danger built into it. The boss wants to do the job for a number of personal reasons. To do it the boss needs to hire a guy with an alien skill set.
-The boss and the guy each get into complicated fixes. Each uses their individual skill and power to extricate the other from trouble.
-The boss comes to appreciate the guy and his skills and for several reasons, helps the guy write richer love letters to his wife. In doing so the boss introduces the guy to an artistic world and culture that was unknown by him.
-The hired guy starts to appreciate these new worlds and the bosses different but extraordinary abilities.
-Because of this exchange and the time they spend together, a "band of brothers" bond forms - a fundamental and common human reaction when people go through ordeal together. All world literature contains stories replete with this kind of cross-cultural relationship building under stress.
-Both characters lives widen because each is exposed to a culture that had previously been hidden from or misunderstood by the other.
These archetypal elements are found in the literature of all cultures.
While race is a potent obstacle because race can separate, cultural exchange is the central action.
Let's not confuse "exchanging" with "bestowing."
17
Because we need them the way we need hope, understanding, forgiveness.
3
Yes, indeed. What about the other races that makeup America? What about Native Americans, Latin Americans, and Asian Americans? Why are there stories less worthy? Why is it that when people discuss interracial plots, they seem to focus on the binary dynamic of black versus white?
There is an infinite amount of ethnic, racial, and gender relations across America. Why aren't those stories being told? Why aren't those stories being pusehed to the front of the line?
Also, is it a fantasy when a black and a white person are friends? I am not quite certain what the premise of the argument being made here. However, if any film that depict interracial friendships imply that one character helps the other overcome barriers is in the realm of fantasy, then, the author must re-examine the premise.
At the end of the day, this is a set of formulaic plot sthat somehow always work. There is a reason why certain films are dubbed "Oscar bait". It is because they contain elements of some underpinning social, psychological dynamics that are often under-discussed.
Sometimes, a film is just a film. Sometimes, people make films to make money. Not to resolve the deep and underlying traumas and historic wrongs in America. If we try to make more meaning out of certain films than others, we are guaranteed to be disappointed.
4
@Anym I knew that someone would be offended by this article.
First of all, there are DOZENS of movie about relationships between other types of people. What the author is pointing out is how , mostly white people, portray interracial relationships between black and white characters, which hasn't changed very much. Surely you've seen many westerns, with "indians" and cowboys. It's been done a million times. So to ask where those movies, which are also most inadequate are, is disingenuous.
You've seen movies depicting Asians characters, notably about WW II and its aftermath (you know, you have the nisei youngster going off to fight Asians in Korea, for instance).
Stories about black and white people are not as frequent and almost never honest, usually written by white people (see The Help).
We have a long way to go till things are "colorblind", which I think is what you want and which is sickeningly typical of white observers.
4
Lee has long been overlooked in this marketing ploy "awards " show. Give him the award to give it some credibility.
5
When I go to see a romantic comedy, I don't get all worked up that the film isn't a fraught drama about abusive relationships, highlighting the historic exploitation of women by patriarchal society. I go see a rom-com for a few laughs and a happy ending.
Here we're talking about "race" movies. "Green Book" was fun. So was "The Upside." Actually, "Driving Miss Daisy" was also fun. Though race was the big deal in the movie, these days, I note also that it dealt with old people dealing with change, loss, & their own mortality. Spike Lee made some great movies, but not every movie can or should be "Do the Right Thing." Going to the movies is not a political duty, like voting. People often go because they want to have a good time. Is Wesley Morris saying people should be ashamed of that?
22
I take this article to be the crest of a wave of critics' fear that the 'wrong' movie about race may actually win on Hollywood's big night. So many of them like the 'Times' reviewer tried to talk down this film, ignoring the fact that it is an entertaining film liked by a lot of people that does take a look into our society at a specific time and place. Were they afraid that so many people would see it that it would shatter their preferred view of how race must be presented on stage and film? Believe it or not critics, every single day many more millions of us Americans get along in every place we gather than not; there's certainly nothing wrong with seeing that world presented on screen as well.
17
What is so wrong with movies being inspirational? Why does there need to be such a different proposed ‘realism’ standard for movies with an interracial relationship main plot versus other genre? To bemoan that “the wheels of interracial friendship are greased by employment” is to ignore the history of our country. It is these very employment situations that have arguably done the most to improve interracial understanding to the limited extent it has changed. To thus castigate what is an inspirational interpretation of this dynamic as being inappropriate is attempting to allow cynicism to block progress.
21
Hollywood does hit us over the head with the racial conciliation message. But, most of us have seen the world change one person at at time. When I was just a kid on a Wisconsin dairy farm, and George Wallace was running for President, I would hear my Dad talk about Wallace in glowing terms. As an adult, Dad and I farmed together for about ten years. Jesse Jackson was running for President. Jackson was to give a speech at a farm in Amery, Wisconsin. Dad and I got in the pickup and drove up to hear him. No one will ever make a movie out of it, but I'm proud that my Dad voted for George Wallace and for Jesse Jackson.
24
Money is the vehicle used in these moves to simply bring the people together. Although that money symbolically serves as a reminder of their different positions, the money is only a guise to bring the people together. In a movie like Driving Ms. Daisy, the only way Hoke and Ms. Daisy's friendship could evolve is if they are brought together somehow. How else could they be brought together? And, at the end of the movie, she is literally eating out of the palm of his hand. This money trope is not new to American film. Charles Dickens used it with PIP in Great Expectations. Much of Dickens work is about middle and lower class people being helped by their superiors. Scrooge ultimately helps Bob's son, Tiny Tim. But all these relationships begin with the lower class person as an employee or indebted somehow to the superior. But the relationships do evolve and that is the message. Love trumps money.
18
Why anyone should expect insight or realism from the Hollywood fantasy factory is a mystery.
9
Although I thought this article wasn't going to address any actual issues I'm glad to say it really did. I think most people notice but excuse it because its "feel good" but we need to see more movies like Spike lees to show that friendships are difficult just like in real life
9
Oscars aren’t giving out for meaningful stories they are supposed to be given out for excellence in certain well defined categories. The Oscars don’t fail the “fantasies”; the film makers do.
2
My parents were longstanding friends of Don Shirley - my father having known him since the late 1940's. I asked my mother - who recently saw the Green Book - whether his portrayal was on point (as in how could any sophisticated person from the North be that obtuse). I was surprised to hear her say that it did not go far enough.
Dr. Shirley was a polymath, an incredibly versatile musician and composer, and in the opinion of my late father, living on a plane far above the artificial constructs of prejudice or race.
One might wonder how anyone, especially a black man, could not be aware of what was happening south of the Mason-Dixon line in 1960. But, unless one had a connection with the people, the culture or the politics, that person might as well have been from Mars - or totally engulfed by music. Perhaps an alternative title should be "A Stranger in a Strange Land."
44
There is a fundamental problem with trying to paint everything and everyone with the same brush.
Altering culture and history is a devious attempt at altering public perceptions, cultures and values.
Essentially this is a calculated process to morph a world into what I consider a vanilla stepford future. Afraid of how technology will run the world? Here's a close second.
7
A country like ours that can't even discuss race relations constructively can't produce films that can illustrate race relations constructively. These films mentioned only ever left me with the same vague confused sense of how Whites and Blacks are different that I came in with. What also stands between "Daisy" and "Green Book" is Obama's Administration; a truly failed attempt for us to discuss these issues clearly and sanely. We halfway praise these lukewarm films because it's all we have. We have yet to see an era of truly Great Black Filmmakers, the eloquent work they create, and the society that is clear-minded enough to embrace them.
9
I do not recall Driving Miss Daisy, so will not comment. Having seen Green Book, while admittedly predicable, for once I enjoyed a movie that had a positive ending, that gave some hope at a time in this Nation where hope is in short supply.
Having grown up in NYC attending a very large public high school in the late 1960s, we had a large, diverse student body-no cliques, no in groups or out groups, just gettinig along. Perhaps there were tensions brewing underneath, but at that point in time, we all managed to get through.
Green Book may have not portrayed the south as harshly as it was, but anyone who knows the history, did not need that. Rather, I took it as a story of two men, from very different worlds, whole lives touched and who learned from each other.
And sometimes, I just wish the critics could just accept movies as simple stories and not always as touchstones for our society. Sometimes, a movie can tell a story and that story just says what needs to be said.
42
This is the American culture. Racism and segregation are still even more present today than in the 80's , almost 50 years after the civil rights ( so called ) movement.Which was itslef happening 100 years after the Civil war which took place 70 years after the abolition of slavery.
That it is a bad film , is an other American story.
3
Thanks for this, I was so disappointed with the lack of nuance in Green Book and this summed up why perfectly.
2
I thought that, when Miss Daisy said "you're my best friend, Hoke," she was having an epiphany; she suddenly realized that, and she was exclaiming at least as much as she was telling him. Although Jewish, and subject to prejudice, she was also a child of privilege, and she suddenly realized something (that I'll not try to characterize) about humanity that she hadn't noticed.
13
@Thomas
Or - Miss Daisy did not have many (or any) true friends. She suddenly realized the value, maybe, of having one: a true friend who you believe KNOWS you.
I recently' enjoyed watching 'Girl in Progress' in which a young Latina girl 'adopts' an elderly woman in a nursing home. She knows nothing about the woman, cares very little about her, and even invents a name for her. The woman can't speak, reacts very little to any attempts at social interaction. When the girl visits her to tell her she is leaving town and won't be visiting any more, the old woman croaks (speaking for the first time in years), 'But you're my best firend!' Ah, the elderly. They do need friends. The more elderly they are, the more they have buried friends and acquaintances.
1
“ Driving Miss Daisy “ was NOT a “ reconcilliation fantasy. what a self-righteous, arrogant and ignorant remark. it was a beautiful , ACCURATE , story of a stubborn woman and a smart and kind man, whose mutual support made each of them stronger. i knew those people, Miss Daisy and Hoke and her son AND her daughter-in-law and the wonderful, beautiful Idella. they were all over the south. and, Miss Daisy’s proud judiasm is important, over-looked point. yes. it WAS the abominable segregation. but even in segregation, there was humanity. i think, watching “Miss Daisy” highlights the cruelty of segregation with vivid, realistic and sympathetic characters, brilliant writing, production, acting. those were real people encapsulated in fictional characters, but i recognize each and every one. and one would have to be a monster not to be affected by their humanity.
