Maybe they’d have the patience to explain to you why having made some money does not immunize them against racism. Maybe you’d even listen.
Admit it now or admit it later down the thread…I overspoke and made an unwise generalization.
My disdain for Lee is great and the idea that millionaire Lee is being criticized “Because he’s an uppity Negro” and not just a jackass who has played the race card throughout his career is noxious.
I stand by my statement about the Academy Awards.
I think that while having enough money trumps race in my opinion compared to a very poor person, everyone has their own problems, and someone else’s problems being worse than yours does not mean that yours aren’t valid.
Better than anything Lee has directed.
I knew Spike Lee would be furious as soon as I saw Green Book win best picture. He wasn’t gracious about it, but then, Lee is rarely gracious about anything. He does have a huge ego, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong to be upset.
I don’t think Green Book is a white savior movie. It has a different problem: the protagonist is a white guy who learns not to be a racist because of his exposure to one black person. It bothers me that in the 21st century we still have movies where the audience is expected to feel good about a story arc like this. It’s unrealistic, and it’s designed to make white audiences feel comfortable, or even smug. A decent person should learn not to be blatantly racist long before hitting adulthood.
Another problem with Green Book is that Don Shirley is depicted as a sort of cypher. He has no friends, isn’t close to any family members, and doesn’t even socialize with the other musicians in his trio. He’s intellectual and aloof. He doesn’t fit in anywhere: being black means he doesn’t fit with white people, and being educated and intellectual means he doesn’t fit with black people. Tony Lip actually seems to teach him to be black. This ignores the fact that there have always been educated, intellectual black people who fit into black society just fine. What was the Harlem Renaissance?
Driving Miss Daisy is more of a white savior movie, in that Hoke is illiterate, and Miss Daisy proves her humanity by teaching a black man to read. On the other hand, Miss Daisy isn’t shown to be an out-and-out racist (as I remember it, she’s just a cranky old woman).
Someone upthread mentioned Sorry to Bother You, which I liked. Another movie dealing with race that came out in 2018 was Blindspotting, which I liked even more. It was also set in Oakland, and really showed the city, with its various neighborhoods and residents.
I will note that many of the ungenerous comments Spike Lee made about the movie came about because reporters were chasing him around backstage asking him what he thought about Green Book shortly after its win. They certainly got what they were hoping for.
I simply do not understand this type of criticism of this and the other movies you mentioned. If you are going to tell a story about the assassination of Medgar Evers and the events of the next 30 years, for example, what would be the way to make a black person the lead character and make the movie equal or greater in quality?
If the ADA was black would that have damped your criticism?
I felt that all of these movies, including Green Book, went to lengths to tell the story from the perspective of the blacks that were portrayed, and each of them told the story from a perspective that showed the injustice of each of the situations.
This isn’t a criticism of the Green Book it is a wish that they would make a different movie. The characters are not archetypes but are based on real people. The real Tony Lip was a working class Italian who grew up in a racist time among a group of people who looked down on outsiders. He likely exaggerated Shirley’s awkwardness because they were so different and he could not understand him. Shirley was an intellectual, frustrated artist who struggled with his sexuality. Yet despite their differences they were able to form a friendship and help each other out. Stories of very different people learning to overlook their differences and bonding over their shared humanity are very common in literature because they make us feel good. It is odd for people to criticize a movie for depicting someone get less racist.
In Driving Miss Daisy, Hoke is not saved in any meaningful sense. Daisy is the one who is saved, in that her friendship with Hoke saves her from loneliness and makes her a better person.
According to the Shirley family, the portrayal of Don Shirley and his relationship with Tony Lip are completely inaccurate. They say that Dr. Shirley was not a recluse, that he was close with his family, that he had friends, that he wasn’t estranged from the black community, and that he never became close with Tony Lip. The family was vocally upset about it. It’s true that the characters were based on real people, but to a large degree the filmmakers used their names to tell the story they wanted to tell.
I didn’t hate the movie, or even dislike it. There are things I liked about it, although I think some of the other nominees were more deserving of Best Picture. All I’m trying to say is that I understand what Spike Lee is upset about.
I see Green Book as a kind of a throwback. The story arc is something that would have been seen as enlightened in 1967, like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Green Book was released in 2018. By this time people shouldn’t be so impressed with a story about a white man overcoming his racism by being exposed to a black man.
How is this different than any other “based on a true story” movie? Real life is usually pretty boring. Some details need changed to make it an interesting story. I don’t understand why something that is very commonplace is used to imply that these types of movie are systematically excluding blacks.
What exactly is Spike Lee upset about? The movie business is a business and not an affirmative action program. Since only approximately 12% of the population is black, you want to make a movie that most of the viewing public can suspend disbelief.
This second point I also disagree with. This is not about a white person overcoming racism. The twist in this movie was that Tony Lip was an Italian and suffered much of the same racism that Shirley suffered, plus you throw in the class angle with Lip being poor and Shirley being rich.
Most other stories of this type are from the POV of racist Southern WASP who has a change of heart. I thought this movie explored the dynamic from a very different angle.
I haven’t seen Green Book and no particular intention to, you know maybe on Netflix at some point or something. I don’t see most things the way Spike Lee or the other very harsh critics of the movie do generally, but I can see the argument that it’s a somewhat worn out theme, just from the perspective of me bothering to see it, not necessarily as a reason it shouldn’t have gotten an award.
And I wonder if ‘white savior’ is a fair characterization. I agree that doesn’t really fit Driving Miss Daisy either, which I guess some of the critics seem to have in mind for that epithet. There’s no one direction of ‘saving’ in that movie and Daisy’s family are Jews in the South from the 1940’s and hardly immune from prejudice, though not on the same level as Jim Crow.
In general just because people nowadays work themselves up into a self-righteous fury about stuff related to race doesn’t mean there’s necessarily anything really to it.
Also the ‘family says that’s not how the real characters were’. That’s their side of the story. There’s no unbreakable rule of nature saying their account is more accurate. And even if it is, it’s still a fictional movie. What matters is whether the script is plausible and well played by the actors. Doesn’t seem anyone is showing it’s an implausible story, just one they don’t like for socio-political reasons. And the academy separately found Ali’s portrayal worthy of an award too.
There are reasons to doubt the family’s claims. I certainly do.
**puddleglum **said, “the characters are not archetypes but are based on real people.” My point is that this doesn’t make sense if story is so far from the truth. Yes, movies based on true stories are fictionalized, but some hew closer to the truth than others. In this case, the filmmakers chose to create a false picture of Don Shirley to tell the story they wanted to tell. You can’t use reality as a defense if the story you’re telling is made up. In other words, the characters actually were archetypes.
The idea that an Italian-American suffered much of the same racism as an African-American is absurd. In what town was Tony Lip subject to arrest if he stayed there after dark? In what hotel was he not allowed to stay? In what restaurant was he not allowed to dine at?
Finally, I find your reference to affirmative action troubling. You seem to think Spike Lee is asking for some sort of set-aside based on his race, and you say that a story must be told from a white perspective for financial reasons. As I remember, *Selma *did just fine at the box office, as did Malcolm X, Get Out, and Twelve Years a Slave.