Articles
Sociology of Sport Journal, 2012, 29, 131 -150
© 2012 Human Kinetics, Inc.
White Domestic Goddess
on a Postmodern Plantation: Charity
and Commodity Racism in The Blind Side
Jeffrey Montez de Oca
University of Colorado
This article looks at the Hollywood “blockbuster” movie The Blind Side (2009)
to explore intersections of race, class, and gender in a significant neoliberal,
cultural commodity. Animating the production and, apparently, the consumption of the film is the “inspiring” story of Michael Oher, an impoverished young
African American man who was adopted by a wealthy white family and rose to
success in the National Football League in the United States. The film mobilizes
postracial and postfeminist discourses to tell a story of redemption and how
private charity can overcome social problems that the state cannot. Ultimately,
charity operates as a signifying act of whiteness that obscures the social relations of domination that not only make charity possible but also creates an urban
underclass in need of charity.
Cet article se penche sur le film hollywoodien The Blind Side (2009) pour explorer
les intersections de la race, de la classe et du genre au sein d’un important produit
culturel néolibéral. Animant la production et la consommation de ce film est
l’histoire « inspirante » de Michael Oher, un jeune afro-américain pauvre adopté
par une riche famille blanche qui obtient un grand succès dans la Ligue nationale de
football aux États-Unis. Le film mobilise les discours post raciaux et post féministes
pour raconter une histoire de rédemption ainsi que la façon dont des œuvres de
charité, contrairement à l’État, peuvent surmonter les problèmes sociaux. En fin
de compte, la charité fonctionne comme un acte signifiant la blancheur qui non
seulement cache les rapports sociaux de domination qui rendent possible la charité
mais qui crée également un sous-prolétariat urbain qui nécessite une telle charité.
This article looks at the 2009 film The Blind Side to explore intersections of
race, class, and gender in a significant neoliberal, cultural commodity. The film is
actually a single commodity sitting at the center of a cluster of commodities: the
initial book by Michael Lewis; the movie adaptation; two spin-off books plus the
movie tie-in rerelease of the book; numerous television spots for the actors and
characters in the story; and public speaking engagements for the story’s characters.
Animating the production and, apparently, the consumption of this cluster of commodities is the “inspiring” story of Michael Oher, an impoverished young African
Montez de Oca is with the Sociology Department, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO.
131
132 Montez de Oca
American man who was adopted by a wealthy white, evangelical family and rose
to success in the National Football League (NFL). In telling a story about class
transcendence and athletic success, the film and the other commodities mobilize
postracial and postfeminist discourses that exemplify broader patterns of neoliberal
capitalism.
While informed by and drawing upon the other commodities of the cluster,
this article engages in a close textual analysis of Michael Oher’s story told in the
film. I focus primarily on the film because it is the most widely consumed and thus
most familiar of the commodity cluster, but it also condenses the book’s central
concern—Michael Oher and Leigh Anne Tuohy’s relationship. In this article, I first
locate the film within neoliberal capitalism before engaging in textual analysis of
the film itself. The first part outlines and locates the film as a commodity within
the current configuration of capital. In addressing the narrativity of the commodity, I take an intersectional perspective on the film and situate it within broader
neoliberal discourse on race and gender, namely postracism and postfeminism.
The second part draws on literary theory to interrogate The Blind Side’s use of
postracial and postfeminist discourse. I argue that the film emplots Michael Oher’s
story within a romantic, white savior narrative that takes place on a postmodern
plantation. The empirical support for this section comes primarily from a cultural
studies methodology of closely “reading” the film to disentangle narrative themes
pertaining to the construction of race, class, and gender in the film-text (see Allen,
1992; Clayton & Harris, 2004; Giardina, 2003; Radway, 1991; Shohat & Stam,
1994). I supplemented my analysis of the film by applying this methodology to
readings of the different books and television spots that make up the larger cluster
of commodities as well as coding themes within user reviews on Amazon.com and
RottenTomatoes.com of the film and books.
The sociological literature on sport, media, and race looks at how sedimented
notions of race and gender operate in sport media. The literature finds that sport
media repeatedly contrasts black deviance to white civility (embodied in the norms,
practices, and authority relations of organized sport) to produce emotionally charged
narratives that reify white supremacy (see Andrews, 1996; Carrington, 2010; Cole,
1996; Cole & King, 2003; C. R. King & Springwood, 2001; Leonard & King, 2011;
Newman, 2007a, 2007b; Silk & Andrews, 2008). An intersectional analysis of The
Blind Side is therefore valuable because it highlights how sedimented notions of
white supremacy operate in sport commodities while superficially appearing to
promote antiracism and offer solutions to persistent social problems. The interdisciplinary nature of this project further highlights how political economy works at
the level of culture.
The Blind Side and Neoliberal Capitalism
This section outlines how The Blind Side fits into the economic, political, and
cultural conditions of neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberalism refers to the configuration of capital that emerged in the 1970s in reaction to the rigid, highly centralized economic policies and practices of Postwar Fordism (Antonio & Bonanno,
2000; Harvey, 1990). The unfolding of neoliberalism is apparent in the history of
American college football television broadcasting. The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) created broadcast regulations in the 1950s to stabilize an
Charity and Commodity Racism in The Blind Side 133
incipient television market in the United States. Rationalizing the market generated tremendous capital for leading schools/firms and allowed for cartelization of
the NCAA. Then, in 1984, a highly developed broadcast market was deregulated
to harness new communication technologies, in particular cable, and capitalize
on consumer demand. Although advocates claimed deregulations would expand
consumer freedom by increasing choice and local content, the net effect was to
drastically increase capital accumulation by leading NCAA schools/firms (Montez
de Oca, 2008). A pattern of deregulation that releases constraints upon capital
coupled with the utilization of new technologies (communication, transportation,
and production) to maximize efficiencies and flexibility within a globalized production, distribution, and consumption environment characterizes neoliberalism.
The effect has been to magnify relations of inequality endemic to capitalism as the
state and corporations divest from the public and the role of private organizations
and citizens in governance increases (Antonio & Bonanno, 2000; Best & Kellner,
1997; Castells, 1996; Harvey, 1990; T. Miller, 2007).