66
@cass county one would have to be a monster, as most whites in the South were/are, to accept "Miss Daisy" as humane and at the same time overlook/accept all of the strategically engineered asymptotes which kept Ms. Idella & Mr. Hoke in their rigidly protracted social and economic planes in the first place.
5
A complicated essay, which makes me want to re-view several movies.
I liked Green Book - despite the syrupy ending - because I thought is was a decent narrative of the development of unlikely relationship over a North to South and back again road trip - with the laughs that attend road trip movies, even in hostile territory. Both Dr. Shirley and Tony Lip were prickly, intolerant and skeptical - - and thus bearable - as played by two superb actors.
26
"Driving Miss Daisy" is an historical film. It portrays the interactions of Black-White relationships as they were at the time. I came of age in the 1960's, and as a poor while person growing up in a racist culture, I saw what the country was like, and it was ugly for the most part when it came to race.
When I was young, we didn't see black or brown faces on TV in the news broadcasts or the entertainment programs. It was a big deal, negatively, for lot of white America when there was a black nurse or an educated black person as the star on TV. There weren't any brown faces either. That was also a big deal for a lot of people who saw nobody who looked like them on TV in a different way.
I am an old white guy, and I am glad to read this column because it gives me a perspective of these movies and how others see them, from a younger black man. Thank you.
49
Having seen all the glowing reviews, my wife went to see Green Book wanting to love the movie. It ultimately left us both feeling disappointed. Then we realized that this movie was more about the Viggo Mortensen character than the Mahershala Ali character who certainly had the more interesting life. I would have appreciated more character development of this world famous pianist and possibly some flashbacks on his life story. Without such material it becomes a cliched buddy movie.
16
Love this article, but there's no mention of the elephant in the room : Storytelling Craft. Whatever faults they may have, both DRIVING MISS DAISY and DO THE RIGHT THING are beautifully written, directed, and acted; these are two movies that "work," whether you like them or not. Same goes for GREEN BOOK. But, sorry, BLACKKLANSMAN is just a mess dramaturgically; its lapses of narrative and characterizational logic took me totally out of the film (until the searing conclusion, which I genuinely loved).
15
The "interracial friendship" movies mentioned in this article are pure Hollywood fantasies ending with improbable "feel good" white/black relationships. It is far more powerful for white audiences to witness and learn from the real life gritty world of the hood surrounding an intense friendship between two black men like Chiron and Juan Moonlight. The $1.5 million Indie will be a cinema classic long after the vacuous Hollywood films released this year fade from our collective consciousness.
6
Spike Lee peaked with Do The Right Thing. He’s never made another movie as good. What makes Daisy and Green Book both touching portrayals is certain elements were true in their historical settings, unlike Mockingbird or The Help, which were total fantasy. Moonlight outshines them all.
5
However flawed these attempts may be, they will open at least a few hearts to understanding and feeling our shared humanity. They don't need to be perfect to do that. I am grateful for all of them.
26
I would love to know what Mahershala Ali, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Hart think of their respective roles. Has anyone seen any discussion along these lines?
12
While there is, I think, I good theme here the examples sued are silly. Period pieces like Driving Miss Daisy necessarily have the dynamic complained about herein - precisely because of when they occur. As the author notes, it is based on a true story. The theory discussed here would be better served with films that take place after the interpersonal dynamics were not necessary for them to be believable. Or perhaps they still are believable??
When we go to the movies it is the ones that touch our hearts that we remember and love. Human relationships that develop into close, caring, connected ones lift us up on a human level. This will rarely addresses the problem of racism in our country.
In my own experience, it is the one on one relationships between races that will ultimately support major change. Certainly there are valid complaints about what is produced by the entertainment industry, but it is still essentially entertainment and not a political organization.
18
Most movies are formulaic. They simplify plots and smooth over difficult issues. People like an optimistic story. Should Daisy not try to be a better person. You mean Hoke isn’t a good person who cares about others. Movies are fiction not reality.
It’s not just Academy voters, most people don’t want to watch Spike Lee movies. They find their dissection of racial issues to be just as phony as Daisy, but far less enjoyable to watch.
In the end, it’s a business. Commercial success is more important than awards season. Black audiences are a big part of the domestic box office. I don’t see them flocking to Spike Lee movies either.
29
When I was a college student in the 1970s, African-American intellectuals complained that white people didn't talk about race. It occurred to me then that straight people didn't talk about sexual orientation. Now they do, but they speak with a different vocabulary, and from a different knowledge and experience than gay people do. I long since realized you can't have it both ways: you can't ask people to engage in a conversation about a topic they're new to, a topic they don't know much about, a topic that makes them uncomfortable, then blame them for not talking about the topic in your vocabulary, with your very different knowledge and experience.
So while it's useful to point out from time to time, as Mr. Morris does here, that white people, no matter how well intentioned, have limited knowledge of African-Americans' experience, it's important not to say anything that might cause white people to withdraw from the conversation. The stakes are too high for that.
As I said recently after Kevin Hart was bounced from the Oscars because of some old homophobic tweets he has disavowed, albeit imperfectly, we shouldn't hold against people who are trying to be better that they are not yet perfect.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
https://politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com/2019/01/05/ellen-degeneres-and-second-chances/
95
@Ecce Homo. Nicely said! I would add that you also have to appreciate that these people may well share a different point of view. If the idea is to create a dialogue, then both sides have to agree to listen as well as talk.
3
And isn't Roma (as beautiful as it is to look at) the same thing?
21
I too was troubled that the indigenous maid, although always on-screen, seemed to be a supporting player in the main drama, which centered on her white employers.
Thanks for this fascinating and subtle essay. Maybe it's not absolutely correct in every detail -- or maybe it is. But what it's about is important, the thinking is impressive, and how it is written is marvelous.
15
I am turned off by this genre and was disinterested in going to see Green Book even though the two main actors are top notch. I grew up in an all white suburb of Chicago but now live in Canada with my interracial family.
I recently saw "Do the Right Thing" again with my kids and was struck by how powerful, relevant and brilliant this movie is twenty years later. Spike Lee was so ahead of his time. Guess he still is. Back then, I was appalled but not surprised that Driving Miss Daisy was chosen instead.
Well-made, innovative movies, like Black Panther, where the black characters are front and center, have demonstrated their universal appeal. It is time that Spike Lee and other black directors get the recognition that they deserve.
45
@science prof I would recommend that you go see "Green Book". Marashala Ali is definitely front and center.
1
Once Hollywood executives find formula that works, it's repeated ad nauseum until the audience moves on to the next formula. The issue here is that African American actors have a hard time finding work outside of the formula - first gangster, then gruff police captain and now noble men and wise women helping educate white people that are unaware of their biases. Nothing wrong with that (just not as a steady diet) but it's also what makes Black Panther or almost any Spike Lee movie so riveting. When Hollywood gets beyond the formula and casts the right actor for the role, regardless of race, then that opens up so many interesting choices that I believe audiences will embrace
10
@Mister Mxyzptlk
Black Panther, while entertaining, is a superhero action movie. I saw it because of all the buzz, only to discover it was an entertaining superhero action movie. I no longer remember the plot.
I loved both Do The Right Thing and Driving Miss Daisy, and I don’t think Black Panther is in the same league.
7
Sorry, but this review leaves me scratching my head. Yes, Green Book and Driving Miss Daisy both portray people of different races initially brought together by employment, who come to find more to their relationships. This is bad? More to the point, doesn't Green Book turn whatever might be a racist stereotype in Driving Miss Daisy on its head by reversing the class status of the two people? Yes, it would be great to have movies with more edge, nuance, and honesty about ethnic relationships such as Do the Right Thing. But let's not dump on films that show some positivity and progress about such relationships in a country that desperately needs more modelling of them.
188
More than 50 years after the passage of the great civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965--the latter of which, to be sure, has been eviscerated by the Supreme Court--we have reached the point where many prefer to argue that racism is so deeply embedded in American life that interracial friendship has become an offensive idea. Regarding Green Book, neither the author of this piece nor Shirley's family, to my knowledge, has disputed the claim of the film that Tony Lip and Don Shirley remained friends for the rest of their lives. We all do have a certain human essence which allows us to deal with one another as people. I'm sorry that that idea has become threatening to politicized fellow countrymen. I enjoyed Green Book very much because the characters were not stereotypes or time travelers, but real people. They were not crippled by the assumptions they had chosen to make
61
Sorry but there was only ONE character in “Green Book” who was allowed to have a deep background, family life, context, and evolved character arc, and that was Tony Lipp. Not Dr. Don Shirley, whose principal function was to service a white character’s magical metamorphosis. It takes major myopia to not be able to identify this grotesque discrepancy in the development and handling of the two principal characters in “Green Book.”
6
Because Don Shirley told Tony’s son to ONLY use the story of the trip and to tell the story after his death. He told Nick he could use any story Tony told about the trip, including the jail story. Maybe Don Shirley didn’t want his life story revealed.
3
A short answer to the question posed in the "Why" title question: White, moneyed, neo-liberalism. It's not about white guilt per se, but rather it's about the leisure class affirming in the manner of public pronouncements about art and taste what they are already so certain about themselves, which is that they think and feel appropriately about Others. This enables them to detach cultural contingency and historical specificity from their true love, which is to prattle on about art and aesthetics in the old liberal humanist terms that insist "Art" be antonymous and transcendent and that the "human condition" is universal. That's the deeper underlying fantasy, one in the end which is related to their fantasy that their own unreflective and unearned positions of power and privilege are irrelevant. Watch out for that "royal we"; it never seems to speak for working class me.
15
Never judge a book by its cover. Never judge a movie by its poster. The columnist's first sentence speaks volumes about his approach to criticism.
13
@Carmela Sanford Except the poster reflects how marketers intend to attract audiences and thus some of the function of the movie for audiences.
9
@Carmela Sanford
Two classic adages and the best kind of common sense for any approach to literature or the arts.
4
@Esther
Posters reflect nothing about which you write. Additionally, I clearly referenced the columnist's overt thinking that the poster for "Driving Miss Daisy" was the movie and meant he didn't have to see it. He even writes that it told him everything about the film, which simply cannot be true.
