Nice White Lady To The Rescue!
| March 11th, 2007MadTV parodies Music of the Heart, the story of a teacher (Meryl Streep) who bucks the system to bring love of music to the underprivileged colored kids she teachers. Or maybe they’re parodying Dangerous Minds, the story of an ex-marine teacher (Michelle Pfeiffer) who inspires her inner-city students with a great opening credits song. Oh, wait, I think that was Freedom Writers, the story of a history teacher (Hilary Swank) who inspires underprivileged inner-city students by making them read the diary of Anne Frank. (”See, underprivileged inner city students? Things could be worse!”)
All of these movies were based on true stories, and I don’t doubt that the women these movies were inspired by are terrific teachers and all that. But I somehow doubt their real lives were as simplistic and, well, soppy as these films are. Why does our culture have this hunger to see at-risk youth rescued by the pure hearts of gorgeous white women? And isn’t there something smary about, well, about an image like the one below this paragraph?
It’s like a generation of filmmakers saw Up The Down Staircase when they were kids and are now determined to remake it… and remake it… and remake it.
Anyhow, the MadTV parody (YouTube link) totally cracked me up. Via Assault On Black Folks’ Sanity.
March 11th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I discussed the “nice white lady” teacher movies a few weeks ago during a teachers’ meeting. We had gotten free passes to go see the Swank film and one of the teachers had seen it. I mentioned that a better film was “Stand and Deliver” which while an inspirational tale of inner-city youth achieving beyond expectation, managed to feature a teacher who wasn’t white or a lady. And not even pretty!!
I think Hollywood really likes the fish out of water scenario of these films and doesn’t realize how racist and classist they can be. It may ease some middle-class white guilt to watch it, but I can’t imagine most students of colour find it particularly inspiring at all.
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March 11th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Oh and the video made me laugh out loud. Thanks!
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March 11th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Thank you for sharing that hilarious video; sadly, it was pretty true to the Freedom Writers script.
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March 11th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Another day I wished the U-Tube worked.
I’m not so sure Hollywood is that benevolent. They do seem to like the fish out of water deal, but there’s more ways to get that then the pretty white lady teaches inner-city kids spiel. I don’t watch many movies, perhaps 2 or 3 a year at most, but I can’t think of any advertisements or movies that reverse the roles, like having, oh, a man of color teaching poor white students, which I’m sure has happened. I doubt such a movie would go over well for the portion of the white populace as a whole, as it suggests that they’d need someone to take care of and inspire their children because they can’t do it correctly themselves.
But then, I’m seriously lacking in television and movies, so if there is a movie like that out with a teacher of color / white students, I’d like to know the title and director so I can watch it.
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March 11th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
ArrogantWorm
Actually such a film exists. It’s called “To Sir with Love” and was made in 1967. It was very popular in the UK, where it was filmed.
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March 11th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I should’ve added,
Not to say that all inner city youth are of color in real life, but to generalize, the majority of kids in the movies depicting the teacher/student scheme that I’ve seen are. Sorry if that was confusing.
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March 11th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
That’s nice to hear, thanks for the title muchly. I’ve no idea of the general idea of racial situations(? don’t think that’s the word I’m looking for, but it’s close ‘nough for government work) in the Uk, though I hear it’s more tolerant and open minded than the Usa. Wonder if the film was popular in the Usa.
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March 11th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
“To Sir, With Love” was also popular in the US. The song was good too:
Those schoolgirl days, of telling tales and biting nails are gone,
But in my mind,
I know they will still live on and on,
But how do you thank someone, who has taken you from crayons to perfume?
It isn’t easy, but I’ll try,
And so on. :)
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March 11th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Haven’t heard the song, either. It still makes me wonder, though. Since it was popular in the Us, why aren’t there more of the same? Hollywood usually jumps at ideas and overplays them when it finds something popular. An example of one doesn’t do much to disprove something.
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March 11th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
The clip was pulled from YouTube. :(
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March 11th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Nice White Lady To The Rescue! - Mar 11, 2007 - Ampersand Fear - Mar 9, 2007 - Maia Don’t Say Vagina!! Apparently It’s a Dirty Word - Mar 8, 2007 - Rachel S. Why Peanuts kicks Garfield
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March 12th, 2007 at 12:20 am
That bites, I was gonna borrow my sister’s so I could watch it. I think she might have UTube. Too late now, at any rate. Downloaded the song, not bad, but it’s a bit to melancholic for me.
