How come "white savior" movies are getting a bad rep lately? (cast, drama)

[reneeh63]

Originally Posted by ironpony

Yep that's true, I thought the white savior story was powerful cause it has a white guy betraying his own fellow aggressors to help out a group of people being persecuted against.

But there are times in history when it wasn't just the whites that are the aggressors, but it seems no one wants to make the movies a lot of the time.

You keep focusing on the weird "white guy betraying his own fellow aggressors". I've NEVER picked that up as a major plot point. Usually the white actor is surrounded by adoring non-whites...with maybe one scene where a sneering white person calls the white savior a "____ lover" or some such. And then it's back to just being the adored white savior.

[fleetiebelle]

Originally Posted by reneeh63

You keep focusing on the weird "white guy betraying his own fellow aggressors". I've NEVER picked that up as a major plot point. Usually the white actor is surrounded by adoring non-whites...with maybe one scene where a sneering white person calls the white savior a "____ lover" or some such. And then it's back to just being the adored white savior.

A white person living among or helping out people with a different skin tone isn't "betrayal" of people who look like he does. That's such an odd take to have on this.

[Suburban_Guy]

Hollywood has a long and annoying tradition of putting white leads in a movie that has a majority non-white cast or deals with subject matter related to non-whites, and the controversy over it is certainly not recent by any means.

You have movies like Cry Freedom (1987) that told the story of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, where much of the screen time focused on....the white journalist who befriended him. You have Blood Diamond (2004) about the trade in diamonds from Africa where most of the screen time is on DiCaprio's character. I mean, the list goes on and on, Cool Runnings, The Air Up There, Dances with Wolves, The Blind Side, Gran Torino, Great Wall, Tears of the Sun, on and on and on.

Sometimes, hollywood even changes a real life story to make the main character a white lead, as happened with the movie 21 (the true story was about several asian students).

The movie critic I felt most responsible for highlighting this was the late great Roger Ebert. I still remember his review for the 1984 movie "The Killing Fields." One of the things that greatly impressed Ebert about that movie was how the second half was told mainly from the viewpoint of the Dith Prahn character, how he was taken prisoner and how he was able to escape and survive his journey to freedom.

There seems to be this stupid, ingrained, and ignorant view by hollywood studios that Americans do not want to see movies that have little to no white faces in it. Even with the huge success of movies like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, studios still would rather have white actors in every single movie (cuz, you know, that way white people can 'relate' to it).

Sometimes, though, the 'white saviour' thing works in my opinion, such as for Mississippi Burning and The Last Samurai.

[Dangerous-Boy]

I mostly liked The Last Samurai

[BirdieBelle]

Originally Posted by warhorse78

Well, then please tell me what is the point of Live Aid?

The point was to provide humanitarian aid to countries in famine, and they did that.

Originally Posted by warhorse78

Sure, multiple races were trying to help the famine, but it was a white man on MTV that organized the whole thing...

Yes, after he saw BBC reports about physicians in the Doctors Without Borders program who said there were not enough resources to help the people who lived there.

Originally Posted by warhorse78

... and it was probably mostly white people who were donating their money to help the cause.

Because the organizers wanted to target the broadest audience possible (yes, primarily Western), with artists who had ‘known’ names, to maximize impact. The television audience was an estimated 2 billion people, about a third of the globe’s population at that time.

Originally Posted by warhorse78

Sadly, the money would never get to where it needed to go because the non white warlords of the region hijacked the money and used it to feed and supply their armies.

That's a myth. Bob Geldof learned from George Harrison and his Concert for Bangladesh about having good accountants and getting around corruption. They established a charitable trust and reported on their activities regularly, to this day.

Originally Posted by warhorse78

And your assumption that all people of color around the globe is a little bit over exaggerated, but when you step back, why is it the non white's of the world are either migrating to white dominated countries, or welcoming the likes of China, Europe, USA or Canada with open arms when those countries promise charity and infrastructure?

That's quite an exaggeration. It's not as if those are the only two choices for people of color.

Originally Posted by warhorse78

Just going through history, no doubt, white man has caused terrible crimes throughout the world, but let's not pretend they are the only ones given the history of the conquering going on with ancient China, African barbs and radical Islam.

Yet they are the only ones chastised for being "saviors."

The tsunami in the Pacific? The hurricane in Haiti? The tsunami in Japan? They all received an international response. Yet there was not a word there about anyone being anyone else’s "saviors."

Why the discrimination?

Originally Posted by warhorse78

But, I will note, white people have also fought for the freedoms for everyone throughout the world, but when white people were being attacked and enslaved by the Moors, or fighting a massive war against Hitler, I can't recall any non white countries coming to help despite the fact that if Hitler had won, those very same countries would be in trouble. I do find it interesting, Japan took allegiance to Hitler. I guess they liked the idea of Nazi's being the ideal world leaders.

The legacy of colonialism by the West has influenced public discourse to the extent that even the best-intentioned efforts can only ever be seen as the "benevolent donor-infantilized recipient" dynamic, driven supposedly by the white guilt, a term which ironically suggests that the only people who are aid donors/Western are white, even though it's just not true.