Unless he's clairvoyant, the poster told him only that Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy were in the movie. It didn't tell him the story, or anything else that makes a film a film – the acting, the cinematography, the editing, and the production values, et. al..
Never ever choose or reject a movie based on a promotional poster.
9
I find it very difficult to read discussions about race relations that exclude sexism which plays such a huge role regardless of ethnicity. To write as if black men’s experience comes anywhere near the two-fisted racism/sexism that black women experience is naive and/or duplicitous. If sexism is not included, “equalizing” black men to white men simply grants the unearned privileges of white men to black men - that is not equality.
As long as anyone is figuratively, literally, or symbolically the property of another human being, equality cannot be won.
As long Michelle Robinson is erased by “Mrs. Barack Obama” and nobody asks why - we are not talking about equality at all.
If we do not question why half our population - the half that actually builds and produces each human being in our population - is erased and labeled with the names of the other half - we cannot have equality.
Until black men say that they refuse to be like white slave holders - putting their names on their wives as whites used to do with their human “property” - we will not have equality.
As long as we pretend that a women’s name being thrown away and being replaced by a man’s has no effect on how men view and treat women - we cannot have equality.
Until we admit this, until black men stand up and stop this (and not blame their wives for the practice), they are no better than white men. If they really want equality - on and off screen, they must talk about the equality of black women first.
26
I saw The Black KkKlansman last week. At the end I was in tears and so was the rest of the audience. It was so hard to listen to the KKK rhetoric through the movie and then (spoiler alert!) confront the current footage at the end.
11
About freaking time. At least Green Book acknowledges the vastness of the chasm, but since Ali's character is a genius, worthy of oodles of respect, he is allowed (with money) to win over a white guy. But in the absence of musical genius (GB), or writing genius combined with quadriplegia (Upside), or Morgan Freeman (who does actually sub work for God), we end up with Do the Right Thing.
The hard, hard work of overcoming racism is trivialized by Hollywood. Much in the same way it trivialized war, with very few exceptions until the past decade.
There is a great scene from Remembering the Titans (an otherwise "meh" movie. Two coaches, black and white are arguing over how to deal with an attack on the black coach's house. The white coach suggests he is taking it too personally, making too much of an issue. The black coach angrily responds, "My family was there". To which the white coach answers, "So was my daughter". And then the black coach, played by Denzel, takes it home: "My daughter is home EVERY DAY". And then quite nicely, you see the white coach begin to understand something that he was completely oblivious to: the constant, grinding evil power of racism, and the need to fight it. And before that point, he really had no idea. We need more of that.
25
am why do film reviewers and critics like at the NYT keep supporting a male-dominated view of cinema...outrageous how women keep being overlooked for their contributions, which IMHO are overwhelmingly superior to the typical fare that we see out of men. enough catering to the boys!
6
To describe Jim in "Huckleberry Finn" as "an amusingly dim sidekick" betrays a complete misreading of his character. Look again, closely.
68
Morris manages to attack the relationship between the two protagonists in th3 film Driving Miss Daisy, and only mentions the word « Jewish » only once, and no mention of anti-Semitism at all. Mr. Morris, look again: it’s not all about you.
23
I noticed in your examination of current films that you failed to mention Roma, a Master/Slave film south of the border. Why. Doesn't fit your premise?
22
Totally agree. I saw it the other day and had the same reaction.
1
How can people who make decisions on housing, employment, schools, vacations, and recreation based on whether people of color (read: black people) are within a thirty-mile radius live in blissful ignorance about the existence of racism?
7
Because America is a racially obsessed country. Racism happens on both sides of the left and right, when it comes to Blacks.
Democrats treat Blacks just as bad as they say Conservatives do, but when the Democrats do it, it is like they are saving the dolphins or something.
1
@MPA, There is racism in both parties because contrary to obsession, this country has a long history of racism that is systemic and is woven into society for generations. The Dems , however do promote racial equality and inclusion, however imperfectly.
6
@MPA-- more than that. Racism exists among black and white people. To say this is not true is to walk through life with a blind-fold.
How to live in harmony? I have no solution as long as people use black and white as a dividing line. Now, if people used just "people" then we would be able to live in peace with each other.
Not a fan of Spike Lee. The incredibly sexist and offensive School Daze was one of two movies in my life I hated so much that I walked out in the middle. The other movie was Macon County Line.
I'm not going to sit still for trash.
12
@sarasotaliz
The premise of School Daze was to examine HBCU issues of colorism, sexism, and the abuses of Greek life among other things. It wasn't meant to be taken as a cute college movie with a few musical numbers thrown in. LOL
2
Commentary seems fair enough. It would be great to see movies about what REAL 2 way interracial freindships can look like, warts and all. I would love to hear about some.
4
Thank you for this!
Watching onstage how the mostly-white cast and creators of Green Book (except for Mahershala Ali) celebrated their Golden Globe, as the cameras scanned the audience to the actors and creators of Blackkklansman, Black Panther, and If Beale Street Could Talk, I had the same sense that WE ARE WAY OFF THE MARK.
White people (the majority of the film community) love seeing white people feel better about race relations. And yet this is a time when so many African Americans and people from the African Diaspora are making great art (books, films, visual arts) about race relations in the US...and those stories have very little redemption. Why aren't we watching more of those stories coming to fruition and appreciation? The answer is in this article.
I can't wait until we're all ready to see Ta Nahisi Coates' Between the World and Me or Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing on the big screen--and be ready to accept the truer story of a brutal, never-ending dirge of racism that continues to flood this country. When we're able to vote THOSE as good movies, then we can say we've made some progress.
17
@Aimee Lehmann
The real problem is that movie’s like Beale Street don’t get into mainstream movie houses. It is a wonderful film with the supremely underrated Regina King. But here in the liberal bastion of Northern Ca, it was hard to find. Therefore, more straight forward shows get put up and ones like Beale Street get ignored. It is just tons better that Klansman in every way. But no one will know that because it’s not in wide release.
2
Your sentence about Huck Finn is so way off. Why don’t you read what Toni Morrison wrote about the novel?
18
It’s a remake of a far more nauseating French megahit — “Les Intouchables” — and that claimed to be based on a true story.
Where do you get your sources? Les Intouchables does not claim to be based on true events, it is, whereas Mr. Lee's BlacKkKlansman really claims to be based on a true story when most of fit in fact did not happen: Stalworth did not call the Klan (he wrote a letter), his sidekick was not Jewish, there was no gun chasing, no one came knocking on Stalworth's door, there were no lengthy phone exchanges with David Duke, and most importantly there were no explosives, no bombs and no arrests were made.
Many movies nowadays claim to be based on something, that something is quite vague, and so far off. It matters less when it depicts private events, such as Les Intouchables, but in the case of a more politically engaged movie as BlacKkKlansman, it is arrogant, misleading, and just wrong, especially when it is followed by real footage of real events; the enormity of the arrogance to add this footage at the end of the movie, to use it as a political message, when the entire movie was just hot air.
12
Do the Right Thing was both entertaining and disturbing. But at the end of the day, it was about hate between the races: blacks, Italians, Koreans, etc. Mookie was one of the more reasonable characters for most of the movie, but at the end, he initiated the violent trashing of the Italian owned pizza store he worked for, and the next day came back to find the owner and demand he be paid. What exactly was the message in that?
A movie less entertaining but certainly more disturbing was Get Out where a white family kidnaps young healthy blacks to transplant the brains of their elders so they can live on. At the end, one of the black victims kills everyone in the white family. Again, what’s the message? That whites want to enslave blacks, and blacks need to kill whites to be free?
The author of this article apparently prefers the hateful “truths” of movies like Get Out and Do the Right Thing to “false” positive movies like Green Book, Driving Ms. Daisy and Kill a Mockingbird.
Maybe he understands true hatred better than I.
9
What strikes me as odd about so many of these racial-harmony films is how they require the non-white characters to transcend emotion. They aren't allowed to grapple with difficult truths or even to struggle at all. They are all acceptance without showing the work it takes to achieve such a state. Why are only white characters allowed to exist in 3 dimensions while their black counterparts are flat and cartoonishly wise? My gut says it's because our culture is quicker to turn on black people. A white person is always given a second chance. Black people are labeled as being "no-angels" and discarded. Even in this very paper.
9
@Chris B
Is this the case when Don Shirley laments that he is viewed as too black among whites and too white among blacks?
Regarding "Green Book," a better starting place might be the strong elements: The score of soul music on the car radio and amazing classical music/jazz mix in Shirley's concerts. Also the pacing and much of the filming. Then go ahead and criticize the cliches and limitations.
8
This writer simply spouts off his opinions as certifiable and verifiable facts. OK, let me spout off mine, but not as culture-driven facts but as pure opinions. As both a play and a movie, Driving MIss Daisy was and remains hokey wish-fulfillment fantasy. The key word is "hokie." On the other hand, Green Book is an excellent comedy. I agree that it's about time Spike Lee's directing was recognized, but not for the overdone Do the Right Thing. Malcolm X, He Got Game, 4 Little Girls, 25th Hour are enormously good movies and should have had Oscar recognition. But let's distinguish between excellent achievements by Lee and good intentions (and I'm not persuaded that DTRT has good intentions). This article is just another in a slew of whitey-gets-it-wrong diatribes. I'm just glad that BlacKkKlansman got all those noms. It's far and away the best new movie I've seen last year. If the noms are too late (they are), it's good that Lee finally got them.
8
You have my heartfelt sympathy, Mr. Morris. I was born in south Texas. My grandparents raised me for the first few years of my life. My memories are quite different than what you place before us.
My grandmother had a black house keeper who came by one day a week to help with housework. My grandfather owned half of a cotton gin and the rest of the year he was auctioning off fruit. I remember my grandmother and the housekeeper, I think her name was Mrs. Johanson to us though. Every day, whether Mrs. Johanson was there or not my grandmother began at 9am preparing lunch for 12-16 people. When Mrs. Johanson was there she was right by my grandmother preparing lunch. About the time the table was fully set with a white table cloth, stiff starched napkins, weekday china and condiment trays at both ends, my grandpa would pull up with some men in his car and usually some men following behind in a pickup truck.
