I’m reading some interesting responses to “The Green Book,” which, if you have been in a cave in Thailand for the past six months, is a movie about a white racially antagonistic chauffeur who ferries around a black musician.
There have been complains, and their have been counter-complaints, largely on the line of “it’s just a movie.” (I have written elsewhere about how our entertainment does matter. A movie is never just a movie.)
The complaints about the movie itself might be due to what’s in this article, about a slice of history that is used as a prop for another story entirely.
I researched the meaning of the Green Book a few years ago, to the point of finding all the locations in my city (Seattle), and trying to see how many of the locations were still somewhat in the same availability. That is, was a gas station still a gas station? Was a restaurant still a restaurant? Was a hotel still a hotel. It was a shock to discover that my own office complex was set right on top of one such location. It was a very weird moment of realization—I work within a monument to technology that covers up disappeared lives.
The Green Book has a story and it is about the inability of our black American brothers and sisters (purportedly equal citizens since the mid-1800s) to have a safe journey across much of America. The Real Green Book is a story of people whispering “Here’s a place to rest your head. Here’s a place to get a meal. Here’s a place to set a spell.” The journeys were in plain sight as were the places of refuge, but invisible to the rest of us. The Green Book was a way to whisper “All is not as it appears. This is a refuge. You are safe here.”
The Green Book is about a system of blind obedience to white racism and ignorant acceptance of the exclusion of human beings from the comforts of the society we all simply enjoy as white people. It is a story about the secret voices of the invisible. It is a story of the power of human dignity to create a world in the face of the system that denies their dignity. It is not a story about “us” unless we want to include our black brothers and sisters into the “us,” and the Green Book–and American history and policy–says that this simply didn’t happen.
It is astonishingly ahistorical to make this movie about a white savior who is a chauffeur to a black man, a white savior who comes to know in a small way that being around black people brings tearful changes, and to make this the “story” of the Green Book.
The Green Book in reality is about the black experience in America. Period. Full stop. End of story. If there is any reason to include white people in this story, it is not because we are a central part of it, and IMO it should not focus on the redemptive arc of white people who use black people and the black experience as a prop for our self-enlightenment and our salvation.
We have endless, endless stories of racist white people who are magically changed by their encounter with black people. I know we white people LOVE this story, and we love telling it to ourselves, over and over. We might be sinners, but if we can just have the authentic experience with Our Black Friend or Our Adopted Child or Our Black Neighbor, then we can be redeemed from our personal acts of racism and discover the True Freedom of Forgiveness. We get that magic touch, and we get a new awareness, and we will, from now on, make that exception for the exceptional black person. But still we live in segregated communities, work in segregated jobs, send our kids to segregated schools, and worship in segregated churches. The magic touch is enough to make us feel good, but not enough to change our behaviors.
Is there a story about white people and the Green Book? Sure. But it is not the Main Story. That story is literally in front of our faces, every day, even today.
And we are blind to it because we want blindness.
“Now granted the Green Book site was just an auto shop where you could safely get a refill on your tank and use a restroom, and the thirteen-story glass and steel contraption that supplanted it is more useful to everyone…”
Not to the folks who needed a safe spot. 🙂
But more to the point of the post – Green Book was a competently-made entertainment – which suffers from all you describe and more. Because the white main character isn’t the only one transformed. The black “supporting” character is famous and talented but alone – and he finds the cure for his aloneness, at the end of the movie, by being accepted in the white man’s home. (Shirley’s family denies that he was estranged from them at this time.) Along the way, the white man “teaches him how to be black” by, for example, feeding the black musician his first-ever friend chicken.
Green Book was written by the main character’s son – it is, perhaps, unsurprising that it would focus on the writer’s father. But reports say that Mershala Ali, who played Shirley, was told that Shirley didn’t have close family still alive for him to consult about Dr. Shirley (https://www.bustle.com/p/dr-don-shirleys-family-responded-to-mahershala-ali-green-book-win-at-the-golden-globes-with-a-lot-of-support-15725350).
Ali, when he found out, reached out to the family.
“I got a call from Mahershala Ali, a very, very respectful phone call, from him personally,” said Edwin Shirley, Don’s older brother. “He called me and my Uncle Maurice in which he apologized profusely if there had been any offense. What he said was, ‘If I have offended you, I am so, so terribly sorry. I did the best I could with the material I had. I was not aware that there were close relatives with whom I could have consulted to add some nuance to the character.’”
https://news.avclub.com/mahershala-ali-responds-to-the-shirley-familys-claim-th-1831546074
The white “key players” were, as the article describes it, “somewhat less gracious.”
“Mortensen, who, in November, apologized for using the N-word during a panel, responded to the claims by praising writer Nick Vallelonga, the son of Tony Lip, for showing “admirable restraint in the face of some accusations and some claims—including from a couple of family members—that have been unjustified, uncorroborated, and basically unfair, that have been countered by other people who knew Doc Shirley well.”
Yep. Cuz once you co-opt someone else’s story for your own purposes, if they object, the answer is to accuse them of being unreasonable.
After Ali’s recognition at the Golden Globes the Shirley family released a statement, saying
“We are very proud of him. In no way would we ever steal his joy for his recognition because he is an accomplished actor and we respect his ability and his position.”
Like them – I am so pleased for Ali.
It really pleases me that we are engaging in these stories and these reactions. There is a lot to unpack in every one of these accounts, and a lot to simply understand about people.
I was thinking about your reactions (posted here) and how much different this movie might have been with different principals. That is, suppose there was a different director, or lead, or supporting actor, or writer, or cinematographer, or sound engineer, or writer…the stories we hear are a composition from many moving parts, and just a slight change in the composition of the creators can have a significant difference on the creation.
It pleases me that these conversations *happen, and I hope to see more of it. Found an interesting reaction article on the root, which I recommend. One of the things that struck me from it was a mention – almost an aside – that the filmmakers had actively chosen to make the film ‘from a white perspective.”
That bugged me.
Not that they chose to do that – but rather that having knowingly chose to do that, they then chose a title designed to imply otherwise, and misinformed the lead black actor so he could not connect to the resources that would have lent authenticity to his character. Those three things *together give me a different feeling than just “that white filmmakers chose to make the film from a white perspective.”
The more we talk, the more those combinations of things come out. And it kind of puts me in mind of things like the combination of redlining and social pressure and rules around home loans that cut black veterans off from using their VA home loans after WWII. They don’t “add up” until you see them laid out together.
https://thegrapevine.theroot.com/green-book-has-great-acting-a-misleading-title-and-pa-1830572839
Good points.
Ms. Irving’s comments about systems and systemic racism hit home after I watched the 1999 Nightline episode about Ms. Cynthia Wiggins. So many interlocking systems worked together to lead her to her death. Almost none of them had deliberate malicious intent. Or maybe, conscious intent.
But for what now looks like stupid, selfish, cynical, and self-serving reasons, Ms. Wiggins’ death was inevitable from the moment she was born. The system was ready for her, not as an individual, but as a member of a disfavored group she could not help being born into.