The Great White Savior

i was on a blog i follow, and the latest topic brought up something i thought was interesting. it was about the movie that Sandra Bullock recently won an award for her role as....the great white hulk in the movie The Blind Side.
the minute i saw this preview (while i was going to see some shitty Tyler Perry Movie that i saw simply because Inglorious Bastards was sold out...), i thought "wow....ANOTHER Dangerous Minds?" didn't we get enough of the...'nice white people that come in and save the day in minority infested slums' type movies?

aside from Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pfeiffer playing the great white saviour, there is also Half Nelson with Ryan Gosling, Freedom Writers with Hilary Swank, Music of the Heart with Meryl Streep, Sunset Park with Rhea Perlman, and The Principal with John Belushi.

not only is this concept played out, it also says a lot about how the media portrays inner city schools/people (i.e. minorties). and about who the media feels can save/help them (i.e. white people). but this concept is as old as colonization; it IS the idea behind colonization- whites needing to come in and save brown and black people from their uncivilized, barbaric lives. apparently blacks need help on how to read, write and wipe our own asses, and now we also need whites to teach us how to play sports (Sunset Park and The Blind Side)...seriously? black people now need help in SPORTS?
not only has this idea of needing help from whites permeated the minds of some whites, i think it's also permeated the minds of many minorities. and while i think socialism does work, will work, and would have worked in the past (had it been implemented properly), something about being black in the Unites States and accepting welfare or assistance feels like the the whole colonized idea not ceasing, but becoming cyclic. then again, this isn't a socialist nation (it's capitalistic with a few socialist policies)...so that analogy wouldn't completely fit.
and while i don't think something like this would work in this decade, i do wish that blacks and minorities had separated themselves (somewhere in between Garvey's "Back to Africa" and the Panthers' "Free the Land" concepts) and become strong in our own communities without any governmental or white assistance prior to integration.

so what is with this idea? do these movies impact the image America has on minorities, on inner-cities, on whites? does it impact your images and thoughts? do you think it says something about these award shows when people win awards when they help out minorities (like Sandra Bullock), and blacks get awards when they portray negative images (Monique for her role in Precious as the abusive mother, Denzel Washington for his role in Training Day as a dirty cop)?

comment. think. criticize.