While my grandma and Mrs Johanson set steaming bowls and platters on the table the men would all troup into the bathroom and wash their hands and faces, then arrive and set down at the table and after a prayer, help themselves to foods. They were all shades of skin. When a new Mexican was present some would speak Mexican while everyone spoke English. Meanwhile Grandma, Mrs Johanson, and me walked around the table making sure that there was water and ice for tea. I never new skin color mattered until I moved out of Texas.
12
One of the worst of this type of movie is “The Blindside”—a “true” story in which a wealthy Memphis family adopts a poor black student, schools him at a local private school where he plays football with great success, and, with the help of a determined tutor, finds himself heading to Ole Miss to play for The Rebels. It’s a feel good movie for white folks, especially Southern white folks who like football. But please note, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus does not “rescue” Tom Robinson. He fails to get an acquittal for an innocent man and his children suffer at the hands of a racist man as a result.
1
It's better to show friendship, for whatever reason, among whites and blacks than emphasize animosity, in the name of reality. For the same reason portrayals of middle class black families are better than daily dose of the local news of urban violence. There problems that need to be solved but the solutions lie somewhere else, not in spreading the truth only.
I am reading Michelle Obama's great book Becoming, basically story of a black woman from working class background. Not having any personal friendship or even acquaintance with blacks or Hispanics it is rare when people like I learn about normal blacks lives. If books, movies, and news can tell us more about lives of middle class and working class minorities we may get a better perspective.
Spike Lee's movies may be realistic but they don't help anyone, may even hurt already bad racial relations.
8
It's far easier to cheer a such 'inter-racial' associations than live them. We're going to be a us-and-them society for a long time. Both, on the condescending left and the disparaging right.
4
I would like to see the best possible movies nominated regardless of race. Blackkklansman was good, but by no way Spike Lee’s best film. Black Panther was right up there with Thor. yawn.
4
Interesting, but surely the revelation that Hollywood Fails To Reflect Reality warranted the front page.
2
Perhaps one of the most accurate movie reviews of all time. What a breath of fresh air in a land of Hollywood lies.
5
Because white racial innocence is the cornerstone of white supremacy? Because locating racism in the hearts of redeemable white characters makes it easier to ignore structural racism? Because locating racism in the benighted past allows white people to rest on "how far we have come" in the present?
Hollywood reproduces all kinds of white mythology.
13
Mr. Morris's analysis is timely, important, and accurate. I want to add the obvious: white-male-patronizing movies are hardly confined to black/white race relations. An Asian kid is saved by a white guy in Disney's Up. Native Americans are saved by a white guy in Dancing with Wolves. Insert whatever ethnicity you can think of and there's a movie of a white guy saving that group. Even non-Earth-non-white beings can't save themselves without the help of a white male (I'm looking at you, Avatar). I'm grateful to finally see movies made by non-whites about non-whites.
7
I had this conversation with friends the other day - the author (quite expertly) delivered a very excellent and complete breakdown of this topic. Bravo
10
So if black ex-con Kevin Hart had been white ex-con Kevin Hart, would the "lesson" of the movie have been less suspect and fanciful?
I mean we're talking about a guy who served time in prison, not exactly high on the desirability list at Match.com in the "people I want in my house" category.
Swipe left on this analysis by Mr. Morris.
4
Great write up! If movies are meant to be escapist fantasies, then the racial-buddy movie is fantasy par excellence.
Do The Right Thing remains the "truest" movie about racial relations and is only dated by some of Spike's goofy reaction shots.
Glover's Atlanta is stupendous but its not meant to be about racial relations, its Seinfeld for Black people. There's no character for white people to see and say "that's the good white guy I want to be!". So, white guilt not just un-assuaged but totally undressed(!), it gets snubbed at the Golden Globes.
And that is why we get Green Book. A movie that peddles nostalgic saccharine so purely you wouldn't be surprised if you left the theater and were suddenly wearing a flannel suit smoking a Lucky.
But the Green Book is the hisotrical lie we never needed and don't need now. It implies that the barrier to real interracial friendship is just being open and sharing a burger.
The reality is so so so much more fraught: we need to give and take as equals. Not score settling or extracting "justice". Just treating others exactly as you'd want to be if the shoe was on the other foot.
...good luck filling your theater at $12.50/ticket on that one.
3
I would add Dee Rees' 2017 film "Mudbound" to the list of films that focus on how proximity to whiteness is a threat to black lives. The white WWII veteran is desperate to bond with a fellow veteran, and keen to rebel against his racist family. Those desires lead to black death.
5
This is a brilliant essay which gets at a lot of the pandering, goodthinkful shtick of most of the films discussed. Still, is "Do the Right Thing" a great film? With all its flaws, I think "Mississippi Burning" is, perhaps because the performances of Gene Hackman and Frances McDormand make it so. Or is that beside the point? I liked Daisy, Klansman, and Green Book but these are mostly unremarkable and heavy-handed, no matter how much they try to educate audiences on our shamefu past.
1
Fantastic essay.
6
Why is it okay for a non Italian actor to play an Italian or Italian-American? Certainly wouldn't fly if the film were about an Asian, there would be outcry. Same think happened with the Versace miniseries. Had Spanish actress and latino passing for Italian. Shame on the double standards....
9
@Jg - I have to laugh at your comments. Hollywood's history of using non-Asians to represent Asians is alive and well and there is no sign of it stopping. Is there any "outcry"? Well, there are the same old Asian advocacy groups rightfully complaining. But I wouldn't describe it as an "outcry" because nobody else seems to care and the practice continues. I would not recommend entering a competition about whether Italian Americans or Asian Americans are more marginalized in Hollywood. It is clear which group has more representation in movies in the modern era. The only double standard here is that Asians are left out in ways that other groups are not.
1
@Jg False equivalency. I am Italian-American and I really don't care that much and I would never equate it with what happens to a minority group like Asian-Americans. Lighten up.
1
Everything Mr. Morris writes about "Green Book" is undercut by the fact that it's based on a true story. There's no getting around that. I'm becoming very tired of revisionists to so much of our shared history.
Did the journey seen in "Green Book" not happen? Was there not a guidebook for people of color so they could travel safely in the southern United States at that time?
Would Donald Shirley, the black gay composer, have survived as a stranger in a strange land without some protection? There were still lynchings in the south during the Jim Crow Era. And there was a lot of prejudice.
Also, why is Mr. Morris complaining about narrative cinema and television? It's a for-profit commodity. People have a right to create their works of film, literature, theater, and music to try to earn a living.
And, yes, Mr.Morris has the right to complain about them, but regarding "Green Book," he's completely off-base.
At my showing of the movie, with a full house of people of all colors, it was clear that everybody enjoyed the movie.
31
And then there are the variations of this theme (interracial and interclass affect and friendship developing from labor situations) that the American public loves perhaps because they distract from or hide the real and more disturbing racial and class transactional and conflict relations at stake. The other beloved film up for Oscars with a related theme of this dynamic, but in a different context, is Cuaron's "Roma." Indeed, the public loves those representations. And people love the indigenous servant's docility, sacrifice, and loving disposition to the master family. She is so heroic and motherly that she even risks her life to save one of the employer's children. Cuaron apparently had a hard time finding an indigenous actress today that would embody the virtues he remembered in his many/domestic servant.
3
@tdb
“[P]eople love the indigenous servant’s docility, sacrifice, and loving disposition to the master family.”
WARNING: MY COMMENT INCLUDES A SPOILER
I respectfully disagree. In addition to the superb cinematography and historical accuracy, what people “love” is the representation of the power differential between (indigenous) housekeeper and ethnic European family she holds together. Roma pulls no punches in its indictment of the classist and racist entitlement of elite Latin American society. Of course he doesn’t flat out state, “this is a terrible system,” he relies on his ability to show and not tell.
The end of the movie is exquisite in its assigning and representation of the housekeeper’s true place in the system: she ascends, indeed, transcends it all - all the way to heaven.
The Green Book is a very fine work of motion picture art.
I am quite sick of the line of thinking represented in this article: that non-white Americans are only defined by their skin color, and that the rest of his/her humanity is totally unimportant. The author goes on and on "black, white, black, white,...". What about culture, class, art, sexuality, taste, personal choices? Aren't those too qualities that define us as whole human beings? Why must a black man find "his people" only in other blacks? Why can he not find "true" friendship in the warm embrace of an Italian family, while the one he was born into had rejected him for whatever reason?
It's about time that we as a society look past the color of our skin and find the humanity in each of us that is complex, multi-dimensional.
I find the movie "The Green Book" refreshing with its skillful telling of the transformation stories of the two individuals on a shared journey. The point was well made in this very Oscar-worthy film: look at people as humans, not just "blacks" or "whites". Too bad the author of the article holds on to an identity politics that divides us, rather than unites us.
56
Triumph of the human spirit is a popular Hollywood theme and racial reconciliation films are a subcategory. As Mr. Morris cynically observes, the current movies are Oscar-bait. But filmmaking is business as much as an art, and if a major studio falls short of absolute raw artistic integrity, it’s probably a conscious decision. Fifty years ago Do the Right Thing and Driving Miss Daisy could not have been made. I doubt that today’s producers and directors are as clueless as Mr. Morris implies. Producers and directors want to be around to make the next film and the ones after that. It’s a long game, just like racial reconciliation.
8
While I understand the issue this writer has, there is always a difference made by HOW this story is executed. To compare the delightful 'Driving Miss Daisy' with its delicate portrayals of old folks and the 'I'll hit you over the head with my sermonizing' which is the approach of 'The Upside' is not fair. The first goes down more like a fine champagne, the second with all the subtlety of your fifth Bourbon and Coke at a trucker bar.
4
The Oscars keep falling for these movies because, as Toni Morrison observed about literature, all art is presumed to cater to the white gaze. These are the racial stories white critics are most comfortable with, so that's what they reward critically. If a movie does not center the white perspective it is not likely to achieve critical success. That's what made the Best Picture award last year for Moonlight so striking. it really was like a bolt of lightening.
19
Indeed. Whether it’s a gaze governed by race, class, or sex, one of the tragedies of Hollywood is how so often, again and again, it’s screenwriters and directors insist on/purport to tell the stories of marginalized groups from the perspective of those who have left them oppressed and vulnerable in the first place. I could see this coming with “The Green Book” a mile away, and felt disappointment even from the moment it was initially advertised.
2
You were immediately disappointed in the movie based on its advertising? Do you judge all films "from a mile away"? It saves money, I suppose.