[ironpony]

Originally Posted by fleetiebelle

A white person living among or helping out people with a different skin tone isn't "betrayal" of people who look like he does. That's such an odd take to have on this.

Well in the movies examples I gave, the other white characters look at it as a betrayal. In Dances with Wolves, after the main character, betrays his own race, he is then arrested, and charged as a "traitor". Doesn't being given the status of 'traitor', mean betrayal?

And in The Last Samurai, the villain says to the main character, "If you ride with them, you're the same as they are". Doesn't him saying this line, suggests that he and his group consider themselves, betrayed? Or in Avatar the villain says "How does it feel to betray your own race". Doesn't that mean he thinks that he main character betrayed his own race? How can anyone not see it like that, and that the theme is betrayal, when it is actually mentioned in the films?

[Ralph_Kirk]

Originally Posted by charlygal

I know you are young and live in Canada. Surely you are not this naive about racism and race relations.

None of the complaints are about drama or white people turning against their own kind.

The issue is with the perpetuation of the idea that all people of color around the globe are so deficient that it takes a white person to save them.

The Mockingbird example is not really a good example since that is more a function of Black lawyers not being able to practice law in the white dominated legal system. Yes, there were Black lawyers back then.

A better example is Great Wall with Matt Damon. All those Chinese people and it took a white outsider to come save them?

After seeing these same narratives for years, it leaks into the cultural psyche that people of color are always deficient and white people are superior. People of color can't solve their own issues. They need saving like children.

That's the problem.

Where I draw a line to call a movie a "white savior" movie is when the white lead "crosses over" and then is superior to the locals at what the locals had been doing all their lives. And also gets the best girl among them (looking at you, Avatar).

What saves "To Kill a Mockingbird" from being a "white savior" story is that Atticus Finch fails--just as a black lawyer would have failed.

So we can look at some real world examples: Viola Liuzzo and James Zwerg. They're not "white saviors" because they met the same fate as the black people they allied themselves with. This can have a powerful effect when someone from the privileged class proves that under the same conditions, they do no better because it's the conditions, not the people, that prevent success.

[Suburban_Guy]

It's not so much a 'white saviour' complex itself that makes hollywood want to cast white actors in lead roles.

It's the fact, like I mentioned, that hollywood studios think white audiences in America do not want to see any movies that don't feature white actors. That's it, simple as that. This, even though American audiences of all stripes have embraced movies like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians among others. It's the studio heads that think they know what white people want to see on the screen.

This is why when hollywood makes a movie set in a foreign country, they must stick in a white leading actor because this is what they think sells tickets in America. Never mind that these days, foreign box office means a whole lot more to a movie's overall success. Hence, Matt Damon in Great Wall. Or Keanu Reeves in 47 Ronin (though Reeves is part asian, he looks white enough that he's had a long career in hollywood as a leading man). Or Tom Cruise in Last Samurai. Etc. etc. etc.

Hollywood wanted a white lead actress for Crazy Rich Asians

But in an alternative reality, the role could have been given to a white actress. As Kevin Kwan, author of the novel upon which the movie is based and executive producer of the film adaptation, told Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross in a recent interview, one of the producers who initially approached him to option his book said the offer was contingent on rewriting the role of Asian-American economist Rachel Chu as a white girl.

[katygirl68]

Originally Posted by ironpony

When I suggest to my friends that we could watch a movie like District 9 or The Last Samurai, they say they don't want to watch those movies cause they are white savior movies. I had to look up that term as I was unfamiliar with it, but it seems to be growing pretty popular now, after looking it up. But why are white savior stories bad really?

Isn't the white savior ideal more dramatic and powerful in the sense, that since the white race has colonized so many areas of the world, that it makes it more accessible to have a white hero turning against their own people? That way you have a dramatic betrayal, instead of a total 100% of us vs. them philosophy.

I mean if in To Kill A Mockingbird for example of Atticus Finch was a black attorney, I think the story would have actually been worse, cause then no white person sees what is right then, and it's too black and white then, pardon the unintentional pun.

Does that make sense?

And the theme of stories like District 9, Avatar, Dances with Wolves, or The Last Samurai is how not everyone in the race of villains is going to see things there way. So I think it's a powerful theme, but for some reason, the movies are giving a bad rep cause of this 'white savior' stigma.

But what do you think? Do I have a point, or would movies be better off if it was one race against another, and there were no betrayals at all?

First off, I don’t see how District 9 is a “white savior” movie in any way, shape or form. Aren’t they aliens come to earth? If that’s the case, then any color of human could be in the place of “savior.” It would definitely require a human to be a savior.

And did you just call white people “the race of villains”?

[ironpony]

Originally Posted by katygirl68

First off, I don’t see how District 9 is a “white savior” movie in any way, shape or form. Aren’t they aliens come to earth? If that’s the case, then any color of human could be in the place of “savior.” It would definitely require a human to be a savior.

And did you just call white people “the race of villains”?

Well when my two friend say they didn't want to watch a white savior movie, when I mentioned watching District 9, I told them that I didn't think it counts cause it's a human savior movie, cause it's human's battling aliens.

My one friend responded by saying that it still counts cause the one human that is the good guy is white, and the other friend agreed (shrug).