The White Savior in the Green Book

The White Savior in theGreen Book: A Postmodernist Project

Madeline McBeth

In February of 2019, Green Book, directed by Peter Farrelly, took home the Academy Award for Best Picture. As the Oscar winner was announced and nearly three thousand people in the Los Angeles Dolby Theatre came to their feet, one man turned away from the stage. Renowned director Spike Lee, whose movie BlacKkKlansman was also nominated for best picture that evening, became visibly upset when Farelly’s film took the prize. Shortly thereafter, while acceptance speeches were being given, Lee was seen walking out of the theatre. In the press room later that evening, Lee expressed his disappointment in no un- certain terms: “I thought I was courtside at the Garden and the ref made a bad call” (Real). As a contemporary filmmaker famously alive to the possibilities of parody, who has become widely “known for his uncompromising, provocative approach to controversial subject matter” (Britannica), and who has spent most of his career curating a cinematic edge on a shoestring budget, Lee is undeniably invested in his art form on a level that runs much deeper than profit or popularity. Thus, his 2019 loss and subsequent response beg the question of what kind of “call” he believed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was making.

Essais vol. 10 no. 2 | Fall 2020 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth

Whether Lee’s particular brand of film-making was at all influenced by theoretical models, it is difficult to avoid -cer tain eminent poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists when discussing parody and critical approaches to art. One such thinker—Roland Barthes, who, although from an entirely different generation and vocation than Lee—is similarly invested in his own undertaking. To paraphrase, Barthes favors active engagement with literary texts, rather than passive consumption of them. He is concerned with the question of whether art can jar us out of ideological frameworks perpetuated by the repro- duction of dominant interpretations (3, 4, 5). For Barthes, one must always take a critically active position; one must always be re-reading. Close re-readings of both films mentioned above reveal how Lee’s reaction is rooted in something other than spite or the superficiality of an award: the complexities of race and systemic racism in cinema. ThoughGreen Book sparked some controversy and polariza- tion among other movie makers, film critics, and audiences alike, reception was generally positive. Upon its release, many critics praised the movie’s feel-good tone, while some protested its proliferation of the “white savior” trope, referring to a white person who is portrayed as messianic for rescuing a non-white person from their troubles, and who usually learns something about themselves in the process. In Green Book, this messianic figure takes the form of the movie’s central character, Tony Vallelonga. The film chronicles the real-life tale of Dr. Donald W. Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a world-class African American pianist estranged from his family, and Frank “Tony Lip” Val- lelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a tough Italian American bouncer Shirley hires to be his chauffeur on a concert tour of the deep south in the 1960s. The screenplay is written by none other than Nick Vallelonga, the real-life son of Tony Lip. Lee’s BlacKkKlans- man also tells a true story, that of Ron Stallworth, the first African American detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department. To make a name for himself in local law enforcement, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) sets out to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan with the help of his Jewish counterpart and

94 Fall 2020 Essais fellow detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver). They go undercover (on the phone and in person) as potential members of the Klu Klux Klan to investigate and ultimately outsmart the extremist group, as well as humiliate its grand wizard, David Duke (played by Topher Grace). What connects these two films—material centered around racism, Green Book’s contested mode, and Lee’s reaction to its commendation—also raises questions of how exactly these narratives operate. What is Green Book saying and doing, and how? What is BlacKkKlansman doing and how? Why does BlacKkKlansman feel entirely more self-aware and distinctly ironic than Green Book, even though both films contain (or claim) historical truth and anti-racist themes? My argument is this: As a film that claims to confront race in a productive way but nonetheless propagates white saviorism, Green Book further embeds society in the racism it purports to critique, therein representing Linda Hutcheon’s postmodern. Despite whatever supposedly merited its mark of recognition, this makes Green Book a far less critically significant piece thanBlacKkKlansman and a far more dangerous one for being valued above it by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Situated at the intersection of contemporary criticism and the machine of modern-day Hollywood, this thesis uses a postmodernist lens (primarily derived from Linda Hutcheon’s “The Politics of Post- modernism: Parody and History”) to explore the examples and effects of white saviorism in Green Book and understand why they are so problematic, i.e, how the appraisal of Green Book over BlacKkKlansman retrenches increasingly stale stereotypes and tropes that paper over the fault lines of race and racism in American culture, denying the national reckoning on race that films like Lee’s demand. Before delving in further, a contextualization in white saviorism and a grounding in Linda Hutcheon’s work is crucial, and more specifically, the distinction that she makes between “the postmodern” and “postmodernism.” In “The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History,” Hutecheon sets the parameters of postmodernism as “resolutely contradictory,”

