The Blind Side was at best a slightly above average movie with the cliché scenarios of a Black kid named Michael Oher being saved by a White family. It also had the same magical negro phenomenon. Like any good Black character popular in many films, we soon find out the mystical powers of this woefully overplayed, quiet giant.
The film is set up as if this African American young man knows little if anything about football. He's big, strong, and everyone calls him Big Mike. By definition, he must be taken in a charity case. But, the writer-director knew fatuous sympathy was not enough for his audience to feel compassion for this poor black character. Yes, he's poor, uneducated, maybe dumb, big and underprivileged. However, the audience needed something more.
The magic is learning that he is actually smarter than it seems with a strong body and character beyond comprehension. The White family that eventually takes Big Mike in finds him walking in the cold with a short sleeve shirt on the side of the road alone and hungry. So, okay, this family has to be given credit for taking a stranger in. However, if it wasn't for a charismatic young son from the White family that befriended him, it is more than likely that he would not have been considered harmless by the "adults."
I must digress here because the relationship between the big, amazingly disarming Black man and the creative tongue of a preemie child playing the son of the parents who eventually take Big Mike in requires attention. Remember The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Finn and Jim seemed to be illustrated in The Blind Side.
So, you might say, what is wrong with that?
Not much if you believe that a young elementary aged boy can lead a nearly grown man through life. Yes, they are friends and eventually become family. However, I am not inclined to believe that any man would follow behind a young boy in the way it is portrayed in the film. At least in Huck Finn, they shared poverty, little or no education, common goal to escape the South, and Jim Crow. None of those pieces existed in the film but they found of way to replicate the same dynamic and commonalty regardless.
Is there something to be said about any family taking in a young man, clothing him, providing shelter, feeding him emotionally and physically, and providing opportunities that he could not easily come by without their intervention? Of course. I do not care to see another film that down plays the truth and replaces it with nonsensical crap.
Although a gentle giant, we find that Big Mike needs direction that only the White family is able to provide. His gift to the family is his kindness and sense or need for a family, past trauma requires that he protect others in his family at all cost. The isolated young man quietly sits in waiting for his adoptive White family to respond to the celestial call to come together and be a family. He teaches them to be a loving family in exchange for shelter, learning the subtle details of football, a full-time tutor, and a house you might find in the lifestyle of the rich and famous upper middle class. His strength of character brings the White family together collectively around their new mascot. On the field, Big Mike is discovered to be a monster, kind but ferocious in ways not imagineable.
I recommend you read the book,The Blind Side: Evolution of the Game, which The Blind Side was based. It avoids the mimicry of the movie. Albeit that it will take time to read a good story and learn the truth. However, if there was going to be a movie made, the producers, writers, and directors for it would have been better served to use reality to tell the human story instead of replacing it with short sighted bullshit.
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