The Blind Side fits into broader patterns of neoliberal commodity relations,
first, in terms of production, marketing, and branding. In the era of neoliberalism,
production, distribution, and marketing strategies for major Hollywood productions
maximize the effect of commodity spectacle. During the studio era, films were
released in limited markets and were then moved to other cities in stages to minimize
risk associated with distribution and marketing costs. Following the release of Jaws
in 1975, “blockbuster films” became central to Hollywood’s political economy by
creating movie events as a strategy to generate enough profit to compensate for
losses on other projects (Grazian, 2010; Sklar, 1994). Unlike the staged release of
films before 1975, The Blind Side was released in 3,110 theaters and so far has netted
$256 million in the United States and over $309 million in total worldwide box
office receipts (“The Blind Side,” 2009). In the most important secondary market,
the video release (DVD and Blu-ray) has sold 7,636,755 units and netted over $102
million (“The Blind Side - DVD Sales,” 2011). Given its estimated budget of $29
million (“The Blind Side,” 2009), The Blind Side is an extraordinarily profitable
sports drama. In addition to its direct economic success that suggests broad popular appeal, The Blind Side was also a critical success nominated for two Academy
Awards including Best Motion Picture. Sandra Bullock’s portrayal of Leigh Anne
Tuohy garnered her an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Critics’ Choice Award,
a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a People’s Choice Award. Further, 66% of the
187 “critic reviews” on the web site Rotten Tomatoes were positive and 90% of
the 321,095 “audience reviews” were positive (“The Blind Side (2009),” 2009). A
majority of the negative reviews claimed that the film and Bullock’s portrayal of
Leigh Anne Tuohy were “inspiring”.
Given the expansion of strategic alliances and integrated marketing within the
new economy (Grant & Baden-Fuller, 2004; Whitson, 1998), The Blind Side reflects
the intensive cross-promotional marketing strategies characteristic of neoliberal
commodities. The Blind Side is a cross-promotional platform for a variety of different highly branded entities such as PepsiCo, FedEx, Borders bookstores, the
University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), and the University of Tennessee. Further, The
Blind Side is also an effective vehicle of identity branding that generates tremendous
value in the commodified identities of the story’s characters and actors. Winning
the Oscar and the other awards promoted Sandra Bullock from being a popular,
134 Montez de Oca
attractive actress famous for the films Demolition Man (1993), Speed (1994), and
Ms. Congeniality (2000) to the marketing category of “quality actress”.1 Since the
film’s release, the Tuohys have been transformed from a wealthy Memphis family
into a family of minor celebrities who have had multiple television appearances,
including an interview on Huckabee2 and starring roles on an episode of Extreme
Makeover: Home Edition. Further, The Greater Talent Network Speakers Bureau
represents Sean, Leigh Anne, Collins Tuohy, Michael Oher, Michael Lewis, and
Sue Mitchell (the tutor) as motivational speakers.3
The commodity value of The Blind Side’s story and the character’s branded
identities has further created merchandising potential for the Michael Oher-Leigh
Anne Tuohy story. In addition to the video releases and the film tie-in rerelease of
the book, the Tuohys and Michael Oher have published books of their own. Although
sales figures are difficult to obtain, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy’s In a Heartbeat:
Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving (2010) reached #53 in football books and
#44,132 in all books on Amazon.com on May 11, 2011 and Michael Oher’s I Beat
the Odds: From Homelessness to the Blind Side and Beyond (2011) reached #2 in
football books, #25 in biographies, and #2,912 in all books on Amazon.com on
May 11, 2011.4 Despite economic and critical success, there is very little that is
unique to The Blind Side. Indeed, the film is typical of commodity relations within
neoliberal capitalism. There was an explicit strategy to create commodity spectacle
and to link the film to as many other commodities as possible across a range of
markets to maximize capital accumulation from a single familiar and emotionally
powerful narrative.
Relations of production, distribution, and consumption are not the only ways
that The Blind Side connects to neoliberal capitalism; it also connects to expanding
capitalist contradictions. The ascendance of neoliberalism has created a material
reality of increasing social and economic stratification (e.g., Kochhar, Fry, &
Taylor, 2011; Ratcliffe & McKernan, 2010). The tremendous increase of social
inequality can be understood in part from attacks upon the state and public in the
form of defunding public services, and the divestment of corporations from society
as a result of deregulation and decreased taxation. Greater inequality also stems
from a real decline in workers’ wages despite their increased productivity, a result
of increased labor time and efficiencies gleaned from new technologies, coupled
with increases in top management compensation (Bauerlein & Jeffery, 2011; Castells, 1996; Gilmore, 1998/99; Gilson, 2011; Harvey, 1990; Wolff, 2011). The net
result has been an intensification of wealth at the top and an expansion of poverty,
especially in urban communities of color (Massey & Denton, 1993; Massey, 2001;
Stiglitz, 2011; Wilson, 1987).
The dramatic increase in social inequality has been accompanied by an ideological project that valorizes the same forces that expand inequalities, namely the
market and corporations, as solutions to contemporary social problems. Moreover,
the neoliberal ethos of personal responsibility denigrates systemic policies emanating from the state as inefficient in favor of individualized action emanating from corporations and civil society, namely private charity and volunteerism. John McMurria
(2008), for instance, showed how Extreme Makeover: Home Edition advocates
corporate benevolence, individual volunteerism, and personal responsibility as a
means for solving serious social issues such as the housing crisis. What television
shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition demonstrate is the proliferation of
Charity and Commodity Racism in The Blind Side 135
“corporate social responsibility” (CSR) (Carroll, 1999). CSR allows corporations
to market themselves as combating social problems that they oftentimes perpetuate,
as Samantha King (2006) found with breast cancer philanthropy. The discourse
of CSR allows leading segments of the capitalist class to engage in self-serving
moralism and to suggest solutions to social problems that they often perpetuate.
As we shall see, the discourse of charity in The Blind Side and its interlinked commodities perform a similar ideological operation.