95 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth

“unavoidably political,” and striving to “de-doxify our cultural representations” (1, 3). Hutcheon actually borrows this term, “de-doxify,” from Roland Barthes, upon whose seminal poststructuralist insights she built her own. The root “doxa” is a Greek word meaning a commonly accepted opinion or belief, so Barthes defines dedoxification as the process that allows us to see the often concealed ideologies which predicate held “notions of reality” (16), as Mufti Mudasir explains in “Towards a Poetics of Postmodern Drama: A Study of Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard.” Mudasir elucidates: Barthes’ main thrust as a critic was to denaturalize our assumptions of the human self and the “objective” world outside us. Hutcheon sees a similar potential in the postmodern parody as it helps us see the political and ideological nature of all human discourses. (16) Simply put, postmodernism opposes any attempt to think of representations as “natural” (from natural, but cultural/historical), instead urging recognition of their ideological underground—their contrived, cultural origins. Hutcheon’s postmodernism is “complicitous with the values it inscribed as well as subverts” (102), or rather, it partakes in and parodies the object of its critique in order to perform that critique. Hence, postmodernism is “self-conscious, self-contradictory, self-undermining . . . like saying something whilst at the same time putting inverted commas around what is being said”; its effect is to spotlight, and thereby subvert, making its mode “knowing” and therefore “ironic” (1). In a postmodernist work, the contradiction of parody and history creates significant ten- sion, which is what qualifies the work as “unavoidably political.” As Hutcheon reminds us, “Indeed it is their compromised stance which makes those politics recognizable and familiar to us. After all, their mode—that of complicitous critique—is for the most part our own” (2). On the contrary, Hutcheon defines “the postmodern” as lacking critical irony and complicitous critique, with an “unproblematized reliance on realist narrative and transparent representational conventions” (9). In other

96 Fall 2020 Essais words, Hutcheon indicates here that in “the postmodern,” although there may seem to be an appearance of critique, it will be void of critical irony and that vital political dimension. As aforementioned, Hutcheon claims that the postmodernist concern is in “de-naturaliz[ing]” the “dominant features” of our lives (1). In “The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption,” Matthew Hughey considers the white savior trope to be one such entity. Any instance in which “a white messianic character saves a lower- or working-class, usually urban or isolated, nonwhite character from a sad fate,” Hughey designates white saviorism (1). According to historian James Axtell, this motif was born out of real events that occurred when the United States was first being formed. Natives would return captured white settlers (most often missionaries, teachers, or soldiers) because they “regarded their white saviors as barbarians and their deliverance as captivity” (62). Hughey emphasizes the deeply-rooted history of the white savior trope and its expansion throughout our entire culture: “This trope is so widespread that varied intercultural and interracial relations are often guided by a logic that racializes and separates people into those who are redeemers (whites) and those who are redeemed or in need of redemption (nonwhites)” (2). The “logic” spoken of here could be interchangeable with “ideology” as it pertains to both Barthes and Hutcheon. The logic of the white savior could be restated as the ideology of the white savior. Though traditionally associated with “right-wing paternalism” (Hughey 2), the white savior trope and its ideology are not exclusive to any one political party or cultural camp. It is both a narrative trait and a narrative itself that can be found in past and present-day film, television, literature, religion, environmentalism, news, on social media, and in other facets of everyday life. Hughey cites as an example Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal journalist Nicholas Kristof, who admitted to using an identifiably American “foreign protagonist” in his writings about Central Africa in order to increase public inter- est and readership (3). Attributing the saturation of the white savior trope in contemporary society to its use, Hughey insists:

