Of course America cherished “The Blind Side,” the 2009 film a few homeless and hapless Black teenager rescued from a bleak future by a rich, white household. It was based mostly on the true story of the Tuohy household, led by Sean and Leigh Anne, who took the future N.F.L. participant Michael Oher into their house and raised him proudly as he made it to school and past.
It’s the kind of story we’re used to in sports activities, one which undergirds our beliefs about sport’s energy to create lifelong bonds, assist its individuals overcome hardships, and construct character. It’s additionally a simplified rendering of race in America, one which hinges on the trope that white individuals will be magically redeemed by coming to the support of a Black character.
Audiences sucked it up. The movie took in over $300 million and Sandra Bullock received an Oscar for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy, self-possessed belle of the New South.
But “The Blind Side,” based mostly on the best-selling guide by Michael Lewis, renders a sophisticated actuality in the most digestible format. This week, shocking information of a lawsuit filed by Oher towards the Tuohys spurred many to rethink the film, looking for solutions to questions raised by the authorized declare and obscured by the movie’s comfy, tidy narrative.
Oher is suing the couple for a full accounting of their relationship. He claims that when he thought he was being adopted at 18, the Tuohys urged him to signal a conservatorship that gave them management to enter into contracts on his behalf. He says that the familial bond, warmly portrayed in the film, was a lie and that the Tuohys enriched themselves at his expense.
The Tuohys have defended their actions, arguing in an announcement that the conservatorship was a authorized necessity so Oher may play soccer at the University of Mississippi with out jeopardizing his eligibility.
In a narrative with no less than 4 variations — these of Lewis, the film studio, Oher and the Tuohys — it’s virtually unattainable to discern who’s telling the reality.
Until this week, I have to admit, I had by no means seen “The Blind Side.” I’d purposefully prevented it. I’m leery of motion pictures that lean on easy racial clichés — a fatigue that started as a baby, when so many of my Black heroes died at the finish of movies so white heroes may reside.
News of Oher’s lawsuit satisfied me that it was time to plop down on the sofa and soak up the movie, with the profit of 14 years of hindsight — 14 years wherein race and sports activities have re-emerged as important platforms for the examination of America’s troubles.
My assumptions had been proved right early in the movie, whereas Oher’s character was taking form. As the story unfolds, he’s proven as a misplaced trigger earlier than assembly the Tuohys and attending a well-to-do Christian faculty in Memphis. The movie portrays him in straightforward phrases: as a physique, initially — a gargantuan Black teen whose I.Q., we’re advised, is low, and who has no concept by any means about how life operates in worlds that aren’t swamped in poverty and despair.
The Oher of the movie, notably early on, has little company and no actual goals of his personal. When I noticed that, it felt like a intestine punch. “What?” I muttered. “There’s no way this characterization is true.”
The Baltimore Ravens chosen Oher in the first spherical of the 2009 N.F.L. draft. No one makes it that far in sports activities with out a basis of years of motivation and coaching, which supplies credence to Oher’s long-held criticism of his portrayal in the movie. He is an clever individual, Oher has stated, repeatedly, and he was a talented soccer participant nicely earlier than assembly the Tuohys.
Not somebody who wanted the Tuohys’ younger, pint-size son, Sean Jr., to show him the sport in the best of phrases — through the use of bottles of condiments to indicate formations and performs. We watch Sean Jr. at a park, delighting in placing a clueless Oher by means of exercises.
The film additionally exhibits the Tuohys utilizing sports activities as a car for Oher to develop confidence, enter a world of status and riches — and finally to attend Ole Miss, the couple’s alma mater, the place Sean Tuohy as soon as starred in basketball.
Oher protects Leigh Anne Tuohy after they dare to go to the neighborhoods the place he’d grown up — “That horrible part of town,” she says. He saves Sean Jr.’s life when the two are in a automotive crash through the use of his huge arm to protect the younger boy from the drive of an airbag. When Oher struggles on the observe subject as he learns the sport, Leigh Anne Tuohy bounds from the sidelines and drills him with agency instruction: He should protect the quarterback the identical approach he guarded her and her son.
“Protect the family,” she insists.
A lesson delivered to Oher by a feisty white lady as if he had been a first-grader (or a servant) is a turning level. Oher begins remodeling from a soccer neophyte raised on the streets into an offensive lineman with the power of Zeus, the nimbleness of Mikhail Baryshnikov and the dimension of an upright piano.
Soon, we watch him play in a sport, enduring aggressive and racist taunting from an opponent who initially has his approach with an inexperienced rival.
Suddenly, Oher snaps. He doesn’t simply block the opposing participant: Enraged, Oher lifts him and drives him throughout the subject and over a fence.
“Where were you taking him, Mike?” his coach asks as Oher stands on the sidelines.
“To the bus,” Oher deadpans, his tone harmless and childlike. “It was time for him to go home.”
By the movie’s finish, the transformation is full. We study that underneath the watch of a rich white household, Oher’s I.Q. has improved to a median stage! We see him change into a highschool champion! We watch a parade of coaches — actual coaches, taking part in themselves in the movie — fawn over Oher as they attempt to persuade him to swimsuit up for his or her faculty.
It is difficult to determine, by the film’s telling, Oher’s motivation, or his savvy, as a result of he continues to be portrayed as a prop — quiet, docile, a younger man who, for the most half, does as his newfound household says. This, by the approach, makes it arduous to even determine, all these years later, the reality of his lawsuit.
What we do see in the film is that he shines in school and the professionals. There he’s in the N.F.L., in his Baltimore Ravens gear. He had made it to the sports activities Promised Land and thru all of it, the Tuohy household was at his aspect.
This movie had every part.
The dumbed-down trope about race and sophistication in America that Hollywood has all the time peddled.
The simplified narrative that uncritically hails sport and its purity, the approach it may well change lives, all the time for the higher, by shaping diamonds in the tough into jewels. The shadowy aspect of sports activities — the dishonest, the lies, the damaged guarantees, which, on this authorized tussle, could possibly be coming from both aspect — by no means encroaches on the fairy story.
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