The Sedimentation of Coloniality
in Neoliberal Commodities
The Blind Side is structured within a colonial narrative of the white savior in that
a good white person (Leigh Anne) rescues a poor black child (Oher) from poverty
and ignorance by bestowing the gift of civilization upon him (Chambers, 2009;
Goff, 2010; Pimpare, 2010). But, despite repurposing the colonial trope of the
white savior, The Blind Side is not a colonial narrative strictly speaking since it
tells a story about race and class relations in the contemporary United States. In
this sense, The Blind Side is better understood as postcolonial in that it operates
from a perspective of white supremacy outside of a colonial context, specifically
postslavery and post-Jim Crow5 United States. What connects the sedimented
colonial narrative in The Blind Side to neoliberal discourses on race and gender is
its emphasis on individual responsibility and private charity as solutions to social
problems unresolved by state programs. Thus, close analysis reveals how colonial
tropes sedimented in contemporary cultural commodities express white supremacy
in U.S. popular culture by mobilizing postracial and postfeminist discourse (Collins, 2006; Shohat & Stam, 1994).
Postracial discourse constructs the United States as having moved beyond
racial discrimination, especially since the election of Barack Obama. Therefore,
contemporary racial inequities stem from minorities’ own poor choices and any
reference to race or racism is itself considered racist (Bobo & Smith, 1995; BonillaSilva, 2006; Carrington, 2010; Reed, 2010). Lawrence Bobo and Ryan Smith (1995)
called this “laissez-faire racism” or the idea that with the end of Jim Crow racism6
and the dismantling of formal structures of racial inequality, such as segregated
workplaces, residences, and education, existing patterns of racial inequality are
the legitimate outcomes of race neutral market-relations. Thus racial inequality
results from minority’s unwillingness or inability to take advantage of the economic
opportunities afforded them by a race neutral society (e.g., McWhorter, 2003).
The logic of laissez-faire racism both demonizes poor African Americans for not
assimilating to white norms and it distances affluent whites from the violence of
white supremacy that structures U.S. society. Moreover, while whites sincerely
claim a lack of racial prejudice, they also vehemently oppose state policies that
would address and ameliorate the effects of white supremacy (Bobo & Smith, 1995).
The construction of racial ideology in The Blind Side is fairly explicit through
its white savior narrative, but as Abby Ferber (2007) reminded us many studies of
race overlook how “the new racism” intersects with gender. Without a focus on how
racism and sexism intersect, studies of race risk obscuring and even reproducing
other forms of oppression. An intersectional perspective posits that the experience
136 Montez de Oca
of inequality, whether as privilege or oppression, is central to the formation of
individual and group identities. Intersectionality theorizes how power operates at
the level of identity because without critical attention to the complex relationship
of identity and power even progressively oriented politics can reproduce oppression by marginalizing multiply oppressed peoples and recentering the logics of
domination (see Collins, 1986; Cooper, 2005–2006; Crenshaw, 1991; Grillo,
1995; Lorde, 1984; Neal, 2006). Since Michael Oher’s relationship to Leigh Anne
Tuohy in The Blind Side repurposing the white savior narrative, a focus on the
film’s construction of black masculinity and white femininity is appropriate. In
fact, Barbara’s Welke’s (1995) title “When All the Women Were White, and All
the Blacks Were Men” suggest how The Blind Side’s seemingly liberal narrative
may in fact reproduce oppression.
The Blind Side bifurcates heterosexual black masculinity in what Frank Rudy
Cooper (2005–2006) calls “bipolar;” split between a “Bad Black Man” whose
deviance needs to be captured, contained, and excluded from white society and
a “Good Black Man” who replicates white norms and thus earns assimilation.
Guided by a white savior, Michael Oher comes to embody the Good Black Man by
moving away from his poor black community and toward whiteness embodied in
the Tuohy family. Oher’s black masculinity is thus pacified in a commodity form
and sold for white consumption in a feel-good film (Collins, 2006). Assimilationists like Oher also operate in white dominated sport media as model minorities
and negative counterpoints to less docile black athletes such as basketball player
Dennis Rodman, American football players Adam “Pac Man” Jones, Michael Vick
and Terrell Owens, and boxer Mike Tyson (Carrington, 2010; Cole & King, 2003;
Reed, 2010). Deviant black masculinity that might appear threatening to the white
community is then contained to real and imaginary ghettos.
Since sports films typically marginalizes and trivializes women (Daniels, 2005;
Pearson, 2001), featuring a strong female character who drives the narrative makes
The Blind Side appear gender progressive. When we first meet Leigh Anne, we see
that she runs her own interior design firm, which includes a client whose home
will be featured on MTV Cribs. Moreover, Leigh Anne dominates the men around
her, including coach Cotton and her husband. In addition to her business acumen,
Leigh Anne performs a hetero-sexy feminine identity from her style of dress to her
Southern white womanhood—a steel magnolia that exhibits the delicate beauty
of a flower but is also as hard as steel (McMillen, 1997). Leigh Anne’s Southern
womanhood was a recurring theme in the Tuohys’ December 19, 2009 interview
with Mike Huckabee (see note 2). Her strong and sexy duality is emphasized in a
scene in which Leigh Anne storms onto the field during practice to teach Oher how
to block and coach Cotton how to coach. As she stomps away, in high heels and a
tight skirt, the boys on the team conspicuously stare at her ass.
It is clear that Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sandra Bullock’s portrayal of her are
very compelling to many people. We can see it in Bullock’s awards and the preponderance of user reviews that compliment everything from Leigh Anne’s goodness to her sexual attractiveness. Leigh Anne Tuohy appears to fulfill feminism’s
promise of autonomy and gender equity while remaining hetero-sexy. However,
her success is rooted in a domestic sphere that is financed by her extraordinarily
wealthy husband. As mother and interior designer, she upholds an image of white
womanhood typified by the white goddess archetype—blond and pure, nurturing
Charity and Commodity Racism in The Blind Side 137
and heterosexually attractive, and ultimately dependent upon men (Hoch, 1979).