97 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth

The trope survives and sets off controversy with each new manifestation, especially in cinema. Whether arguing over the content of the films themselves, the evaluations of film critics, the meaning-making of these films by a heteroge- neous consumer public, people wrangle over the site and suitability of the white savior and stake out a position along the spectrum of evaluations: good to bad, progressive to racist, and stereotype to true story. (3-4) White saviorism, from its inception to its thorough per- meation throughout our culture, has no doubt served as one enduring “feature” of our way of life. It lives on especially due to its inclusion in cinema, but also because of how its place on the silver screen has been contested by people taking positions one way or the other. Adolph Reed positions himself not on the side of Black or white, but in terms of false representations of real Black American figures in cinema. Whether it be through white saviorism, or untrue images of Black accomplishment, he essentially holds that filmmakers take too much artistic license, resulting in a misrepresentation of history that does a disservice to both the white and Black man. He finds the 2014 movie Selma to be a demonstration of this disservice. In “The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act: Selma in Fact and Fiction,” Reed perhaps unknowingly speaks to Hutcheon’s concern with denaturalizing “dominant features” of our way of life by condemning one way that they are still being naturalized through film: “Selma and its recent predecessors (Django Unchained or The Help), like other period dramas, treat the past like a props closet, a source of images that facilitate naturalizing presentist sensibilities by dressing them up in the garb of bygone days” (33). Reed goes on to quote Jerome Christensen, who argues that mere historical depiction is not the aim of such films; instead, movies like these are meant to “move” or manipulate the audience (34). It would seem that the makers of Green Book have taken similar liberties, side-stepping actuality and picking from the props closet of Donald Shirley’s life to facilitate, intentionally or not, a

98 Fall 2020 Essais naturalizing of saviorist sensibilities by shrouding them in the trappings of racial equality and true friendship. Feedback given by Dr. Shirley’s living family members after Green Book’s release indicates that accurate historical depiction was certainly not a priority in Green Book. Instead of portraying things exactly as they happened, tweaks were made to acco- modate a white savior-infused anecdote. For example, in an interview with Shadow And Act, Dr. Shirley’s brother, Maurice Shirley, and nephew, Edwin Shirley III, condemned the movie for manipulating the relationship between Dr. Shirley and Tony Vallelonga. Edwin said it was “rather jarring” and “very hurtful” to watch the film for the first time, as Shirley’s estrangement from his family was “100% wrong” (Obie). Maurice was reportedly “furious” about the film’s “symphony of lies.” He included in his account that Dr. Shirley kept in frequent contact with his three brothers during the time in which the film is set. Maurice’s wife, Patricia Shirley, revealed in reference to Dr. Shirley and Tony’s relationship, “It was an employer-employee relationship,” adding that Dr. Shirley never referred to Tony as a “friend” (Obie). In this respect, the film’s deceit excuses it from the ironic, and renders it, at the very least, a mere performance of equality underpinned by racist ideology. Charles Ramirez Berg’s submission that one of Hollywood’s purposes is to “ra- tionalize—and sanitize—the history of the USA’s North American imperialism and transform it into an entertaining, guilt-free narrative that conformed to core American beliefs (liberty, democracy, freedom, equality) and values (truth, honesty, fair play)” (Berg 3), is a fitting ascription forGreen Book’s function. The seductive incorporation of the white savior trope in Green Book plays a pivotal role in its charming, entertaining, feel-good narrative. Having spelled out the principal terms of this essay, in- cluding Hutcheon’s theoretical tenets and the details of white saviorism, we are now prepared to analyze Green Book and examples from that film of the white savior trope in action. In one of the film’s earlier scenes, Dr. Shirley (Don) and Tony are driving through the countryside, and Tony is devouring a

