Reflection

I recently read an article called "Never Ending Story: Conversation About Race Has Not Brought About Cultural Consensus". What particularly struck me was the observation regarding how the American people use film in order to have the conversation of race. From what I was able to gather, the author suggests that Americans use films which cover race in a particularly sensitive way in order to "have a conversation" about race but be able to conclude that conversation with a certain sense of satisfaction.

It is not as though movies which talk about race are not popular. Tarantino's "Django" was a hugely successful film which although artistic and sensationalized, did speak to the violence of slavery in the South. However, when considering how this film contributed to the conversation of race in America, it did very little.  Isolated in time and space, the film only spoke to mid 19th century racism in the deep American South. Additionally, while the main character Django is a gun wielding black man seeking great revenge, he is still led to his position by a white man.

This "white savior" complex seems to be a major problem in film. Conversations about race are accessible to white people because they're toned down. In these films, there are the white people who are evil villains with extremist thoughts and then there are the white people with a moral code that everyone reveres. The latter are the kind of white people that today's audience can look at and be like "Well if I lived back then, I'd be that guy!" It lessens any sort of white guilt. It lets white people talk about just how terrible things like slavery were but then feel a sense of relief due to distance from the actual situation and solace in the white savior that they "would be if they could."

I wonder about how commercially successful a film would be that didn't have a white savior. One that really highlighted the abuses of the white majority against blacks without any forgiveness. Forgiveness softens the racial conversation that films could potentially have.