Leigh Anne’s simultaneously progressive and traditional femininity makes The
Blind Side an example of what Angela McRobbie (2004) called “postfeminist:” a
conservative reaction to the feminist movement that says women have achieved
gender equity and thus moved beyond the need for either feminism or structural
change. Moreover, her gender performance is also predicated on a history of white
supremacy and class privilege that her wealthy husband makes possible (discussed
below). In this sense, her performance of white womanhood operates as a commodity fetish obscuring the multiple forms of privilege that she enjoys (cf. Dworkin
& Wachs, 2009).
The film’s white savior narrative is apparent in the movie poster that mobilizes
Oher’s poor black masculinity and Leigh Anne’s charitable white femininity to
construct relations of goodness and docility within a commodity spectacle. The
poster shows Leigh Anne and Oher walking away from the camera and toward a
football field that is drenched in bright sunlight. This romantic image puts both
figures into a silhouette that highlights their similarity and difference. They stand
parallel to one another and are dressed alike, wearing dark tops and tight white
pants (Michael wears a football uniform). The most striking aspect of the image
is Michael’s large black body towering over Leigh Anne. Her hand rests gently on
Michael’s back in a guiding gesture while his head submissively hangs down. With
her head turned toward him, the sun reflects on Leigh Anne’s blond hair creating
what Richard Dyer called the “glow of the white woman” (Dyer, 1997) as she
appears to lead Michael away from the darkness behind him and into the light.
The text hanging above their heads and against the blue-sky reads “BASED ON
THE EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORY” to suggest that the film simply reflects
reality rather than participates in constructing a racial reality.
While the image of a small blond white woman leading a large black athlete
into the light suggests a relationship of caring and sharing, it also suggest relations of power. Specifically, it connotes Leigh Anne’s power as a feminine white
savior to domesticate a very large, young black man. As postcolonial theorist Ann
McClintock argued: “Etymologically, the verb to domesticate is akin to dominate,
which derives from dominus, lord of the domum, the home. Until 1964, however,
the verb to domesticate also carried as one of its meanings the action ‘to civilize’”
(McClintock, 1995, p. 35). Sport itself has historically been used to adjust and
integrate working classes and colonized peoples into capitalist labor relations
(Carrington, 2010). When contextualized within a longer history of colonial
representation, we can see The Blind Side as a racial spectacle that commodifies
both Oher’s poor blackness and Leigh Anne’s charitable whiteness. McClintock
further argued that commodity racism packages racial theories and ideology in
pleasurable and even inspiring forms for broad popular consumption: “No preexisting form of organized racism had ever before been able to reach so large and
so differentiated a mass of the populace” (McClintock, 1995, p. 209). Through
the lens of postcolonialism and intersectionality, we can say that The Blind Side
uses the colonial trope of the white savior to construct black degeneracy on an
evolutionary path toward white civilization for a large, diverse global audience to
consume.7 Moreover, the emphasis on charity and individual effort as solutions
to social problems rather than state policies makes The Blind Side an example of
postracial and postfeminist discourse.
138 Montez de Oca
Redemption, Fantasy, and Sport Romance
The fact that The Blind Side is a story about American football is not inconsequential. Although the specific sport is less important than the fact that The Blind Side
centers on sport as a vehicle of social mobility (Montez de Oca, in press), football
is a timeworn vehicle for representing the American Dream (A. C. Miller, 2010).
In a study of football films, I call the representation of the American Dream in
football films “narratives of redemption:” stories that celebrate a protagonist’s
transformation through his commitment to and sacrifice within football (Montez de
Oca, in press). Gaining entrance to college and winning a middle class white girl
symbolizes mobility for young white characters while escaping “the ghetto” symbolizes mobility for African American characters. When white characters repudiate
prejudicial beliefs, they are cleansed of the sin of racism by a good black character
and achieve “racial redemption” (Montez de Oca, in press). Literary scholars call
this “black magic,” or the idea that the whiteness of white characters is dependent
upon the presence of a “black angel” whom they act upon to produce themselves
as virtuous, pure, and (hence) white (Chambers, 2009; Gabbard, 2004).
The Blind Side is a paradigmatic narrative of redemption. Michael Oher is
transformed in (and by) the story from being a poor, ignorant young man living
in the ghetto to a national celebrity and “role model.” The Tuohys achieve racial
redemption through their giving relationship with Oher who in return loves them for
their goodness (Chambers, 2009; Goff, 2010; Pimpare, 2010). The transformation
of Oher and the goodness of the Tuohys, particularly Leigh Anne, is what most
people in online reviews find so compelling about the story. Reviews on Amazon.
com used the word “inspiring” more than any other to describe Leigh Anne and
Oher’s transformation. The focus on transformation and inspiration emphasizes
sport’s ability to unite fantasy with reality. As David Rowe argued, sport films
are especially powerful in a multicultural, postindustrial society because, “…the
mythologies of sports are inherently protean in their capacity to unite symbolically
diverse affective and structurally segmented constituencies and to play off binary
distinctions between the fantastical and the real” (Rowe, 1998, p. 354). In other
words, sporting narratives in popular films unite diverse populations in national
fantasies that comment on and give a glossy vision to a fragmented yet shared
social reality. Sport stories are especially effective at mobilizing national fantasies
when told through a romantic narrative structure.
One might reasonably ask if The Blind Side is a romance at all since romance
generally connotes escapist supermarket fiction organized around heterosexual
couplings (see Radway, 1991), which clearly does not describe The Blind Side.
Frederic Jameson, however, points out that romances are not necessarily love stories. Instead, they are “magical narratives” about transformation that results from
a struggle between white and black magic, goodness and evil (Jameson, 1975, p.
138). Indeed, Oher’s defeat of poverty and journey from the darkness of the ghetto
into the light of professional athletics is classic romantic material stemming back
through the Middle Ages (cf. Heng, 2003). Moreover, romance is not necessarily
escapist; rather it provides a fantasy realm in which uncomfortable anxieties, particularly around race and desire, can comfortably be explored (Morrison, 1997).