99 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth bucket of fried chicken. Don admits to never having eaten fried chicken, and Tony replies, “Who are you bullshitting? Your people love the fried chicken” (00:51:34-00:51:37). Don lets Tony know that he is not required to share the tastes of other members of his race. Tony then forces a chicken wing into Don’s hand, and when Don asks for cutlery or a plate, Tony tells him “Eat it with your hands. It’s how you’re supposed to!” (00:52:33- 00:52:35). Don soon comes around and finishes a few pieces of chicken, laughing along with Tony as the two throw chicken bones out the window. In this scene, not only are we introduced to the white savior in a new way (where the white savior is “saving” the Black man by teaching him something he should know), but we gain a sense of Tony’s superiority that is threaded through the story. The underlying message is not so much that Tony is better than Don, but that he knows better than Don. He even knows better about “how to be Black” and must clue Don in to his Black experience. The trend continues during a scene where Don has left his hotel room one night to get a drink from a local bar (something Tony asked him not to do). Don gets drunk, and being in the deep south, nearly gets beaten up by three racist men at the bar. Tony is notified of this and arrives in the nick of time to save Don from assault, by threatening the three men with a hidden gun. The men eventually leave and Tony delivers Don, stumbling and nearly unconscious, back to his hotel room (00:57:10- 01:00:10). Later, when Don is caught naked in the shower with another man at a local recreation center by a rec center employee, Tony receives a phone call from the police officers at the scene telling him to come fetch his employer. When Tony arrives, Don is still naked, sitting on the floor with the other naked man, both handcuffed to one of the pipes in the corner of the locker room. Tony yells at the police officers for not having the decency to give Don a towel. As Tony stands in the foreground of this shot, talking the police out of arresting his Black friend, and Don crouches naked on a dirty, wet floor in the background, viewers are provided with a stunning portrait of the white savior (01:13:10-01:15:11). Also, the modern-day image of slavery

100 Fall 2020 Essais here simply cannot be missed; the naked men chained up, stripped of clothing, dignity, and at the will of their oppressors. One of the most potent examples of the white savior trope in Green Book takes place in an argument between Tony and Don. Don is upset with Tony for punching a police officer in the face, after he called Tony “half a nigger [himself]” (01:26:37- 01:26:40). Tony asks, “What, I can’t get mad at that stuff he was saying ‘cause I ain’t Black? Christ, I’m Blacker than you are” (01:31:33-01:31:38). What follows can only be described as a bizarre commentary on race, which could be mistaken for critique, but is actually imbued with the spirit of white saviorism. Tony rants about how he has to “hustle every goddamn day to put food on the table.” He continues with, “I live on the streets, you sit on a throne—so yeah, my world is way more Blacker than yours!” (01:32:06-01:32:20). Don becomes enraged and counters by saying that he lives in a castle alone, and that rich white people let him play the piano for them to feel cultured. He says that once he stops playing, he goes “back to being just another nigger to them—because that is their true culture. And I suffer that slight alone, because I’m not accepted by my own people, because I’m not like them either! So if I’m not Black enough, and if I’m not white enough, and if I’m not man enough, then tell me Tony, what am I?!” (01:32:54-01:33:12). It is important to note that in this scene, Don is not only completely dependent on Tony for protection, salvation, and redemption, but also for instruction and direction on who and how to be. Pervasive are these moments in Green Book when Tony is tasked with saving Don from physical abuse, incarceration, exis- tential crisis, his own ignorance, and even segregation at a fancy restaurant in Virginia. Consistently, the educated, sophisticated, wealthy, well-mannered Donald Shirley is reduced to a drunk- en, broken, confused, defeated damsel in distress—chained naked to a pipe, slurring in a bar, hungry in a tuxedo, crying in the rain, alone in his “castle”—and in need of saving. What better way to wrap up the film than with Don arriving at Tony’s home, a bottle of wine in hand, for Christmas dinner, once