1
Driving Miss Daisy won the Best Picture Oscar, but Do the Right Thing wasn't even nominated. Lots of great movies that year.
1
I recently listened to commentary on Dear Sugars where the guest speaker, who is black and married to a blue collar raised white male, says all white people are racist and that even though her husband is super wonderful to her— he can never “get it” but at least believes her realities of being a black woman in America. And I’ve chewed on that a lot while I’ve been dog walking in the snow—that there is the black experience that is personal to every black person in America and all we can do to “get it” is to truly listen and examine ourselves and believe this reality— and part of it is understanding how this white privilege has been ingrained as part of our collective culture. And try to “get it” and keep moving away from our legacy of racism through education— which includes film and the underlying messages they send. It starts with awareness and the willingness to look at these truths no matter how uncomfortable they make us.
9
Wesley Morris' commentary is tiring. What he apparently doesn't comprehend is that Hollywood is a for-profit institution. For that notion to financially succeed, one must make movies that appeal to the broadest audience. Mr. Morris attempts to interject morality and historical accuracy into what is essentially fantasy/escape for profit. Sorry, the notion that I'll pay for a condescending lecture about racial injustice and relations is simply false. Should Mr. Morris feel the urge to produce such a movie, that's fine. But he'll have to do it on his own nickle because no one else will back him.
35
@Mike
Morris no doubt understands that Hollywood is a “for profit” institution
but he also knows that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves — and especially those we celebrate— do matter, and merit scrutiny.
(This year, Hollywood has gone especially fluffy, sentimentalized: good on Morris for adding to that insight.
10
I can't add much to the racial analysis, but let me add that Hollywood is obsessed with money and thinks the audience is too, which is one reason for these paid friendship movies. Also these movies are made by men. I was somewhat taken aback by the uncomplicated portrait of the indigenous maid in "Roma" and I'm waiting for a dissection of that, which could touch on some similar themes. She loves her white family more than herself and this is portrayed without comment. The Hollywood male's obsession with money has tainted many films, most irritating to me was "Lord of the Rings" in which Peter Jackson grossly misunderstood desire for the Ring to be about wealth when it was about power. The subtext of Mr. Morris's essay is the need for more diverse filmmakers but when they are primarily lauded for garbage like "Black Panther" perhaps there is little hope. We'll see.
1
Brilliant analysis. Thanks for articulating the feelings that made me hesitant to see and financially support the "Green Book" and "The Upside".
8
I've always enjoyed "odd-couple" stories. I think most people do. Even though I'm and old white lady, I learn from movies that illustrate what it was like in a different decade.
OK, so I liked Green Book and I learned from it. So what? Some of the comments seem to suggest that enjoying and learning from a movie is shameful. Not feeling it. Instead I'm feeling grateful for the entertainment coupled with the new knowledge.
53
While this article makes a lot of good points, could it be that the point of using characters of different races is for dramatic effect?
I think the appeal of these types of movies/stories is not necessarily that they are some rose-colored version of interracial relationships. Instead, I would argue that the point of these stories is character growth and journey and the farther apart the characters start from each other, the more dramatic their eventual coming together is. Unfortunately, race is a realistic determinant of how different two people's life experiences (and therefore viewpoints) could be Is it lazy to use race as a key component of such movies? Yes it is but it's also a component grounded in reality. Otherwise, we wouldn't have discussions regarding "white privilege" or Black Lives Matter today.
8
The film, Green Book, sacrifices (steals) the story of its Black character in the service of permitting its white audiences feel virtuous about the theft.
It's the same with Mockingbird; it's the same with Driving Miss Daisy; it's the same The Help.
Films like Blackklansman and Black Panther don't offer white audiences the same cheap sentiment. These films demand that audiences, of any color, immerse themselves in the Black experience. These films challenge audiences to ask the question: What would Black life be like without white folks?
45
@tyrdofwaitin
Agree. Or, maybe what is, not would be Black life, in the most honest of movies. Unfortunately, what is too rare in Hollywood are serious, realistic movies such as Eve's Bayou, portraying Black people as, well, people, telling universal stories that offer shared meanings. Alas, this doesn't play well for a mass-market box office that needs contrived movies that ultimately mean nothing.
9
@tyrdofwaitin "What would Black life be like without white folks?" Um, that's easy. See Baltimore as a classic example.
8
@tyrdofwaitin I just don't get this comment that I've heard over and over - that whites feel virtuous somehow after seeing Green Book. I've talked to about fifty people about this movie and not one white person said she felt virtuous or somehow better about race relations after seeing it.
11
Why? Because many of us like to think of our country as a place that doesn't discriminate anymore by race, gender, disability, sexual orientation or age. Unfortunately, reality is much harsher. Luckily, more and more don't want to suspend their disbelief and simply pretend that all is well, but do believe that the status quo can and must be changed.
14
The reality is that Hollywood loves feel good stories where everything works out in the end. This is not limited to racial topics. On the other side of the equation, journalism sees itself as the mirror of all that’s unjust in the world. Neither is a particularly comprehensive viewpoint and both have ulterior motives for how they portray the world. Sadly, I believe that life now imitates art instead of the other way around. We allow ourselves to become a caricature of particular biased viewpoints. We look at others and believe what we hear about them and ignore what we see in them.
8
Thank you, Wesley Morris. C'mon, American people, it's hardly a fairy tale we're living. Sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote the book The Ordeal of Integration in 1997, and we are still struggling with it in many, many ways. Spike tells it like it is, like it or not. Blackkklansman should be at the Oscars, Green Book, not really.
5
Great essay but the one sour note to me was the author's take on Huckleberry Finn. The way I read that book, Huck is actually "amusingly dim" while Jim just knows that he has to act that way because of the situation he is in.
12
On a similar note, I feel like Roma is a class reconciliation story. I was sort of horrified about how little of a class critique existed in that movie. Whatever friction was present, the film plots the smoothing over of the more exploitative aspects of the relationship between the two women protagonists. In the end, it romanticizes the bourgeois lifestyle.
13
Completely agree
Hollywood has never been very interested in portraying collective social struggles, preferring to personalize and individualize conflict and, thus, depoliticizing it and making it "safe" for public consumption as a commodity. Hollywood films almost always portray structural issues as personal ones, making reconciliation between individuals embedded in conflicting social relations of power substitutes for the overthrow of the inequitable structures of power they are embedded in. This has certainly been the way Hollywood has treated both white supremacy and class exploitation throughout its history. In the real world reconciliation between masters and servants can only proceed on the basis of social justice, and that is something that has historically been achieved only through the fire of upheaval and the sacrifice of blood. That's a story that understandably makes not only conservatives but Hollywood liberals very uncomfortable.
5
@john riehle you say "social justice . . . is something that has historically been achieved only through the fire of upheaval and the sacrifice of blood." When and were in the real world has that actually happened? Look at the countries where violent revolutions have occurred: Mexico, Russia, China, Cuba. Do any of these countries have a higher level of social justice than countries like England, the USA, or Denmark, which never had violent class revolutions? Of course not. There is no historical justification for the fantasy that social change is produced only when testosterone poisoned fanatics get their ya-yas out by blowing stuff up.
1
There yet may come a day when, for entertainment, I might consider watching Driving-Miss-Daisy-Green-Book-Hollywood-Racial-Reconciliation-Fantasies but that will probably happen only when I can imagine racial reconciliation in my lifetime and can swallow non-goofy Hollywoods racial reconciliation pill(s). And that's not even close, yet. But there are a few Salt&Pepper flicks, that are my kind of Salt&Pepper flicks, like Hickey and Boggs (1972), and One Potato, Two Potato (1964), The Defiant Ones (1958), Putney Swope - and a few others.
2
"The relationship is entirely conscripted as service and bound by capitalism". Sorry this is superfluous faux erudition. There are myriad forms of service relationships that have existed across most if not all societies ranging from the extremes where household servants were slaves, to people being paid a decent wage with a degree of protection of workers rights at the other. Because a payment in money or goods or otherwise involve doesn't make it about "capitalism". The Mexican film Roma explores the nuances of this kind of relationship between a housekeeper/nanny and the family that employs her quite beautifully. Yes, the relationship of dependence and subservience is limiting, but there is also a genuine depth to relationship.
16
I thought this article was a good read.
I'm not sure how we navigate these waters as a diversely-heritaged nation with baggage, but the comment section is filled with scorn, vitriol, and greivances.
The way forward is compassion, not hate.
6
Hollywood is in the entertainment business but has somehow adopted the pretension that it has the authority and means to lead society into a better future. People go to the movies for a couple of hours of escape. They want to pay their money, eat some treats, and forget their troubles, as they have been doing since the golden age of movies during the Great Depression and the War. No greater gift could have been given to a weary world.
A critic recently wrote about the casting of a woman and a black man in the latest Star Wars movie (as was done, by the way. in the very first Star Wars movie). She acclaimed the choice as something radical because, as she put it, now Star Wars looks just like the real world! So much for escape. There was a time when being an entertainer was a much-loved profession. Now that entertainers have somehow morphed into artists, there is an expectation that society's problems will be solved and a population guided into a new age of enlightenment by wealthy people who play make-believe for a living.
8
@Michael Your view of film is very limited and quite dumbed down. And the fact of the matter is that people often do look to stories to inspire and enlighten them. Also, I hate to break to you but it isn't just wealthy people "who play make-believe for a living" who think they can guide the general populace, all kinds of wealthy people do. Just ask the Koch Brothers.
9
@FDRT I expressed my view about Hollywood, not film. It is the first word in my comment.
2
Hollywood is about servicing people's fantasies? Who would have thought?
The author blames Hollywood and the Academy, when the fault lies with the public. It's *their* fantasies after all.
3
@abo: Uh huh. And just what do you think is the racial composition of those who are funding, casting, promoting, green-lighting, writing, directing, producing, and distributing these movies?
2
For those having a hard time understanding Mr. Morris' take, I recommend reading "White Fragility". It's eye-opening and might help you see this essay (which I found sadly insightful) differently.
Mr. Morris, as a white person, I thank you for your courage in pointing out these aspects of race and culture that are uncomfortable for (perhaps especially well-meaning) white people - myself included.
13
Just watched Jungle Fever for 3X. What a great film.