Sport romances are powerful ideological vehicles that blur fantasy with reality as
they negotiate uncomfortable tensions and contradictions around race, gender, and
Charity and Commodity Racism in The Blind Side 139
nation (cf. Heng, 2003). It is through narratives of redemption that sport romances,
like The Blind Side, reify the national fantasy of social mobility and construct U.S.
society as inherently moral despite the persistent contradiction between an ideological commitment to equality and a material reality of vast inequality. Textual analysis
guided by postcolonial theory and intersectionality reveals the sedimentation of the
colonial white savior narrative within a popular cultural commodity.
Moral Hierarchy in Black and White
Because relations of goodness and evil in The Blind Side are constructed through
a colonial trope of white morality and black degeneracy, the ghetto comes to symbolize an authentic black space, an urban jungle in binary opposition to the white
suburbs, in The Blind Side and other sport media (see Andrews, Mower, & Silk,
2010; Cole, 1996; Cole & King, 2003). The moral chaos and violence that marks
the ghetto as a black space in the film are also, according to romantic conventions,
the antagonistic forces that Michael Oher and Leigh Anne must confront to achieve
redemption (Montez de Oca, in press). Although Oher is situated in the opening
scene as a valuable commodity produced by Hurt Village, the ghetto also traps him
in a tangled web of stereotypes that includes poverty, family breakdown, ignorance,
drug abuse, violence, and gangs. In sport narratives like The Blind Side, the ghetto
may produce star athletes like Michael Oher, but their redemption comes from
resisting ghetto life (Cole, 1996; Cole & King, 2003). Since Leigh Anne’s redemption is based on her ability to lead Michael out of the darkness and into the light,
she, like a Christian soldier, must enter Hurt Village to brave blaring rap music
and gangsters who sit around like wolves to battle the dark forces that threaten to
swallow Michael and rob him of his commodity value.
Since the romantic narrative pivots on the relationship between Michael Oher
and Leigh Anne Tuohy, family and nurturing are key symbols for organizing moral
hierarchies. Michael alone, wandering the streets aimlessly is a leitmotif in the film
that suggests his lack of incorporation into a family, a community, or society. In
the film’s seminal scene, Sean and Leigh Anne see Oher walking alone in the rain.
By taking Oher home, the scene suggests that the Tuohys’ intervention is necessary because Oher’s family, community, and the state have failed to provide for his
basic needs. Michael’s biological mother Denise, we learn, is a crack addict who
“loves the pipe” more than her own children. Within neoconservative discourse, she
symbolizes the moral degeneracy of the ghetto since she is incapable of “proper”
mothering and produces hordes of children dependent upon the state and (white)
tax payers (Omi & Winant, 1994).
The moral hierarchy between Denise (the drug addict) and Leigh Anne (the
Christian soldier) is magnified when they meet in Hurt Village. During the visit, we
repeatedly see Leigh Anne through thick bars that suggest the place is a prison. The
use of light and space starkly contrasts the differential morality of the two women.
Denise cautiously peers out of her dark apartment at a sun drenched and confident
Leigh Anne. Denise is fearful and her apartment is a mess suggesting an outward
expression of inner chaos that compares poorly with the smartly dressed, confident
Leigh Anne. Denise demonstrates an instrumental rather than benevolent attitude
toward children when she is surprised that Leigh Anne is not a foster parent paid
to care for Michael, and then she concludes Leigh Anne is a “fine Christian lady.”
140 Montez de Oca
As Leigh Anne attempts to discover Michael’s paternity, Denise mentions two
different last names besides “Oher” and sadly proclaims, “I can’t even remember
who the boy’s father is.” Between her crack habit, her instrumental attitude toward
children, and her “sexual irresponsibility,” Denise connotes conservative code words
for African American female immorality: “welfare queen” and “crack whore” (see
Omi & Winant, 1994).
If Denise the dysfunctional mother offers one mode of representing African
American immorality, then Alton the gangster who heads a deviant family formation
embodies another. Alton is a violent, egoistic gangster who controls Hurt Village.
Whereas Denise’s failed motherhood invokes collective revulsion, Alton embodies collective white fear of Bad Black Men that has driven crime policies since
Nixon’s law and order platform of the 1970s (Gilmore, 1998/99). Together
Denise and Alton place Hurt Village beyond the moral boundary of the white
community, and the boundary is rigorously defended. When Alton threatens to
transgress the film’s moral-racial boundary by crossing town to sexually violate
Leigh Anne and Collins, Oher (like the archangel Saint Michael battling the
serpent) righteously beats Alton and his gang. As if Alton is not sufficiently
punished, Leigh Anne also emasculates him. “[Y]ou hear me bitch,” she says
to Alton, “You threaten my son [Michael]; you threaten me. If you so much as set
foot downtown, you will be sorry. I’m in a prayer group with the DA and I’m a
member of the NRA and I’m always packing.” With a Saturday night special in
her purse, Leigh Anne claims phallic power over a Bad Black Man who would
threaten her family. The film, thus, posits Leigh Anne’s threat of extrajudicial
violence as legitimate because she reinscribes the symbolic boundary between the
dark space of the ghetto and the white space of the suburbs. Moreover, she takes
on a postfeminist persona where her über-womanhood allows her to do what most
white men would not dare.