101 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth again being saved by the generosity of his newfound friend (02:01:23)? There are countless instances of this kind in the film, though the tagline “inspired by a true friendship” evades them. Building upon the Barthesian apparatus that art should be able to jarr us out of ideological frameworks, and Hutcheon’s concept that a postmodernist work is simultaneously historical and parodic, one can reasonably conclude that Reed’s statement, “History is beside the point for this potted narrative, as is art incidentally” (33), inadvertently applies to Green Book. Its own “potted narrative”—potted meaning packed into an easily-as- similable form—bypasses historical accuracy for something more palatable, less provocative; more commodified, less complex. This is what makesGreen Book’s use of the white savior mechanism so dangerous, and its narrative so seductive. It pretends to portray history as it was, but instead, reverts to a subtle distortion reminiscent of what Daniel Bernardi calls The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. In his book, Bernardi coins the “persistence of whiteness,” or the white racial hegemony that has been formed and constantly reformed through the film industry. Bernardi shows how “Hollywood functions as a sort of prism, refracting the colors we see on cinematic screens by separating them from whiteness (xv). Green Book’s misrepresentation refracts colors to flatter whiteness, resulting in a flagrant injustice for Don Shirley, his family, Black people in general, and all others working to dismantle racism in contemporary society or at least call attention to its pervasion. What is even more sinister about this narrative is how it inverts the widely recognizable version of the white savior trope, helping it go unnoticed. Instead of “a white, messianic character” saving “a lower- or working-class, usually urban or isolated, nonwhite character from a sad fate,” as Hughey suggests, an intelligent, talented, self-sufficient Black man is saved time and again by a gruff, working class urban character. To belabor the point, the first time Tony and Don meet in the film, Don is seated on a literal throne atop a platform in his home. Quite literally, Tony is “lower” than Don at the beginning of the film.

102 Fall 2020 Essais

In addition, Green Book is full of “transparent representational conventions” (9) such as the cantankerous Italian mobster and his captious opposite with their consistent quarrelling and charming back-and-forth. From the outset, the stage seems set for a feature of inexplicable kinship. However, as the plot develops, the story that actually gets told is of a sturdy, dependable white man helping a lost, lonely Black man find his way. Because of this, the film is incapable of challenging the ideology or “logic” of the white savior. It is incapable of that postmodernist confrontation “where documentary historical actuality meets formalist self-reflexivity and parody. At this conjecture, a study of representation becomes, not a study of mimetic mirroring or subjective projecting, but an exploration of the way in which narratives . . . structure how we see ourselves and how we construct our notions of self” (Hutcheon 7). Green Book may depict real historical figures, but it fictionalizes their history in a way that is neither self-reflexive (containing a reflection or image of itself) nor parodic.Green Book therefore finds its place seated squarely in the unproblematized, the unhelpful, and the deceiving postmodern. Spike Lee, on the other hand, fictionalizes racial history in America with BlacKkKlansman by using irony to elicit a closer look at and questioning of racial discourses. He is notorious for walking that line of “historical actuality” and “self-reflexivity” through distinctly parodic and politically-charged films meant to explore and indict our way of life. For example, his approach to the film Bamboozled is clearly defined in its opening sequence with a dictionary definition of the word “satire” (Lee 6). The mode of operation for BlacKkKlansman, though not explicitly stated in its opening credits, is no different. The film’s “complicitous critique” is contained in its unarguably camp-y tone, “camp” being a term that prominent American intellectual Susan Sontag defined as a “sensibility” which revels in “artifice and exaggeration,” “irony over tragedy,” “theatricality,” and “stylization” (1, 2, 8). As Sontag defines it, “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman’” (Sontag 3). The term, then, resembles Hutcheon’s extraordinarily similar understanding and