5
Nice essay. While I liked Green Book (even with the issues you mention) and loved Do the Right Thing, I didn't think BlacKkKlansman was very good. It seemed stilted and cliched.
5
@Finever
I agree... the telephone scenes at the police station for one with the cops giggling as they listened it and the Klansmen were bumbling fools.
I just saw Green Book and when I recounted the story to my daughter, I found myself getting a little emotional. For me, the movie isn’t simply a white person growing up and being less racist. When talking about it to my eight year old, it was about a black man intentionally going on a tour of the South and challenging the norms. And how his white driver sees first hand how hard being black is, even if you’re a celebrated musician.
I don’t think the friendship cures his racism but it opens a door. The beginning of the friendship may have been transactional, but does it matter how friendships begin? Isn’t it more important to see why and how they last? These men continued to be friends their entire life.
And yes, these movies are far from perfect. I found it ludicrous that Don would not know who Little Richard was or had never had fried chicken. But these movies are trying to add to the conversation. We need Spike Lee AND Driving Miss Daisy, because they reflect how complicated it all is. There is friction between hope and reality, ideals and truth and we need all voices to understand that push and pull. And have conversations about it.
I don’t love these racial awakening through odd couple friendships stories, but at their core they are pointing at our only salvation: we must work hard to know each other better, we must live with each other and we’ll realize that we have more in common than we think.
171
I saw and liked "Green Book" as a film that showed a relationship whereby both main characters ventured out of their comfort zones and became friends, despite their past prejudices. It seems that it is too easy to stereotype and demonize people we don't know who are not like us, but when we get to know people from other races and perspectives it becomes easier to find common ground and to see people as individuals more than as part of a particular group. I thought that the film was valuable in this respect. It was a Hollywood film with a feel good story that glossed over some of facts, but I didn't expect it to be more.
During Labor Day weekend 1989, I saw "Do the Right Thing" in Richmond, Va., was blown away by it, but found the ending to be very disturbing(and far-fetched in my view). I discovered the next day that there had been a racial incident that some called a "riot" at Greekfest in Virginia Beach, some 100 miles away the night before. I then realized that Spike Lee's film wasn't so far-fetched after all and the film became even more powerful to me.
I have lived in Charlottesville for over 25 years--long before it became a hashtag on August 12, 2018. Living in a liberal college town, I truly didn't comprehend the racial issues that exist here and that we have been trying to come to grips with as a town ever since.
"BlacKkKlansman" to me was a very Hollywood movie (a good one) until the footage from Charlottesville at the end. Not as powerful as DTRT.
4
How else are you going to portray whites and blacks together? This is all you really got. And that's unfortunately the way it is.
8
Film schools should teach classes based on this essay.
61
My thoughts exactly
2
Ah, another NYT comment section where "well-meaning" white people race to miss the point! White Americans are so convinced of their goodness that honest portrayals of race relations/Black suffering are mere inconveniences, easily written out of their feel good fantasies.
Black folks, we'll continue to face the ugly realities of this country, and we will also continue demanding more from those who feel entitled to tell our stories.
117
@The Black Millennial This sums up the response perfectly. Well said.
7
"White Americans are so convinced of their goodness that honest portrayals of race relations/Black suffering are mere inconveniences, easily written out of their feel good fantasies."
The ambiguous phrasing here is typical of the the whole dysfunctional "dialogue" on race today. --Yes the country must address its racial history & continuing disparities & the consequent suffering of African-Americans.
But, the conception that "white people" as individuals, are not "good people" and need to face their inherent "badness" is just rubbish. This is the dominant "progressive" view today and it's taking us nowhere.
18
@The Black Millennial Most of us 'well meaning white people' are just trying to learn how to heal this divide that we are VERY aware that we created by our 'original sin' of slavery and subsequent oppression. Can you give us the benefit of the doubt please? If we were so convinced of our goodness, as you say, why portray the white guy as a clueless racist, which yes, persists in Italian American culture, I'm the first to admit. It's in my extended family, probably has infected me as well. Many of us are still trying, probably awkwardly, to navigate these tricky waters. We wanted Obama's presidency to be the beginning of the end of bad race relations. Sadly, no. Now a backlash. There's more work to be done. Keep demanding more, most of us are listening.
7
Wow, friendship can only occur if one is not paying the other? Friendship can't transcend initial roles in a relationship? Hmm. It must be difficult for Mr. Morris to get through the day with such a tainted view of race relations. It must be miserable to stay angry at the racism of 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 150 years ago. For sure it should never be forgotten but can we ever move forward?
51
The author likes Spike Lee movies more than he likes Green Book and Driving Miss Daisy. Fine. That's his right to have an opinion and to share it. Beyond that, his article is meaningless.
24
@Otis Tarnow-Loeffler
This review goes well past liking one film (or director) over another, it concerns how one faction of humanity (the one controlling the power and wealth) is depicted interacting with the other, and how even the most subtle of differences and nuances in behavior are fraught with meaning and consequence- whether recognized or not.
The fact that it is "meaningless" to you reflects the reality that you simply have no skin in the game.
21
@Otis Tarnow-Loeffler Yes, this is how someone who really doesn't care about the issue addressed in the essay would feel about the subject matter. Bravo for showing disdain and indifference. Your president would be proud.
2
@Stan B
He doesn't think he's got skin in the game but he does. The stubborn willingness to remain ignorant of the significance of identity politics is a large part of what allows the wealthy to manipulate the masses to the detriment of 99% of us.
1
An intelligent analysis and critique. We are only to ready and willing to adopt the fantasies and reject the realities. Maybe it's just easier and less stressful to watch the fluff instead of the meat and bone of someone like Spike Lee.
8
This is precisely why I've avoided participating in any kind of knee-jerk, feel-good, white/hetero guilt type of movements. So now we've got movies and Broadway shows and TV shows that feature all-black casts or trans- leads or Gender X leads, etc. And white and/or hetero folks are suddenly gushing all over these and thinking 'isn't it great now...how open-minded the world and we have all become now?!'
Meanwhile, black movies are still considered just that ....'black movies'. Yet does anyone think of your typical Hollywood film as a 'white movie'? Why is it that when a trans-gender wins Miss America, it's 'news'? Why, just yesterday, NY State finally made 'conversion therapy' (which was intended to try and 'cure gays') illegal. And then, wasn't it also just yesterday, that Trump banned trans- people from serving in the military?
The day when movies, plays, TV shows etc. don't consider it news that a particular type of person is featured, is the day we'll know we've truly progressed.
The whole cliche black/white lead character thing in Hollywood movies ...where the white person is held up as an example of your 'typically clueless white person, who, at the core, is a good person....just a bit unenlightened... and where they need a black person to show them the light', is really tired, and utterly transparent. But then, what do you expect from your typical movie out of Hollywood?
11
@Lisa I think 'Black Panther' is a great example of a movie with a majority-black cast that would not be considered a 'black movie'.
2
Three things strike sour notes in the midst of this fabulous essay. One is calling Don Shirley in Green Book a “neutered” man—what? Is this code for “gay” man? (Don Shirley was gay, and that is made clear in the movie). Ouch. Number two is several movies' proposition that “proximity to whiteness is toxic, a danger, a threat”—seemingly accepted as axiomatic. So not only is real-world interracial friendship doomed by circumstances, but interracial marriage is too. Wonder what interracial married couples have to say about this? What their children, reading such statements, would be feeling here? Finally, what is with a bizarre leitmotif in several movies discussed—the racist white characters are almost always comic-book Italian-Americans. Pure lazy shorthand—and the only ethnic caricature on the planet that seems to bother nobody. No matter how woke and otherwise nuanced.
367
@Lise speaking from my experience in an interracial marriage lasting (still) decades, unless the White person understands that for people of color, especially Black people, "proximity to whiteness is toxic, a danger, a threat," there will never be authenticity and trust established.
41
@Lise
I think "neutered man" is not code at all but a focus on the characters suggested isolation and the resulting sense of his inability in relating to other black people. This is something that Don Shirley's family takes issue with. The fact that he would need someone white to help him connect with "blackness" is disempowering. Perhaps a better metaphor for that powerlessness could have been selected.
As a black man with many white friends and also one who happens to be in an interracial marriage, I would absolutely say that a proximity to "whiteness" as a construct can be toxic. It's the construct and not necessarily individual people that cause harm. However, the more you buy into the construct of whiteness, the more harmful you can be to those not considered white. From my experience, in order for interracial relationships of all kinds to not be doomed or at the very least extremely limited in depth, the construct of "whiteness" must be challenged from within those relationships. I'm being brief here but I hope this makes sense.
50
@Lise The movie said many things that the family disputed. Don Shirley was married and had at least one daughter. Calling him "neutered" wasn't tied to his sexual orientation, since the real man was either straight or bisexual. Rather, it's about how he is being viewed, depicted and how much agency he has in a story that is supposedly about him.
16
I'm curious about the perspectives of the actors referenced in this (great) piece. What do Morgan Freeman or Mahershala Ali have to say about the interplay of choices and forces that brought them to these roles? Do we erase their agency by speaking as if these movies "happened" to them? Asking because I'm not sure one way or the other.
15
@Anon I don't know about Morgan Freeman at the time or even now but Mr. Ali apologized to Mr. Shirley's family regarding the film.
2
Driving Miss Daisy, while an imperfect film, has some subtlety and awareness of hierarchy. Daisy is rungs above Hoke, but she's rudely reminded by the (real life) bombing of her temple that her place in Southern society is not secure, and as someone in the middle, she has a defined role to play in keeping her spot secure. It has an awareness of society and history that some of these other films lack.
12
I disagree with part of the analysis...in Miss Daisy it exposed the similarities of the characters even though they’re riding in different seats, and the racism each experienced in a very NON Norman Rockwell America. As well as their reactions to it...Hoke is well aware of the subtle and blatant racism, while Daisy tries to exist in denial in an empty house whose purpose and life has passed, but she can still drive to the grocery store: the Temple is bombed, the racist cop makes fun of both her and Hoke, her son has to appease the prominent anti-semitic business men of Atlanta: she’s aware but pretends it’s not true, while Hoke confronts it. In the end, she also states what she’s always known, regardless of her life away, he’s her best friend, whether or not she is his. It comes down to the two of them, she cooks, he drives, it’s a partnership..It’s not strange to me that people who coexist with some similar and dissimilar realities, can create a bond. Most relationships have uneven power structure, one person has more money, more power, less tragedy; one more dependent. I see people everywhere who are very attached to personal household staff or employees, and vice versa...others may dislike each other but are forced to get along. Also, I don’t know a woman who wants a man advising her while she cooks...Otherwise, some points are well regarded.