I’d like to take a stab at this question.
Because if you’re pure in heart, you will succeed! as Disney likes to remind us, and the idea that white women are shining beacons of morality and maternal virtue is dictated by popular opinion. Religion and xenophobic tendencies play into this as well, I imagine, and the idea of who the pure hearts belong to rests largely, but not completely, on what nation/country/specific place one inhabits and the beliefs one is indoctrinated in. Contextual.
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March 12th, 2007 at 7:05 am
“The King and I” came even before “Up the down Staircase”. And I’ll bet that theme goes back even further.
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March 12th, 2007 at 7:08 am
t find an image of the cover of The Marva Collins Story.) The Dead Poets Society, starring Robin Williams [IMG] The George McKenna Story starring Denzel Washington [IMG] Conrack starring Jon Voight [IMG] This post is a response to Ampersand’s post of today in which, ignoring all of the above, he philosophizes: Why does our culture have this hunger to see at-risk youth rescued by the pure hearts of gorgeous white women? I think decent people, people of good faith, really do have a hunger to see at-risk
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March 12th, 2007 at 7:32 am
I don’t know. I recently rented “Akeelah and the Bee” which was, in brief, about a poor black girl rescued by a nice black man (Lawrence Fishburne) who goes on to compete in the National Spelling Bee. (NOT based on a true story). The only white person in the movie is Booger from Revenge of the Nerds, who has a small role of introducing black girl to black man.
In my mind it was actually worse. As I watched it, I was thinking, “This is a movie with an all-minority cast, but the target audience is suburban white people.” It was co-produced and heavily advertised by Starbucks, where I ocassionally consume, and I felt that the target audience was the stereotype of the latte-drinking liberal, of which I guess I am the demographic (i.e., Liberal in the Phil Ochs ‘Love Me, I’m a Liberal’ sense).
The moral I got was, “Minorities can succeed by joining together in harmony and working with each other. You white people watching don’t have to do anything. In fact, if you did anything, it would ruin the purity of the self-help moment. When minorities fail, it is because either they don’t work hard enough, or they are being sabotaged by their own culture.”
At least “Nice White Lady to the Rescue” has the subtext of “Be like the nice white lady.” Akeelah and the Bee
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March 12th, 2007 at 8:44 am
That’s a message that’s irritating and harmful. The first part, I mean. The second, ‘ be like the nice white lady’ I also find objectionable. It sets a goal by linking positive actions to visual intrinsic cues that cannot be changed, and enforces it by having virtually no other representation (Save, apparently, one) in popular media. It breeds self hate starting when a kid sits in front o’ the Tv to watch cartoons, and it doesn’t seem to stop.
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March 12th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Honestly, though, I’m not sure which message is worse, or if that can be decided. At the moment I’m leaning toward’ be like the nice white lady’ is worse.
Because at least a movie with an all minority cast has role models with visual static cues that most poc kids can relate to.
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March 12th, 2007 at 9:22 am
The unfortunate truth, of course, is that this probably reflects reality to some degree: not that a beautiful white woman is more capable than anyone else, but that she may be more able to motivate the “powers that be” and/or draw public attention and funds to her cause celebre more easily than if she was someone else.
there are, BTW, plenty of movies where a rich/educated white person “lifts up” the fortunes. thoughts, etc of lower class white people. I cannot think of many where a POC does so for whites.
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March 12th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Not arguing with that, but that isn’t the concept in the movies I saw, though no doubt it might be evidenced in some. The few I’ve seen use the teacher to motivate the students, not the teacher using herself to get a higher authority’s attention to fund her cause celebre. The teacher is considered a part of the higher authority in the movies, and part of the movies ‘charm’ is getting the kids to respect such an authority.
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March 12th, 2007 at 10:39 am
…Also, that she might be able to motivate the ‘powers that be’ would be based on her being white and upper class/educated doesn’t seem to be mentioned specifically in such movies. If anyone’s got quotes from movies with the white-tends-to-be-a-woman / kids-of-color/poor-kids theme that say stuff like that, I’m interested. (they don’t have to be exact quotes, but they should prolly mention the difference in a non-vague way)
If those instances are the only ones people are taking note of, then of course they’ll be more helpful to such women when they ask for the help in regards to kids because The Authority or The Populace would be under the impression that those are the only types of people who accomplish the objective cuz that’s all they see.