103 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth articulation of parody in postmodernism: “like saying something whilst at the same time putting inverted commas around what is being said” (1). The movie BlacKkKlansman places an emphasis on stereotypical “Black-ness” in the 1970’s; Black characters sport unusually large afros and walk with groovy struts, raising a fist whenever possible. The score is heavily influenced by gospel and soul music and much of the dialogue involves revolutionary talk. There is also a glaring focus on race in the plot; the main character is Black, but goes undercover (on the phone) as a white man. His fellow detective is Jewish, which is the linchpin of several scenes. The language is shockingly racist, and the comedy also mainly concerns race, making it feel disturbingly satirical. Along with these elements, specific sequences from BlacKkKlansman contribute to its irony. Numerous times throughout the film, Ron goes “undercover” as a white man to talk to members of the KKK over the phone. Those on the other end of the calls never suspect his race. Ron enters into frequent correspondence with David Duke, the leader of the Klan, who is also unable to discern his race. In the end, Ron reveals to Duke who he had been talking to, connect- ing with, laughing with, and confiding in all along, alluding to the arbitrariness of race. Another ironic, “paradoxical mixing” (Hutcheon 6) in the film takes place in its final minutes, when Ron and Patrice (a supporting female character played by Laura Harrier) hear a knock at the door of his apartment. Knowing that the Klan has Ron’s name and address, they both arm themselves with handguns before opening the door. The subsequent shot is one that has now become an iconic trademark of Spike Lee cinema—the double-dolly shot. The double-dolly shot is a technique in which the camera moves while on a dolly (a wheeled cart or track used to create smooth camera movements) and the performers follow on a dolly. The result inBlacKkKlansman is a visually surreal moment where the characters, holding their stance with guns drawn, are seen drifting through a hallway as if they are floating just above the ground (02:13:13-02:13:35). This shot makes it look like the intentional, sustained striking

104 Fall 2020 Essais of a pose, or a caricature of sorts. The shot mirrors images from vintage movie posters of the blaxploitation genre—an ethnic variant of the exploitation film that emerged in the 1970s, which usually included “strong black protagonists with anti-authoritarian attitudes, predominantly black urban settings . . . rhythm-and-blues soundtracks (often with extended montage sequences set to music), culturally specific dress codes and language use, high levels of violence, and a liberated attitude towards sex” (Dartmouth). Considering the description already given of BlacKkKlansman’s various components, the film obviously reflects this genre, which is actually discussed in one of the movie’s early scenes. This would also qualifyBlacKkKlansman ’s parody as the same type which “revisit[s], replay[s], invent[s], and trans-contextualiz[es] previous work of art,” as Hutcheon declares in another of her works, “A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms” (qtd. in Mudasir 13). After the double-dolly shot, the scene cuts to a window, through which a large wooden cross is seen burning in the distance, surrounded by Klan members throwing torches. Finally, as per his tradition, Lee ends his film with a montage of real footage. For BlacKkKlansman, that footage comes from the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and includes a video clip of the car that struck and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer, accompanied by voiceover testimonials from dis- believing people at the scene. Clips of President Donald Trump’s press conference following the tragedy are also interspersed, as well as the real David Duke endorsing President Trump (02:06:22-02:08:55). Combined, the effect is visceral and deeply upsetting. BlacKkKlansman leaves viewers with the desire and the demand to figure out “what needs undoing” (Hutcheon 22). Rather than Lee interjecting with his perspective on how we got from the final, fictional scene ofBlacKkKlansman to a raw, realistic picture of just about the same thing, his audience is left to wonder if we ever even left in the first place. In this sense, not only does BlacKkKlansman really do the work of “dedoxification,” but the film is also formally a more nuanced, complex, visually interesting piece that simultaneously

105 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth manages to “retain a critical edge towards the contemporary social and political reality” (Mudasir 11). A.O. Scott, the chief film critic atThe New York Times, confirmed Lee’s bravura in his review of BlacKkKlansman: “[It] is a furious, funny, blunt and brilliant confrontation with the truth. It’s an alarm clock ringing in the midst of a historical nightmare” (Scott). He also specifically commends Spike Lee’s innovation with plot devices, dialogue, use of famous images from the Civil War era, use of technology, asymmetry, and parallel editing, otherwise known as crosscutting: In a sly and stunning tour de force of film-geek dialectics, Mr. Lee uses one of Griffith’s signature innovations—parallel editing—to unravel the deep ugliness of Griffith’s hymn to the heroes of white supremacy. As the modern Colorado Klansmen hoot and holler . . . reveling in the exploits of their predecessors, a group of Black students and activists gather in another part of town to hear the testimony of an old man (Harry Belafonte) who witnessed the lynching of his best friend in Texas around the time “The Birth of a Nation” was playing in theaters. The juxtaposition is chilling and revelatory. The righteous rhetoric of racism is conveyed with the scale and glamour of motion-picture technology, while its grisly truth is communicated by means of still photographs and simple words. (Scott) This technique and its narrative effect are just one of the reasons Lee’s critical masterpiece has also garnered technical and stylistic acclaim. Amongst others are its clever camera work, its ironic allusions to the past with implications in the present, Lee’s ingenious writing and direction, and his keen cinematic instincts. Not to mention, the movie’s rather self-reflexive question, “Why don’t you wake up?,” which is posed to a character in the film who does not believe Americans would elect someone like David Duke to the office of the president. This type of careful craft makes it all the more alarming that a film likeGreen Book—which might as well have been produced in a factory for Thanksgiving Day sell-outs following the same