30
Good article but what was missed was the genius and struggle of Don Shirley, the musician. He went to the South of Sundowners and Segregation trying to persuade the White Power Brokers through his music. He and many others paved the way for Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.
33
I guess it doesn't matter that Green Book is based on a real story, one that, as far as I can research, comes closer to what actually happened than most of Hollywood's films about real incidents. I saw Green Book and while there were obligatory scenes of racial healing -- shudder to think -- it was a persuasive, and well-made, film about something of which I knew nothing. The idea of a Green Book to inform African-Americans traveling in the south. I guess the only films about racial issues we are allowed to like these days are angry, divisive movies. I am glad those films are being made. Why should Marvel corner the market on dumb superhero tropes? But I think there is a place for movies like Green Book, which show two individual human beings -- not two races -- finding a common language. I would just like to remind the NYT that anger feeds on itself, and rarely leads to reconciliation. Nelson Mandela said that.
269
@JayJay I totally disagree with your assessent about what a Green Book is. I still have my Grandparents Green Book and it was/is a real thing. But keep on quoting the tame quotes of Black Revolutionaries....
14
@JayJay: first of all, this movie has been roundly criticized for being untrue, and for distorting and out-right lying about the realities of Dr. Shirley and his employee. Dr. Shirley's family was appalled.
15
@JayJay This seems like a view point that any white uninformed (probably older) white person would hold. I'd be surprised if any Black people looked at it as just "two individuals". No one wants just angry divisive films about racial issues but it'd be nice if this type of narrative died the death of blackface vaudeville. The fact that it still has a life and people like yourself defending it is a reminder to me of how little has really changed. And no amount of unchallenging white fantasizing will make it any more worthwhile.
Put another way, the demographics of who went to see the film 'The Upside' was disproportionately old white (and mostly from red states). I'd be surprised if 'Green Book' didn't have similar numbers. The fact of the matter is that these are films that are white stories about interracial relationships meant to reaffirm world views with little to no interest in how Black people feel about the story. I guess it isn't (hasn't) been seen as welcomed or necessary.
16
The movie with Bryan Cranston is a remake of French movie about a rich, cultured White French paraplegic who hired an African man with a criminal past of some sort that was in turn based on a true story. Hard to find fault with a genuine friendship from a true story. Although American filmmakers tend to ruin European films when they remake them.
13
Isn't Blackkklansman a racial fantasy too? Giving Ron Stallworth's complicated true story the Hollywood treatment to imagine black and white cops working together to defeat racism, and even the one (just one) racist cop is improbably given his comeuppance by the other, non-racist white cops who turn against him. If any movie was made to make white liberals feel good, Blackkklansman is surely it.
28
@James if you felt good after that final scene then I don’t know what can help you. I’m not black and not white and I could barely exit my seat at the end.
4
@Jennifer S
agree, very timely and knocked me out. brilliant film
2
Thank you for so eloquently describing what I could only feel since I saw the trailer for 'The Greenbook'.
6
NYT and Wesley Morris right on the money again, probably as accurate as his appraisal of the performances of Lady Gaga vs Rami Malek. We'll see if any of the award bestowers agree.
4
In an early scene in Green Book, Viggo Mortensen's character throws out two water glasses that were used by two black men who helped his wife fix the kitchen sink. No one sees Viggo do this - it's a scummy, private moment indicative of his character's deeply-ingrained racism, and we see it without any direct pressure from his friends, family, or society to act a certain way.
I find Green Book unsettling not in that a character can undergo a "change of heart" of such fairy-tale proportions, but that actions like this seems so easily forgotten when paired with some fried chicken and some great piano playing.
7
@Jeff It is based on a true story. It's supposed to be unsettling and uncomfortable. Dr Shirley was a real honest eccentric genius musician. This film is a snapshot of a two month period ... I doubt the film makers are trying to save you or the world.
1
@Cam: It is a fabrication of a true story. Dr. Shirley's family has made clear that, if they'd been consulted (they weren't), they could have explained that for you. Dr. Shirley and Nick were employer and employee, not friends. Dr. Shirley fired him after two months. They did not remain in touch.
And it's not supposed to be unsettling and uncomfortable; it's supposed to make white people feel good about themselves.
4
I admire much of Spike Lee's work, particularly "Malcolm X" for which both he and Denzel Washington deserved the Oscar.
That being said, "Green Book" is a fine film with excellent performances. Its success is well-earned. So is "Black KkKlansman's" - another fine film with great performances.
Meanwhile, there's nothing more entertaining than reading well-paid NYTimes writers, at the very height of establishment success, sticking it to the man. Right on!
15
@manta666 Which "man" is he sticking it too? Read like a LOVE letter of desperation to Spike Lee. The "opinion" was more a lobbying effort to Academy member to PLEASE vote for the better more deserving director Spike Lee (please please please). This is worthy of a NY TIMES front page piece? Me thinks NOT.
1
The "Upside" is directly adapted from the French film "The Intouchables". So it's not unique American storytelling as your thesis suggests. It's a French trope too.
11
@TnG Yeah, white supremacy kind of works like that, you know, international. Do even a little research on France and they along with most European nations have this history and never really challenge themselves on these demeaning stories. There is a reason why Front Nationale exists.
1
A little more about the Spike Lee joint that brought him this nomination would have been appreciated.
7
Excellent piece. Thank you.
7
Movies like "Green Book" (and I say this having seen it, and with praise for the performances on the basis of acting craft) are exactly why African American filmmakers like Spike Lee do what they do: so they can TELL THEIR OWN STORIES without being relegated to plot devices for white protagonists.
113
@gmg22 I agree 150% with you....AMEN!!!!
6
Great piece. Share widely.
1
Denzel Washington's "Flight" was supposed to be based on a true story as well.
About 15 seconds of it "the part where they turn back upside down" was sort of, but not really. And all those people died in the crash of Alaska Air 261.
So basically, it's based on a true story in that they were both airplanes and they were both upside down at one point. Everything else is a fabrication. Ah Movies and Advertising. Almost as good as politics
8
Thank you for this detailed article.
2
Morris is a thousand per cent correct. Unfortunately the Academy, at least barring its reconstituting itself, will only get past this race-in-America fairy tale-ending in such a deliberate way it will only add another thin, tough layer of politesse to racial hypocrisy.
4
Brilliant.
Thank you for this.
3
When someone addresses the unchallenged homophobia in Do The Right Thing, I’ll take their analysis seriously.
11
@Tim
And the fact that Mookie is pretty much a drag as a father, not seeming to care about his child or his child's mother.
4
What’s clear is that is 5 men and 1 woman. Shows who the movie biz thinks important. Women only matter about 16.5%
It’s the noun not the adjective
6
It is a buddy movie. Both men learn things. The white character is less racist at the end. No it doesn't usher in a new era in race relations.
Apparently you missed the scene where the Professor is offering Tony Lip extra money and he demurs, saying I'm gonna do what I signed up for, for the amount I signed up for.
They stayed friends for life and there was never any more money exchanged between them.
Good movie. Lousy review.
57
Wesley Morris is a brilliant culture critic and writer, I agree. I appreciate the clarity of his analysis of these racial tropes in the movies. I really hope Spike Lee gets recognized at long last this year. And if you are not yet listening to the podcast "Still Processing" that Morris and Jenna Wortham co-host, try it - it's lively and thoughtful.
3
I saw this movie at TIFF in Toronto. It was my favourite of all the ones I saw. But then, I was just looking at it as a movie and thought it was beautifully done.
10
Yes to everything in this essay. You’ve nailed the feelings of many 40-somethings who still watch the Oscars.
4
Spike Lee is a genius. He's created an original cinematic language. I cried with joy and pain at his boldness and tenderness in BlacKkKlansman. (And just revisited He Got Game.) He has consistently enthralled us with unions of image and music, his insights into families, men and women, his humor, his honesty.
Far above the other American nominees, he deserves Best Director and Best Picture.
Thank you, thank you Mr. Lee.
14
I have declined to see The Green Book for the reasons stated in this essay. I think movies like this are given an extra pass when they're "based on a true story," but even if it were 100% factual, it's a snapshot of one relationship and not representative.
5
@md397
I don’t think this movie was supposed to be representative of anything but the relationship between two men that began in one place and evolved into something apparently special to them. Why can’t we just see it for what it is and leave it st that.
6
@md397 What's wrong with a movie that's a "snapshot of one relationship"? Must all movies "represent" something larger?
2
but also: should disabled characters be played by abled actors ?
that would seem a downside of upside.
This is why I stopped watching the Oscars: awards for Driving Miss Daisy and none for Do the Right Thing. Wesley Morris, your article is worth the wait. Thanks
14
I still remember seeing Do the Right Thing in the theater and being floored by it. It is telling to recall the films that won accolades against this blazing and brave (and creative, original) film. Some of the points against a film like Green Book may seem small, but without even seeing it I am frustrated at the depiction of a black man unfamiliar with fried chicken. I don't want to see more films that make people more comfy with the status quo in this particular way. I don't think the merits of a film should rest on "correct politics" but when a story hinges on racial issues, it's more interesting when there is a connect with/comment on reality rather than soothing elements that make one sector of the audience feel better and one sector feel furious or frustrated. My favorite win at the Academy Awards last year was Jordan Peele for his brilliant Get Out script. This was a film that was so much fun to watch, built on personally experienced fears (from small and real to huge and surreal) about American race issues from an African-American perspective, and for me, it's a classic next to Rosemary's Baby. I will not even see Green Book because, like some of the other films mentioned, it feels too cliched in the descriptions.
11
I've seen 'The Green Book', and liked it for all the wrong reasons, as brought out by this essay. The past dies hard, if at all. We have a long way to go...
11
Truly, this is a persistent and insidious trope in Hollywood movies. Film scholar Ed Guerrero coined the term "bi-racial buddy movie" back in the 1990's, and his critique of how these films are uncomfortable with focusing on a black subject, necessitating that black characters appear in the filmic "custody" of white characters, is still sadly on point. I highly recommend revisiting Guerrero on this: "Framing Blackness: The African-American Image in Film." But let's continue to look beyond Hollywood for smarter representations: so many great independent, web-based streaming vehicles nowadays that break this tired mold.
