The Blind Side: A Good Start but Still Behind

For the first quarter of the movie, I thought..."maybe this one will be on target with the place we are at today in terms of racial issues in the US". We see the white family begin to understand structural violence, or the oppressive forces of poverty and racism, and how they disrupt human agency. I felt genuine human emotion from the mother and from the boy- concern and compassion from one human being to another: the mother for the boy and the boy for his real mother and family. I even cried, which, lets admit, is not that abnormal. But then things started moving away from the real and more toward audience appeal. I only woke to this fact when the seven year old white brother was 'coaching' his new seventeen year old black brother. It was supposed to be cute, yes, but more than that its undertone was off-putting. This white family new the ways to fix the broken black boy, who was truly brilliant but needed their guidance. I am not saying that this is not possible but why does it have to be the white people doing the teaching and "learning" so much about life and love from the underprivileged black person. I was glad in the end that they asked him what he wanted. I wish they would have made more of a point to say that his intelligence was just different, maybe not what the schools or the sports wanted but just as intelligent. Intelligence is such an abstract idea and comes in all forms, just like humans. Lastly, I think that this shows that our culture is far behind the level of understanding it should be at with respect to structural violence.

On a side note, the acting was good overall. But really, I have had it with football movies. There is nothing interesting about football.