106 Fall 2020 Essais hackneyed formula of white savior cinema—took home the industry’s highest honor in 2019. Simply judging by my own dissection of each film, it is clear that BlacKkKlansman, a rich, versatile showcase of artistry and clearly politicized work, more quickly lends itself to unpacking, whereas Green Book’s pleasantries could be mistaken as the limit of its function. In regards to Green Book’s plot, a Google search of its synopsis elicits the following results: “Despite their differences, the two men soon develop an unexpected bond while confronting racism and danger in an era of segregation” (“Green Book Synopsis . . .”). One might assume from its self-proclaimed “confrontation” of race, that a film like Green Book is capable of the same thing as BlacKkKlansman. However, what strikes me about the description of the film is its assertion to address a political issue. It supplies its audience with a critique or conclusion rather than leading them to it, emptying the work of actual critique. Hutcheon calls this “pure commodified complicity” because it is not problematic, i.e, it lacks the need to define the postmodern paradox by offering direct access to it (9). The makers ofGreen Book, in their con- struction and description of it, provide their audience with exactly what they are meant to derive from the film, leaving nothing open for interpretation or needing to be unpacked, therefore engaging in pure commodified complicity. Follow- ing Hutcheon and Barthes, if the synopsis above represents a “dominant interpretation” of Green Book, and if the postmodern “stop[s] at an analysis of [race]” and fails to “enter into complicity” (Hutcheon 5), then the film can only reproduce its ideology. Even so, the crux of my analysis lies not in how Green Book or BlacKkKlansman operate or measure in comparison to one another, nor in the creative invention of their respective directors, Peter Farrelly and Spike Lee. It is not merely a matter of BlacKkKlansman’s ironic mix of history and parody, Green Book’s postmodern white saviorism, or even its attempt to ratify it. Rather, these movies and the results of the 2019 Academy Awards are indicators of what contemporary society values. What these films reveal and typify, beyond Hutcheon’s “postmodernism”

107 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth and “postmodern,” is that although a postmodernist work like BlacKkKlansman might prove more socially alert and affective, a postmodern competitor like Green Book, working to more deeply embed society in the racism it purports to critique, will likely still win out in the end (be it through award season or ideological standing). This estimation is substantiated by the fact that white savior films have won or been nominated for significant awards almost every year for the past several decades—a pattern which deserves increased and undivided attention and analysis (some examples of this pattern being the critically acclaimed Glory [1989], Finding Forrester [2000], The Last Samu- rai [2003], Freedom Writers [2007], Gran Torino [2008], The Blind Side [2009], and The Help [2011]). Some may still cling to the comfortable naiveté that white savior films likeGreen Book are nothing more than harmless entertainment, its Best Picture Academy Award win being a mere celebration of two great men and their touching tale. Although the film does assert messages of acceptance, friendship, and equality, Green Book is undergirded by white saviorism, making its mode dangerously un-postmodernist. Instead of prompting critical awareness or questioning of ideological frameworks, it covertly reproduces them. With such narratives being so highly esteemed and rewarded, it could be said that what is ideologically at stake in these awards is the very societal progress that some think they are making by casting a vote for the covert white savior. If a film like Green Book is recognized as the best film of the year instead of a film like BlacKkKlansman, what does this say about the way the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences values the art of storytelling in this medium? Is the priority to make and reward the kind of art that can jarr us out of ideological frameworks, or is it to soften storytelling for the sake of abiding racist sensibilities? If so, then perhaps one would be right in questioning the validity and reliability of the Academy to fulfill its purpose “to recognize and uphold excellence in the motion picture arts and sciences, inspire imagination, and connect the world through the medium of motion pictures” (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Perhaps Spike