White Charity and the Postmodern Plantation
in the New South
Leigh Anne’s performance of Southern white womanhood is predicated on class
and race privileges. The Blind Side attributes Oher’s failings to the dysfunction of
his family, inner-city schools, and child-protective services. A lack of social support
for Oher (among many other inner-city children) allows Leigh Anne to play the
white savior and the private Christian school Wingate as the institution that saves
him. However, the guise of savior obscures the fact that private Christian schools
like Wingate (nee Briarcrest) are a direct result of how white supremacy organizes
a highly stratified class structure in the U.S. When Memphis public schools desegregated, middle class white families including Leigh Anne’s fled to the suburbs and
established private schools such as Wingate/Briarcrest to exclude African Americans (Tuohy, et al., 2010). White flight and capital flight in the post-World War
II era created affluent white dominated suburbs and hyper-segregated inner-cities
that lack the funding to provide a quality education to a growing urban underclass
(Massey & Denton, 1993; Massey, 2001). Neoliberal policy that accelerates uneven
capitalist development defunds the public sector, increases wealth disparities, and
fosters intensified poverty in inner-city communities in cities such as Memphis
Charity and Commodity Racism in The Blind Side 141
(Gilmore, 1998/99; Ladson-Billing & Tate, 1995). Sport sociologist Michael Silk
demonstrated how Memphis’ implementation of a neoliberal strategy of uneven
capitalist development has produced a downtown zone of consumption-intensive
capital accumulation while defunding poor communities of color that ultimately
intensifies black-white disparities in health, wealth, and education. Silk’s research
on Memphis illustrated the way in which neoliberal capitalist development produces narrativized spaces of leisure by selectively drawing upon a city’s history to
construct an aestheticized (and anesthetic) image of a city and its more complicated
history (Silk, 2007; Silk & Andrews, 2008). Similarly, The Blind Side constructs
a simplified image of Memphis that is organized by moral polarities of charitable
whites and irresponsible blacks that obscures a more complicated political and
economic reality.
The simultaneous visibility and invisibility of privilege situates The Blind
Side’s sport narrative within the romantic tradition of plantation literature. According to Brannon Costello (2007), plantation narratives in the Old South represented
aristocratic planter families8 as having a gentle, paternalistic relationship with
their slaves. The planter family’s performance of gentility fueled the myth that
slaves worked for their masters out of love and devotion. This myth obscured the
reality that the planter family was economically dependent upon coerced, low cost
black labor. The contradiction between a reality of coercion and a fantasy of love
was resolved by the figure of the overseer who symbolized the violence of white
supremacy and distanced the planter family from the violence that ensured their
privileged lifestyle. Indeed, it was the concentration of violence in the oversee
figure that allowed the planter family to perform a gentile identity (Costello, 2007).
Poor Southern whites continued to symbolize violent white supremacy beyond the
plantation era in films like To Kill a Mocking Bird (1962) when in fact the violence
of Jim Crow racism stabilized an agrarian capitalism that privileged the planter
class over poor whites (see notes 5&6).
The collapse of the South’s agrarian economy undermined the rigid, coercion
backed system of racial apartheid known as Jim Crow racism (Bobo & Smith,
1995). The idea of a modern industrial New South characterized by racial harmony
emerged to replace the image of the Old South (Gaston, 1970). In fact, sponsoring
college bowl games in the South was part of a strategy to make the South appear
modern and lure capital investment to the region (Watterson, 2000). Although the
New South was more of an idea than reality for most of the twentieth century, the
South became part of the high technology economy that grew out of state investment in the military-industrial complex (Markusen, Hall, Campbell & Deitrick,
1991). Amy Elias (2000) described a postmodern Southern identity emerging with
neoliberalism as a set of styles and aesthetics branded to sell “the South” as a tourist
destination and site for capital investment. In the postmodern South, the problematic
racial dynamics that emerged out of slavery are both obscured and reincorporated
into the Southern brand as nostalgic symbols of a bygone era (Elias, 2000, p. ¶18;
see also C. R. King & Springwood, 2001; Newman, 2007a, 2007b). Postmodern
plantation narratives, such as The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), similarly reinscribe the plantation of the Old South symbolically in spaces such as golf courses
to distance the postmodern South from Jim Crow racism while repurposing the
paternal relations of the Old South in a nostalgic discourse on heritage (Costello,
2007; Elias, 2000).
142 Montez de Oca
The Blind Side constructs a postmodern plantation narrative where all that
remains of the plantation is the master’s house.9 The aristocratic Tuohy family (see
note 8) does not derive its wealth from land and slave labor but from the service
economy and low-wage, abstract labor. Sean Tuohy is a “fast-food baron” (Tuohy, et
al., 2010, p. 106) whose company RGT Management “owns 83 restaurants under the
Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Off the Grill brands…
spread across Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio and Missouri” (Ashby, 2007).
The collapse of the planter economy has made the overseer redundant because
now abstract, invisible market forces coerce low-wage black and brown labor into
the service economy. Moreover, with the rise of laissez-faire racism that valorizes
race-neutral language, an actual overseer would not distance aristocratic Southern
families like the Tuohy’s from white supremacy’s violence but link them to it.
In The Blind Side’s postmodern plantation narrative, the overseer is transformed
into a “redneck” who has been evicted from the plantation and is not welcome in the
Tuohy’s house. In fact, during his breakout game, Oher drives a “racist” redneck off
of the field and out of the movie in an act of righteous retribution for his performance
of deviant whiteness (Montez de Oca, in press). The Tuohys’ paternal relationship
with a homeless and destitute young black man magnifies their goodness but also
obscures the fact that their gentility is predicated on the exploitation of low-wage
predominately black and brown labor in Sean Tuohy’s fast-food franchises.10 The
Tuohy’s performance of goodness and hence whiteness is predicated on the same
social and economic relations that produce them as wealthy and Oher as in need
of charity. Which means that their performance of whiteness obscures a material
reality of white supremacy that produces the very need for charity that they use to
produce themselves as white and moral. Charity as a signifying act of whiteness
(cf. Newman, 2007a, p. 329) obscures the violence of market forces that makes
white privilege possible and simultaneously creates a minority underclass in need
of charity.
Black Athlete and Domestic White Goddess
Given the racial history of the United State, the relationship between Oher and
Leigh Anne could very easily be a site of racial-sexual anxiety. The theme of a
white hero saving the white goddess from the clutches of dark villains is at the
heart of Western mythology and is central to romance. As Paul Hoch (1979) wrote:
“The threat and fascination of the white goddess-black beast sexual interaction…
is clearly indicated by the overwhelming popularity of the various revivals of the
film King Kong. The threatened assault of the blond goddess by the black ape
seems to have become America’s archetypal nightmare” (p. 48). Sociologist Ben
Carrington (2010) extended Hoch’s line of analysis with what he terms the black
athlete: “Within the literary, cultural and media tropes of the west, the black male
becomes the predatory Other that throughout history is supposedly driven to defile
and destroy white femininity: Othello, Jack Johnson, King Kong, O.J. Simpson,
Tiger Woods” (p. 102). Given the potential racial-sexual tension of Leigh Anne
and Oher’s relationship, we should ask how the film evacuates sexual anxiety from
their relationship?