…You know, I get this titchy feeling that I could simplify that, but I can’t figure out how.
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March 12th, 2007 at 11:28 am
In Take The Lean Antonio Banderas inspires black inner city youth to excel teaching them ballroom dance. This is based on the life story of Pierre Dulaine. (I like ballroom dance, so I enjoyed this movie.)
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March 12th, 2007 at 11:30 am
That would be “Take the Lead”. (Someday, I will learn to proof read.)
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March 12th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
“…When minorities fail, it is because either they don’t work hard enough, or they are being sabotaged by their own culture.”
Somehow this message seems subtly condescending too. I’ve tried lots of things in my life. Some suceeded, some failed. Some of the failures were due to my not working hard enough. Culture undoubtedly contributed to some. But mostly it was simply because I’ve tried to do a number of things that were at the limits of my abilities and really never expected a success rate of over 10% or so on the marginal attempts. Why should minorities be sent the message that if they try something and fail then either they are lazy or come from a toxic culture? Why not just say “well, that didn’t work” and go on to the next thing?
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March 12th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Because people as a whole like to assign tangible causes to things so the blame may rest somewhere. That’s my only thought on that so far, and it’s a lonely one.
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March 12th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Here is a link to a roundup of teacher movies. There are other examples too, some involving white male teachers: Half Nelson, Teachers, The Ron Clark Story, The Principal, etc. In their essential structure, teacher movies are sports movies, where an inspirational leader takes over a bunch of lovable and not-so-lovable losers, endures setbacks (some comic, some tragic), convinces them to bond together, then leads them to achieve some previously unconquerable goal. Think of Coach Carter, Hoosiers, or the Mighty Ducks.
Notably, there is a sub-genre of sports movies where the protagonist(s) loses at the end, like Rocky or the Bad News Bears. The only analogous teacher movie that I can think of offhand is Dead Poets Society.
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March 12th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Yeah, insofar as my original post said “these movies are only every made with white ladies in the lead role,” I was clearly wrong.
I don’t think my post actually said that, but I can see how folks could read it that way.
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March 12th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
one of my all-time favorite films about the bankruptcy of the liberal white savior/noble savage archetype is peter weir’s “the last wave”. it’s loaded front to back with all kinds of deep subtexts about colonialism, both material and spiritual…..you could watch it a hundred times and keep finding new things in it.
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March 13th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Via.
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March 15th, 2007 at 7:51 am
ArrogantWorm, one of the more recent movies with a black man motivating mostly white students is Major Payne. Damon Wayans plays the lead role and like many Wayan Bros movies they play to some racist stereotypes. The Payne character comes off as ridiculous and stupid. It also plays to stereotypes of Marines only thinking about killing all the time. He takes over the ROTC program at some fancy prep school. His love interest is the pretty black teacher/counselor that all the kids love though.
Since we happen to like ridiculous movies in this family, I’ll also mention School of Rock. Which is a poor white slob of a guy (Jack Black) motivating rich snooty mostly white kids at a prep school. The message isn’t for the students to excel, since they already were, instead he subverts their education to create a rock band.
I’d recommend both if you like ridiculous movies with impossible or at least highly unlikely situations. They made us laugh!
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March 15th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Radar–Second the motion on The Last Wave. Peter Weir was so awesome before he came to America and sold out.
Amp you wrote: Yeah, insofar as my original post said “these movies are only every made with white ladies in the lead role,” I was clearly wrong.
I don’t think my post actually said that, but I can see how folks could read it that way.
I think your message was clear; it’s only a *problem* when white “ladies” are in the lead role.
Damn those white women anyway. Why can’t they just stay in their place and make porn, like the asshats I sold my blog to?
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March 15th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
I didn’t say that, I didn’t imply that, and I certainly don’t believe that. Other than that, you’re right on target.
You’ve got your facts wrong about the sale of amptoons, too, but it’s off-topic for this thread. If you weren’t a troll you would’ve found the right thread to post on.
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March 16th, 2007 at 6:49 am
There are white male knights and men who “rescue” women. A certain amount of privilege is needed for the perception of “rescuing” someone.