15
Fascinating essay and no better proof to my comment yesterday that the Oscars and its history are less about what’s actually cinematically “best” and more like snapshots of what’s actually happening socially in each particular year. As I said yesterday, what ends up standing the cinematic test of time is not always what wins “Best” for that year.
I think Spike Lee’s time was “Do the Right Thing”. He should have been awarded “Best Screenplay” at the very least, if not “Best Picture” or “Best Director” (it’s now regularly included in best movie lists and was admitted to the Library of Congress only a decade later) but the fact that “Driving Miss Daisy” won “Best Picture” shows the Academy that year was still grappling with race in comforting, if still complex clichés, rather than being ready to face the realities shown in “Do the Right Thing”.
25
I once heard films like 'Driving Miss Daisy' and 'Mississippie Burning' described as 'how de White folks coped' films. In these films, Black people are supporting characters in their own struggle. It's all about how the segregation, discrimination and even the civil right movement is ALL ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE and how much THEY suffer. 'Green Book' seems to follow in those well-worn footsteps.
It doesn't seem to matter that the family of the Black protagonist isn't happy with the movies. Their feelings are secondary to the White son of the White protagonist, who is also a producer and has a financial stake in the success of the film.
On the other hand, Spike Lee has been telling the truth for decades. He dares to put Black people front and center of their own stories. I am always amazed when White people are so outraged that Sal loses his restaurant in 'Do The Right Thing'. yet seem to be perfectly fine with the death of a young Black man. Sal isn't the story.
Spike Lee has been one of the greatest American directors for decades and this is his first nomination. I'm happy for him and while many will tune in to the Oscars to what Lady GaGa is wearing (something dreadful no doubt), I'll be hoping that the Academy will, FINALLY, do the right thing.
196
@laura174
Thank you so much for bringing up the profit-making aspect of “Green Book,” which, in my opinion, also relates to the US’s long tradition of cultural appropriation from marginalized people for profit.
17
@laura174 Moving beyond the United States but in the same era of filmmaking as the films you cite, "Cry Freedom" is another good example of this phenomenon. The movie should be about Steve Biko, but somehow it ends up being mostly about Steve Biko's white friend.
16
@laura174 The scriptwriter has said that Don Shirley specifically told him not to approach his family, from whom he was estranged, likely because he was gay.
BlacKKKlansman was entertaining and worth seeing, but like everything Spike Lee does, it was over-the-top and an attempt to incite the choir, the only group of people who will ever watch such a movie. Its the kind of film that won't change a single mind or build one iota of racial tolerance and understanding, which is what Green Book does.
27
I have been vaguely uneasy about “Green Book” ever since the closing credits. Thank you, Wesley Morris, for giving eloquent voice to my uneasiness and bringing it into focus.
20
There's good insight in this article. I'm always amazed by the limits of screenwriters and directors imagination of Black people and Black lives. Hollywood rarely wants to tell a story truly, it often makes it Teflon. Watching Dtiving Miss Daisy, I thought it an important movie for younger Black people to know what Black people have endured. This strength and ability to do what we need to to take care of our families is a well of strength I draw from. Families we love in all of our human complexity. That complexity and love is always more realized when people tell and direct their own stories (with a few exceptions along the way).
5
Wesley Morris is a great writer. Keep a sharp eye on this guy.
At some point, while reading this exceptional piece, I got lost in this writer's ability to take complex thoughts and ideas and make them profoundly visceral yet straightforward and easy to follow. Mr. Morris is never condescending. He never sacrifices one word to get his point across.
He is the best and most gifted critic of our time.
37
@Jocelyn H
Even for a relative this is rather overdone.
7
@Jocelyn H
Wesley won a Pulitzer for movie commentary when he worked at the Boston Globe. Was and still is one of the sharpest eyes and minds out there on all subjects related to cinema. This article highlights his brilliance; his wordss and thoughts flow so eloquently. Thanks, Wesley.
7
Im getting so tired of reading these reviews that overly dissect and analyze race relations in what I felt was a thoroughly entertaining film in "Green Book." The constant arguing about how truthful it was, which in most films that are "based" on a true story there is always some artistic license taken to enhance the story line. Ali and Mortensen both pulled off sterling performances which made me laugh and cry. My son picked up on the white enhanced point of view right away. So just like gays were offended by "Birdcage" another thoroughly entertaining film, Green Book has irritated those who argue about the racial divide between the front seat and the back seat. When can we just enjoy a good film and celebrate it for just what it is, good entertainment.
137
@JB
Some people might ask more from their entertainment than you do. I stop being entertained when movies reinforce offensive stereotypes, i.e. refuges for discomfort and prejudices, for cheap laughs or to move along some lame story line. I am entertained when I am met with surprise, intelligence, compassion, moral complexity.
65
You seem to think you can either look at a film like Green Book through the lens of race, or you can ignore that aspect. I don’t think that’s true. You can buy what the writers are saying about the racial relationship between the main characters or you can question its patness. But race is front and center, and enjoying the movie and claiming there’s too much emphasis on the racial relationship is like going to the beach and saying you think the sand gets too much emphasis, it’s really about the water.
16
@JB
I thought “Birdcage” really skewered uptight, Republican, Moral Majority types, especially in the era of Newt Gingrich and the ridiculous “Contract with America”, and was a movie the straight community needed to see but I can’t speak for the feelings of the gay community. I’m sure there are issues as there always are in the imperfect human medium of film. When I saw it in the theater, I was more blown away by the subtle and incredible acting skills of Robin Williams during a decade where he kept topping one role with the next. I thought, “Is there no one he can’t act?” I miss him.
20
Perhaps Green Book, Driving Miss Daisy and The Upside do "fuel a racial fantasy" as the headline states. A fantasy that relationships that begin between blacks and whites as purely transactional can evolve into meaningful friendships among the most unlikely of pairings.
But Spike Lee engages in a similar, and more pernicious, fantasy at the end of his masterpiece, Do The Right Thing. In the scene Mr. Morris cites where Sal, the Italian pizzeria owner begrudgingly pays Mookie who incited the riot that burned down his livelihood, Mr. Lee completely betrays the character he has created in the previous two hours to make a rhetorical point that somehow Sal, while losing his life's work, sees the rightness of Mookie's actions and therefore pays him.
It is an utterly ridiculous fantasy that Sal's character would ever do such a thing. Certainly far more ludicrous than two characters hanggliding to Aretha Franklin.
And between the two fantasies, I much prefer to subscribe to the hopeful one of the possibility of friendship between black and white, rather than justification and acceptance of the most violent, destructive acts.
99
@Sparky I agree Sal would never admit that Mookie was right but I don’t think that’s what happens in this scene. Sal doesn’t hand over a stack of cash to Mookie and apologize. He sneers at Mookie and throws wads of money at him in a very demeaning manner. He screams, “Mookie’s a big man! He’s got $500!” I think he’s telling Mookie that he's a nobody because he believes this is a lot of money while he, Sal – a man who worked hard his whole life - can afford to throw it at him like it’s nothing. Mookie doesn’t engage him. He takes his money and walks away because he’s said what he had to say (and done what he had to do – the “right thing”) and Sal would never understand.
15
@Joe C. I simply don't buy Sal would ever, under any circumstance, pay Mookie after he incited a riot that cost him his livelihood. It is completely out of character for him. He would say let's deduct the $500 I owe you from the $50,000 you now owe me.
I think Spike showed where his real sympathies lie in the argument, which is fine, but it is an important character inconsistency, no matter how well the script tries to finesse it.
9
Anything that bridges the racial divide in America is useful and good. Portraying inter-racial friendship is helpful. People of diverse backgrounds will only understand and appreciate one another when they are brought together. The employment context is perhaps the primary way that happens today. Most religious organizations are segregated, most neighborhoods are segregated, and most social organizations are segregated. That leaves employment and the military as our primary agencies bringing diverse people together.
290
@JerryWegman
Too often portrayals of interracial relationships in popular films, the media and in the US public education system lie about our history and prevent healing. I choose accurate or no portrayals of such relationships over fabrications which continue to hurt the soul of our country.
24
@JerryWegman But in those films, the bridge is ALWAYS on the White side. The Black character is usually solitary, no friends or family and the premise is that, thanks to these wonderful White people, this Black person is fulfilled. That's fantasy, White fantasy, where they deal with Black people on THEIR terms.
What I find fascinating about 'Green Book' is that a White man took a Black man's story and literally put him in the back seat of his own life.
The reason that the institutions that you mention are segregated is because White people WANT to be segregated. They only want to deal with people of colour on THEIR terms. And if they can't have that, they pack up and leave.
91
The key to sounding enlightened is to always nitpick progress. I'm not white, and I've noticed everyone wants to be segregated. You put a black man working for a white person - rabble! You put a white man working for a black guy -rabble! But I agree with your sentiment. Finally, I disagree that religious institutions are segregated - they are often an underrated mixing pot.
14
Surprised there is no mention of Brian's Song. Sports are an area of interracial friendships that are not in the employer/employee vein. But it's no surprise that Hollywood's take is to appeal to the majority white audience in the same way that they also favor Americans over foreigners. We just read about the Ben Affleck movie where heroic Canadian actions were recast to highlight American action as heroic.
10
@Jmb
Thanks for this comment. I loved the movie Argo, but didn’t really appreciate the American hero swooping in to save the day.
4
I remember being deeply offended watching Crimson Tide, when Gene Hackman's character punches Denzel Washington's character, and Denzel does not strike back. To make things worse at the end of the film there seems to be an "everything's okay and we respect each other" at the end of the film. This wasn't so much about the characters for me as it was about saying Gene Hackman the actor gets to punch Denzel, and a white audience gets to get off on it, and at the end of the film we will let them off the hook and absolve the whole thing. Denzel was a hero of mine and I walked out of the film feeling violated by the imbalance.
11
Thank goodness movies aren't life. I might add that it's chiefly movie critics who think they are, but that ain't true either.
31
Wonderful analysis; very true to me.
44
@Into the Cool
Thanks for a concise comment on this column with which I agree.
3