The film’s potential sexual tension is ultimately dispelled by the symbolic
emasculation of Michael Oher. Like a big, black Forrest Gump, he floats through
Charity and Commodity Racism in The Blind Side 143
the film as if carried on the wind, unable to think or do anything for himself. When
the Tuohys pick him up in the rain, Oher is represented as an eternal child, a simple
playmate of their young son SJ, who despite his size, refuses to become a man. In
case the audience has missed Michael Oher’s emasculated man-child status, Leigh
Anne labels him as “Ferdinand the Bull”.11 Bulls have historically symbolized
masculine strength, power, and fertility—El Toro Ferocio. When refracted through
an image of the urban landscape, the bull invokes Carrington’s (2010) black athlete,
a universal category of being that reduces all black athletes to pure physical ability
and natural aggression rather than determination, sustained effort, and intellect (p.
79). The phallic image of sexual threat is what the Bad Black Man Alton symbolizes. But Ferdinand, and by extension Oher, is different from the other bulls. Oher
has the large, powerful body of the black athlete that contains a potential phallic
threat and tremendous market value, but he is also emasculated and unthreatening
(Grotjahn, 1940). Like Ferdinand who only becomes ferocious when stung by a
bee, Oher only becomes ferocious when “his [white] family” is threatened. Oher
thus expresses a bipolar black heterosexual masculinity: Bad/Good Black Man,
wild/noble savage, dangerous/domesticated beast. It is the white goddess who takes
on the role of domesticating, and thus making safe, the docile black athlete for the
white family’s consumption (Hoch, 1979, p. 48).
Oher’s bipolar black masculinity is further expressed when he is compared
with King Kong. In a scene where Leigh Anne has lunch with a group of wealthy
white friends, one of them jokes about the Tuohy’s Christmas card that “humorously” included Michael. The friend says: “[Collins] looked teeny tiny next to
him. Like Jessica Lange in King Kong.” When Leigh Anne expresses how much
Michael has changed her life, the same friend states, “That’s awesome for you,
but what about Collins?... He’s a boy, a large black boy sleeping under the same
roof.” Within a bipolar construction of black masculinity, neither Leigh Anne nor
the audience needs to see Michael as threatening: “He was just this big ol’ kid who
could have been mean and scary and thuggy, but everything about him was soft
and gentle and sweet-natured. With him [Leigh Anne] felt completely safe; even if
he wasn’t saying anything, she sensed he was watching out for her” (Lewis, 2007,
p. 72). Although Leigh Anne chastises the friend for making an explicitly racist
comment, the film still operates on an axis of bipolarity that positions Michael as
a beast. Oher is safe so long as he does not, like Alton, pose a phallic threat to the
white goddess. He can be accepted as a noble savage, a brute with domestic (white)
qualities, who also retains market (and thus social) value by becoming ferocious
to protect the white goddess.
Leigh Anne’s performance of domestic white goddess is predicated upon two
primary factors: her racial-class privilege and Oher’s performance of the Good
Black Man. But this leaves open what differentiates Leigh Anne as a domestic
white goddess from other white goddesses like Jessica Lange. The construction of
white womanhood has always privileged white women within the domestic sphere,
which is Leigh Anne’s profession. In King Kong, the white goddess leaves the
home and becomes the text upon which the white hero and the beast inscribe their
competing masculinities (Hoch, 1979). Leigh Anne, however, uses her relationship
with Michael to produce herself as a postfeminist Southern white woman. In this
sense, Leigh Anne’s mission to domesticate Oher, to integrate the destitute ghetto
child into the white family, connects to the West’s civilizing mission. As Michael
144 Montez de Oca
Lewis (2007) stated: “Leigh Anne was trying to do for one boy what economists
had been trying to do, with little success, for less developed countries for the last
fifty years. Kick him out of one growth path and onto another” (p. 176). Although
the ideology of the white man’s burden has often been ineffective in guiding U.S.
foreign policy (Williams, 1962), it still provides a mythology of racial innocence
and good intentions that is commodified and consumed in popular culture (Shohat
& Stam, 1994).
The film represents Leigh Anne’s strategy to domesticate Michael along two
axes: the economic and the cultural. She bestows economic capital upon Michael
by adopting him, giving him room and board, and providing him luxuries like a
new pickup truck. Leigh Anne also bestows white cultural capital upon him by
correcting his speech, providing a private tutor to help him achieve academic eligibility, exposing him to expensive restaurants, and guiding his style of dress. Unlike
nations in the Global South that resent U.S. charity, Michael Oher reproduces the
plantation myth by loving the Tuohys for their charity, their gentility, and their
whiteness. As he himself states, “To take somebody from my neighborhood into
your house? Nobody does that. I don’t think I’d even do that” (Tuohy, et al., 2010,
p. 182). The romantic narrative of individual giving and charity provides a fantasy
space to negotiate racial antagonisms and create white innocence for diverse audiences to consume.
The Romance of Commodity Racism
The Blind Side invokes a national fantasy of transformation and redemption within
a romantic sport narrative that is set in the New South. The film is dubious of the
state’s ability to deal with social problems—Michael Oher is presented as proof
of the state’s failure and state workers are portrayed as rude, disinterested bureaucrats. Michael Oher’s ignorance and homelessness, which symbolize the state’s
failure, are also linked to the failure of the African American underclass through
the characters Denise and Alton. Neither the state nor his community prepared
Oher for success in the twenty first century. Whereas the state is depersonalizing
and ghetto life is immoral, the Tuohy family provides love, nurturing, economic
support, and cultural capital that put Oher on the road to the American Dream in
the highly commercialized space of American football. Thus in a film based on
a “true story” but told as a romance, private charity and neoliberal individualism
become solutions to contemporary social problems.
