Don’t Watch The Help ...Or These Other White-Savior Movies
“In any civil rights movie, there’s two heroes,” says Chris Rock, talking about white-savior movies in the film Top Five. “There’s the black hero, and the white person who’s ‘equally’ as important.”
You probably have already realized that a lot of the entertainment you enjoyed when you were younger was racist, sexist, or homophobic. Ready for the next level of trying to unfuck your pop culture consumption? A lot of the movies you thought were actively anti-racist actually stumble in their attempt to deliver an anti-racist message.
As our country reckons with police brutality and its impact on Black Americans in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among too many other names, it’s worth reevaluating how the media we’ve consumed has propped up racist stereotypes and historical inaccuracies while claiming to take on racism.
Look at The Help, which was critically acclaimed when it came out in 2011. It’s back in the news right now because it became Netflix’s most-watched movie in the U.S. during the anti-racist protests last week. But critics have been shouting since before the movie even came out that The Help is not a story that confronts current or historical racism. (Don’t take it from me, take it from Ablene Cooper, the real Black woman the movie focuses on who sued because she found the storytelling so untrue and offensive!) In response to the controversy, Netflix rolled out a Black Lives Matter genre tab on the streaming site to showcase Black filmmaking alongside genres like Comedy and Thriller.
There’s a distinction between movies that are about racism and movies that are truly anti-racist. The Help belongs to a genre of white-savior stories—stories about people of color that make white people look like heroes, even when they were actually perpetrators or bystanders. It’s not that these movies are as horrible as, say, Song of the South. The problem is that they obscure what actually happened in history and go ridiculously out of their way to make white people look good. In some cases they completely disregard the truth. In others, they intentionally make Black characters seem desperate or weak or stupid so that the white characters can look strong and kind.
One reason so many of these well-intentioned movies misstep is that they are movies about Black people struggling for power and dignity that are made almost entirely by white people. We’re talking director, producers, writer, cinematographer, composer, in a lot of these cases—the works. Making a movie about Black people fighting disenfranchisement that almost completely disenfranchises Black people is ironic, to say the least.
These stories are told to make white people feel better about ourselves, which is silly, but it’s also harmful—when white people don’t see historical and systemic racism reflected back in our own entertainment, or we see it but we always see a white person there to save the day, we think there’s not much for us to do. It shouldn’t take videos of police killing innocent Black people for you to know that’s not true.
It’s really hard to admit a story you found so uplifting was considered a setback by the community that was the subject of the story. As someone who’s lucky to write a lot about entertainment, I sometimes feel like the lady in this Onion headline: “Woman Takes Short Half-Hour Break From Being Feminist to Enjoy TV Show.” But the truth is that you can discover so many truthful, heartbreaking, funny, uplifting movies and TV shows when you let go of the problematic ones. Here are some of the all-time worst white-savior movies, and the movies and TV shows by Black creators that you should watch instead.
The Help
Are we being too hard on The Help? No. The book that the hit movie is based on compares the black protagonist’s physical appearance to a cockroach. You can be moved by the pure humanity of the “You is kind, you is smart, you is important” speech and also realize that a fictional white woman who sort of criticizes other white women for making their Black servants go to the bathroom in a shed isn’t the hero America needs to see on screen. Even stars Viola Davis and Bryce Dallas Howard have spoken out about it.
What to watch instead: BlacKkKlansman, The Butler, Black-ish
The Blindside
A movie based on the true story of a Black man who overcame obstacles to become wildly successful—what could go wrong? A lot! Football star Michael Oher went from homelessness to the NFL on his own merits and hard work, but the Oscar-nominated movie makes this look as though it’s largely a triumph for the white women in his life. The best solution for the problems of Black people, the movie seems to suggest, is white people. As with The Help, Oher has been critical of the movie inspired by his life story, saying that it was hurtful that it portrayed him as not knowing how to play football until white people taught him. “You don’t have to be saved by a wealthy white family,” he said in 2011, addressing children living in poverty. “You can do it on your own. It is possible.”
What to watch instead: Miss Juneteenth, Remember The Titans (even though it’s kind of a mess in its own right, it’s still worth it)
Freedom Writers
Like The Blind Side, Freedom Writers, which is about a white teacher who transforms the lives of teens at an inner-city high school, is based on a true story. But the message of the movie—that people of color need gracious white people to mold them into civilized and hard-working citizens—is truly a throwback to colonialism. What the teenagers in Freedom Writers need is not a determined white woman dressed head to toe in Anne Taylor Loft but a well-funded school system, social services, and an anti-racist society.
What to watch instead: Coach Carter, The Hate U Give
Green Book
Oh, Green Book, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. As a film critic, I think it’s important to note that stars Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are two of the most attractive men to have ever lived. Other than that, there’s not a lot of good stuff in this best-picture-winning movie. It follows the real-life relationship between Black musician Dr. Donald Shirley and his white driver, Tony Vallelonga, told in a way that The Root said “spoon-feeds racism to white people,” erasing most of the danger and violent racism that a Black man traveling through the Deep South would have actually experienced. Shirley’s family said it misrepresented his legacy, and the movie’s creators were called out for racism throughout their time promoting the movie.
What to watch instead: Selma, Moonlight, Blindspotting
La La Land
Speaking of Moonlight! (If you don’t remember, the two movies are forever linked thanks to the biggest mishap in awards-season history.) Is La La Land a bad, racist, movie? No! It’s a delight. But there are some really reasonable criticisms about the way the movie portrayed jazz, a traditional Black American art, as something that needs to be saved by white men.
What to watch instead: Get Out, Ray, Black Panther
Lincoln
Lincoln is a great movie. But how many more movies are we going to watch about white men struggling against their racism and then ultimately doing the right thing when indescribable damage is already done? Watch it, learn from it, and then watch…
What to watch in addition: 13th, Confirmation, Clemency
Hidden Figures
What we are not here to do is cut down the incredible, rare treasure that is the true story and performances in Hidden Figures. What we are here to do is point out the problem with making things up to make white people feel less implicated in 400 years of gruesome anti-Black discrimination. In the movie, a white supervisor rips down the “colored” bathroom sign, smashes it to pieces, and announces to the whole staff, “No more colored restrooms. No more white restrooms…. Here at NASA, we all pee the same color.” Amazing!
In real life, NASA genius Katherine Johnson refused to use the “colored” bathroom in the space program’s office, defiantly using the “whites only” bathroom. The triumph was hers, and at her own risk. But the movie’s screenwriter, Theodore Melfi, defended the historical rewrite to Vice, saying, “There needs to be white people who do the right thing, there needs to be black people who do the right thing. And someone does the right thing. And so who cares who does the right thing, as long as the right thing is achieved?”
What to watch in addition: Miss Juneteenth, Girls Trip, Night Comes On, Mudbound
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee’s classic book and the 1962 movie based on the book have an important place in American cultural history. But should it be such a central source text for so many non-Black Americans as we try to navigate our country’s painful history? The story focuses on a white man who takes great risks to defend an innocent Black man who has been wrongly accused of raping a white woman. While it’s worthwhile to tell stories about a righteous person living among evil, the reality is that white people’s primary reaction to Black men being wrongly accused of rape in American history has been mob violence, not defense. As a culture, we pay a price for retelling our most shameful stories in a way that makes people who were the exception look like the rule.
What to watch in addition: In the Heat of the Night, Watchmen
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