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March 16th, 2007 at 7:52 am
I think that was Freedom Writers, the story of a history teacher (Hilary Swank) who inspires underprivileged inner-city students by making them read the diary of Anne Frank. (”See, underprivileged inner city students? Things could be worse!”)
Since people are still posting on this thread, I’ll add my criticism of this comment. Admittedly, I’ve never seen the movie in question so I could be completely wrong about the character’s (muchless the actual real life teacher’s) motives. But my interpretation of the message behind assigning the diary of Anne Frank to underprivileged, minority, children to read would be: “Kids, this is where prejudice leads. Fight it unless you don’t mind dying along with all your relatives in a concentration camp.” Which seems to me to be a good message.
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March 20th, 2007 at 1:09 am
NICE WHITE LADY TO THE RESCUE! MadTV did a spoof of those “inspirational” movies (based on true stories!) about white female teachers who go into inner city schools, challenge the way the old guard dismisses their students, and inspire poor, colored folk to learn. I hate these movies so much.
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March 22nd, 2007 at 8:07 am
[...] Recent discussions here and at several other blogs have centered on how to be anti-racist and more on race and racism, understanding when things go wrong, whether we feel comfortable or discomfort discussing these subjects in mixed company, or even if we can ever really understand each other. Each of these discussions are so very different, and yet so much sameness. What I like best is that each of these posts is written by a white blogger. Each of these people understand that people of color can’t be the only anti-racists, that this is something we do together, and that white people must be involved in teaching and learning.In Bewildered Part II, I mentioned the pain of finding out that someone I thought of as a friend was only being my friend as a favor. In the comments of the first Bewildered post BlackAmazon can’t get past the gall of white women saying they expect special commendations for loving their black husbands and mixed race children. There should be no special recognition for doing what should be normal, loving your partner and children no matter what their race! Expectations of unconditional love, gratitude, and undying loyalty no questions asked, are how you might feel about a dog you have rescued from the pound; not a real friend or ally.Nezua says it too:I did everything I could to be respectful, to speak the Queen’s English in the most careful and splendiferous of ways, to tame my wild, Brown™ friends who had no patience for the bullshit and saw right through it, to keep the room civil. And you know what? It didn’t matter. The WHITEPROGRESSIVES came to my joint, spit their shit and split. And I was actually hurt. Can you imagine? Naive Nezua. But he learns quickly.Like a battered wife who swears to la chota that she had it coming, me and dear Sylvia were still fretting as if we did something wrong. Greenwald’s message included the amazing implication that social progress on these issues was not moving forward because of us OVERSENSITIVES. Even more egregious and bold is the implication that WHITE people are doing The Brown™ a favor by comin’ round and entering discussions. And that if we don’t toe the line, where will we be then? When they decide they just don’t feel like engaging it?And Sylvia too:After writing that comment, I felt really badly about pointing out that dynamic. Not even how I did it, just that I did it at all. And I thought about the impact it would have on discussion. I felt really upset because I recognized the chance that Greenwald would not engage Nez’s points, and he would not care to find out if I would stick around for the discussion so he’d feel…well…”safe.”And Greenwald hasn’t returned yet. In the meantime, I questioned what I had done, exactly. Had I called this man a racist? And I did start feeling upset, so I tried to enter again and apologize for the haste. I tried to contribute carefully worded examples in the discussion, I apologized like crazy, and I felt like shit for quite a while. It was hard to try again. I felt butthurt.POC must be appropriately grateful, respectful, and admiring. White allies can say whatever they want and shouldn’t be called on it if it’s ignorant and racist. They mean well.Ok, not you. I don’t mean MY white friends. You’re the good ones! LOL So I am giving you your anti-racist assignment for this week. You should read all the posts that I linked to and the comments, but if you are pressed for time, at least make time for those last two by Nezua: The Skin of My Soul (Intermission) and Sylvia: White Privilege and the (Knee-Jerk) Woman of Color. I wanted to reach right through the monitor and hug the stuffin’ outta both of them!And if you finish your assignment I have a reward for you. You must view some “reverse racism” and be properly outraged! Or if I have trained you correctly you will laugh your butt off. Either way, here are a couple of great movie clips from YouTube. First at AradhanaD’s place: Just Because… then at Amp’s place: Nice White Lady to the Rescue. [...]
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