From Friday’s Guardian film/music review section, Joe Queenan on a recurring theme in Hollywood films prominently featuring Africa or black people generally: that “no matter how bleak the situation seems, they can always rely on some resourceful, charismatic and, in some instances, shapely white person to bail them out”. In this particular case, it’s the movie Blood Diamond, due for release in the UK on the 26th, in which a corrupt former Rhodesian mercenary, “serving a shockingly brief stint in a Sierra Leone prison for violating that sovereign nation’s contraband smuggling rules”, comes to the aid of a fellow prisoner who hid a priceless pink diamond in a riverbank somewhere while enslaved by some rebels in Sierra Leone. The trend for white lead characters saving black people, he says, started with To Kill A Mockingbird, “a beloved, fabulously successful, thoroughly absurd novel” about a white lawyer defending a black man accused of raping a white woman at a time when such a man would most likely have been murdered rather than charged.
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That was a really funny review, and now I feel kind of sheepish admitting I liked the movie. I knew what I’d be in for when I read “from the director of Glory and Last Samurai”, and it’s true the underlying theme of whitey saving the day is hard to overlook. But the film is pretty exciting, the politics are not too ham-handed for a PC “issues” movie, and DiCaprio and Hounsou are both really really good. Hounsou isn’t just a victim in need of saving in the movie. I couldn’t stand to even see DiCaprio’s baby face in his early days, but his performance here is solid.
Assalaamu alaikum,
Hmmmm… I always liked “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
salaam,
‘freedom writers’ plays on the same theme. white women comes and teaches/saves the poor colored kids….