The Blind Side mobilizes both postracial and postfeminist discourse to emphasize individualism while obscuring structural forces of inequality. So although
Leigh Anne Tuohy’s performance of Southern white womanhood is predicated
on racial-class privilege that produces the underclass from which Michael Oher
comes, she is also empowered by her charitable goodness to scold her “racists”
friends for invoking color-conscious language. As a New South white woman,
she has moved beyond the Jim Crow racism that was rooted in the planter system,
but can still enjoy the heritage and privileges of the Old South (Newman, 2007a,
2007b). Specifically, the Tuohys’ performance of an aristocratic Southern family
is based on economic wealth derived from a string of heavily branded fast food
franchises that are often located in “distressed” neighborhoods and that rely on
low-wage labor. The Tuohy’s charity is celebrated in the film and discussions of
Charity and Commodity Racism in The Blind Side 145
the film, but this signifying act of whiteness also obscures the social relations of
domination that funds their will to give in a society structured by racial hierarchy.
In this sense, their whiteness operates as a commodity fetish that obscures the
relations of privilege and domination it is predicated on.
Leigh Anne’s domestic goodness and her mission to civilize a destitute young
black man who cannot care for himself is the fetish object of The Blind Side’s
romantic narrative. We can see and identify with the goodness of Leigh Anne’s
charity without reflecting upon the social and economic conditions that produce
either her wealth or Michael’s poverty. The immorality of the urban underclass acts
as a racially coded antagonist to Leigh Anne’s civilizing mission that makes the
romance plausible and offers an implicit critique of the welfare state. As opposed to
Denise and Alton who symbolize an undeserving poor, the ingratiating and simple
Michael Oher becomes a deserving recipient of white goodness so long as he does
not run amok like either King Kong or O.J. Simpson. As Ann McClintock argued,
the limits of the colonized is measured by how far they have traveled along the axis
of progress toward civilization (McClintock, 1995). It would appear that Oher has
traveled a great distance toward making his blackness safe for middle class consumption (see Hughes, 2004). Indeed, Oher becomes a Good Black counterpoint
to black athletes whose deviant blackness receives tremendous negative attention
in a white dominated media. By telling Michael Oher’s story through the narrative
structure of sport romance, The Blind Side produces commodity forms of blackness
and whiteness within postracial, postfeminist discourse that obscures the operation
of white supremacy upon which the very premise of the story is founded.
Notes
1. Bullock had several nominations for Golden Globes, MTV Awards, and some other awards
previous to The Blind Side. She had won several Teen Choice Awards and some minor awards.
However, she also had been repeatedly nominated and won several Razzie Awards for Worst
Actress before The Blind Side. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Bullock.
2. Huckabee is a talk show hosted by Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and 2008
Republican presidential candidate. Huckabee is famous for being an ordained Southern Baptist
minister and having a “down-home” style.
3.
See http://www.greatertalent.com/?s=tuohy
4. By comparison, Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side stayed on the New York Times bestseller list
for 26 weeks and held the top position from Nov 15, 2009 to March 14, 2010. See http://www.
nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2009-11-22/paperback-nonfiction/list.html.
5. Jim Crow is a mythical African American character made famous in minstrel songs and
performances, particularly “Jump Jim Crow”. The term “Jim Crow” refers to the legal and cultural
organization of race relations in (primarily) the U.S. South between 1877 and the 1960s. As such,
white supremacy became naturalized in all aspects of life under Jim Crow. For a useful source on
Jim Crow see Pilgram, D. (2000). Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. web page. Retrieved
March 22, 2004, from http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/menu.htm.
6. “Jim Crow racism” expressed the structural relations of agrarian capitalism and the needs
of a planter class after the prohibition of slavery. Rigid state structures and terrorism by white
supremacist groups maintained the availability of low-cost black labor begun during slavery.
See Bobo, L. D., & Smith, R. A. (1995). From Jim Crow Racism to Laissez-Faire Racism: The
Transformation of Racial Attitudes. In W. F. Katkin, N. Landsman & A. Tiree (Eds.), Beyond
146 Montez de Oca
Pluralism: The Conception of Groups and Group Identities in America (pp. 182–220). Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
7. Almost 83% of ticket sales were in the U.S., which suggests that the film had broad domestic
appeal but was of less interest to foreign audiences. See The Blind Side. (2009). Box Office Mojo
web site. Retrieved May 20, 2011, from http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=blindside.
htm
8. The planter class owned plantations and slave labor in the Southern United States. Capital
derived from land and labor allowed this class to live an easy lifestyle that invoked British country
squires. The term aristocracy is in reference to a European model of gentility and not an actual
hereditary aristocracy.
9. Billy Hawkins uses an internal colonialism model to argue that NCAA Division I universities make up a new plantation system. This article does not address the commodification of
professionalized athletes at major universities since the film ends when Oher arrives at Ole Miss.
I would argue, however, that the lack of agriculture as well as the centrality of marketing and
spectacle to the political economy of Division I athletics makes those universities postmodern
rather than traditional plantations. See Hawkins, B. (2010). The New Plantation: Black Athletes,
College Sports, and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
10. Moreover, a growing literature on food distribution not only shows that fast food outlets
profit from low-wage minority labor but are also consistently sited in low-income communities
of color where they profit from a social context of limited food choices and foster high rates of
diet related illnesses. See Black, J. L., & Macinko, J. (2008). Neighborhoods and obesity. Nutrition Reviews, 66(1), 2–20, Larson, N. I., Story, M. T., & Nelson, M. C. (2009). Neighborhood
Environments: Disparities in Access to Healthy Foods in the U.S. American Journal of Preventive
Medicine, 36(1), 74–81.
11. Ferdinand the Bull is a classic children’s story about a bull in Spain who only wants to sit
in his field smelling flowers. One day Ferdinand sits on a bee that stings him. The pain, fear, and
surprise of the sting causes Ferdinand to charge wildly and is misperceived as a ferocious bull
with market value in bull fights. However, in the ring he refuses to fight. Lacking market value
since he is unwilling to take on the role of an adult bull, Ferdinand is returned to his field where
he whiles away the rest of his days smelling flowers. In reality, Ferdinand would be sold for
slaughter. Leaf, M. (1936). The Story of Ferdinand. New York: Viking Juvenile.
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