108 Fall 2020 Essais

Lee was onto something in his submission that “The ref made a bad call.” Perhaps, Lee and artists like him are the responsible, savvy cinephiles to watch for. Certainly though, by “stabilizing” (Hughey 12) necessarily complex issues like racism in American cinema and culture, white savior films such asGreen Book pose an urgent threat. Certainly, the Academy’s apparent misplaced value is telling of the way much of society still reads, evaluates, and assigns value to art. Certainly, hopefully, this is enough to force an adjustment of our collective critical eyesight and finally wake up.

109 The White Savior in theGreen Book McBeth

Works Cited Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “The History and Structure of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.” Oscars.org, www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/ files/90aa_academy_history.pdf. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020. Axtell, James. “The White Indians of Colonial America.”The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1975, pp. 55–88. JSTOR. Barthes, Roland. S/Z, translated by Richard Miller, Blackwell, 1990. Berg, Charles Ramírez. “Manifest Myth-Making: Texas History In The Movies.”The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2007, pp. 3-27. Bernardi, Daniel, and Chae Eun Young. The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Routledge, 2008. EBSCOhost. Dartmouth Library. “Film Genres: Blaxploitation Films.” Research Guides, researchguides.dartmouth.edu/film- genres/blaxploitation. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020. Green Book. Directed by Peter Farrelly, Universal Pictures, 11 Sep. 2018. “Green Book Synopsis.” Google Search, Google, www.google. com/search?q=what%2Bis%2Bgreen%2B- book%2Babout&oq=what% 2Bis%2Bgreen%2B- book%2Babout&aqs=- chrome..69i57j0l5.3151j0j9&sourcei d=chrome&ie=UTF-8. Hughey, Matthew W. The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption. Temple University Press, 2014. EBSCO- host. Hutcheon, Linda. “The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History.” Cultural Critique, vol. 5, 1986, pp. 179–207. EBSCOhost. Lee, Spike, dir. BlacKkKlansman. 2018; USA: Focus Features, 2020. DVD. Lee, Spike, et al. “Thinking About the Power of Images: An

110 Fall 2020 Essais

Interview with Spike Lee.” Cinéaste, vol. 26, no. 2, 2001, pp. 4–9. JSTOR. Mudasir, Mufti. Towards a Poetics of Postmodern Drama: A Study of Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. EBSCOhost. Obie, Brooke. “How ‘Green Book’ And The Hollywood Machine Swallowed Donald Shirley Whole.” Shadow and Act. 14 Dec. 2014. https://shadowandact.com/the-real- donald-shirley-green-book-hollywood-swallowed-wh ole. Accessed 10 Nov. 2020. Real, Evan. “Spike Lee on ‘Green Book’s’ Controversial Oscars Best Picture Win: ‘Ref Made a Bad Call’.” The Hollywood Reporter. 24 Feb. 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter. com/news/spike-lee-reacts-green-books-oscars-win-1190 271. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020. Reed, Adolph. “The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act: Selma in Fact and Fiction.” New Labor Forum, vol. 24, no. 2, 2015, pp. 32–41. JSTOR. Scott, A.O. “Review: Spike Lee’s ‘BlacKkKlansman’ Journeys Into White America’s Heart of Darkness.” The New York Times, 9 Aug. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/ movies/blackkklansman-review-spike-lee.html?auth=logi n-google. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020. Shadow and Act Interview: https://shadowandact.com/ the-real-donald-shirley-green-book-hollywood-swallowed- whole. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020. Sontag, Susan. Notes on “Camp”. Penguin Random House, 2018. The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Spike Lee.” Ency- clopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 19 Oct. 2020. https://www.britannica.com/biography/ Spike-Lee. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

111