“Hey, you want unity?
Then read a eulogy.
Kill the power that exists up under you and over me.”
~Lecrae, Facts
It was the end of the night at our friend’s house. We had spent the late afternoon and evening in full swing with our annual Academy Awards celebration. We had breakfast for dinner: Waffles, sausage, bacon, home-fries, and mimosas. We filled out our ballots to make our predictions and, as per usual, winner would take home the prize. It was a night of surprises for anybody who was closely following the awards season cycle. Black Panther and Bohemian Rhapsody took home more awards than anybody had predicted. We cheered when Regina King said “God is good all the time,” and were shocked to silence when Olivia Coleman took home best lead actress instead of Glenn Close, a win nobody saw coming.
The show drew to a close, and Julia Roberts took the stage in lovely pink dress. She was announcing Best Picture. There were several worthy candidates in the lot: BlacKKKlansman (my favorite of the bunch), A Star is Born, and Roma were all worthy contenders. It was even cool to see the first superhero movie, Black Panther, in the mix. There were also a few lackluster films in the bunch: Bohemian Rhapsody, Vice, and Green Book were fine movies, but not the caliber of Best Picture nominees we have seen in the past. Most of the group predicted Roma for the win, easily the most stylish and skillful movie of the bunch. Julia opened the envelope, and to the chagrin of many in our group, announced Green Book as the winner. If you have been on the internet at all over the last week, you will have noticed that many people are not happy with Green Book being announced as winner.
So, what’s the problem? Why is there such a backlash against this movie taking home the award for Best Picture? Well, for starters, Green Book just isn’t that impressive of a movie. Stylistically it’s fairly straight forward and competently directed, but the true draw of the movie lands in the worthy performances from Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali. They, deservedly, received nominations for their work, and Ali took home his second Oscar for his work on the picture(making him only the second black actor to nab two Oscars, after Denzel). But, other than that, there just isn’t much there. It’s a sweet, feel good movie about two men who learn to set aside their differences and become friends. As a self-proclaimed movie fanatic, there is nothing here that stands as an above average work of art that ranks among the year’s best films. It’s good, but it isn’t that good.
Then there’s the controversy that followed the movie along it’s trail to Oscar glory. First, there’s the story itself. You have a movie featuring the portrayal of one of the most accomplished piano players in our countries history, Dr. Don Shirley, who achieved all he did as a black man during the 1950’s and 1960’s. There’s a fascinating story to tell there. But, rather than make a movie about him, the movie is about his white driver. This, for some, only furthers the frustration that Hollywood is still financing white-driven narratives, leaving people of color in supporting roles. Now, one of the screenwriters and producers for the movie is the driver’s son, and he wanted to make a movie to honor his father and his father’s experience with Dr. Shirley. There are those who find this angle problematic, while others are sympathetic to it.
Then, star Viggo Mortenson used the “N” word during a Q&A. Not a great look for a movie campaigning as having something meaningful to say about race relations in our country, even if there is a bigger context to consider as to why he said it. Then there was the discovery that one of the writers, the driver’s son Nick, tweeted in 2015 affirming Donald Trump saying he saw Muslims cheering after the towers fell on 9/11. There is absolutely no credible evidence to support this claim, and it was birthed out of a prejudice against Muslim Americans. Then it was reported that while directing a movie in the 1990’s, director Peter Farrelly exposed his genitals to several cast members as a joke, which is sexual harassment in the work place.
Then, star Viggo Mortenson used the “N” word during a Q&A. Not a great look for a movie campaigning as having something meaningful to say about race relations in our country, even if there is a bigger context to consider as to why he said it. Then there was the discovery that one of the writers, the driver’s son Nick, tweeted in 2015 affirming Donald Trump saying he saw Muslims cheering after the towers fell on 9/11. There is absolutely no credible evidence to support this claim, and it was birthed out of a prejudice against Muslim Americans. Then it was reported that while directing a movie in the 1990’s, director Peter Farrelly exposed his genitals to several cast members as a joke, which is sexual harassment in the work place.
The list goes on, but most of those situations have explanations that don’t require ruining the careers of the people involved (save Nick’s racist Tweet). However, none of those things are the big problem here. Here’s the problem: Green Book treats racism like it is a problem that goes away if people who are prejudiced simply learn to set aside their differences and have a conversation. It posits the idea that racism works both ways, and will only be solved when both parties take equal responsibility for their racism. Now, let it be known, exposure and communion are great ways to cure prejudice in an individual. But racism is not a person by person problem. The evil roots of racism dig way deeper than simply two people groups who just don’t get along.
Black people are not responsible for racism. It is possible for a person of color to act prejudiced towards another individual, but racism is based on power structures and systems that keep one race of people inferior to another. As a country, we are lightyears away from being in a place where we can say people of color hold a proportional power dynamic to white people. If you don’t believe me, you need no look further than the demographic of races in prison. White people comprise 58% of prisoners in America, while black people make up 38%. When you take into consideration that African Americans only make up 12.1% of the American population we are forced to confront a serious problem, and you have to be willfully ignorant to not see the disproportionate numbers at work here. Either black folks are just worse people, and more prone to commit crimes, or there is something going on in the American system and power structures that continually incriminates people of color while letting white people off the hook.
There are many, many other examples to look at, but the point is the way Green Book deals with race-relations is not only unhelpful, it’s damaging. Racism continues to exist because in our country we are systemically structured to elevate the white race over the black one, and until serious discussion and reformation is made about the ways these power-structures work, an entire race of people will continually suffer while another fights to maintain their place on the top. Green Book provides a damaging perspective. Another reason racism flourishes today is because too many people believe the deep seeded evils of racism are a thing of the past, something in history books, not a present darkness to be grappled with on a systemic level. Telling people we just need to have a conversation and get along not only refuses to get to the heart of the problem, but it prevents people from ever seeing it. What does it say about our culture that Green Book doesn’t say anything that Driving Miss Daisy didn’t already say thirty years earlier, which didn’t say anything that wasn’t already said in the movie In the Heat of the Night twenty years before that? The Academy just gave top prize to a movie that is no more relevant today than the movie they gave top honors to in 1968! This point is indicative of a culture that wants to believe it has significantly evolved in the last fifty years. And in some ways it has, but we’ve been so busy buying into and spreading the myth of racisms end that we never finished the job.
We don’t need more art telling us to pay no mind to the man behind the curtain. We need art that forces us to confront the uncomfortable realities of the present moment. We need art that exposes the systems that oppress, holds the oppressors accountable, and tells the stories of those on the margins. We need art that gets in our face and forces to look at the evil that needs rectifying. It is a tragic irony that thirty years ago Spike Lee produced such a movie, one that needed the exposure Oscar attention gives a film. Do the Right Thing was a confrontational, artistic essay on the ways systemic racism inflicts violence on an oppressed people group. Still, Do the Right Thing was shut out of the major categories that year, losing out to the safer and easier to stomach Driving Miss Daisy. He offered another picture this year that is arguably more palatable than Do the Right Thing, but not less relevant, with BlacKKKlansman. And that movie lost out to the much safer and easier to stomach Green Book.
BlacKKKlansman did receive nominations in some major categories, and even earned Spike his first Oscar for screenwriting, but it didn’t win top prize, and was never seriously considered a frontrunner for it. Green Book has been a frontrunner for the award, even with its controversy, since its release. Will it be another thirty years before the mainstream film industry is ready to seriously wrestle with the type of art our society really needs? I pray not. Lives hang in the balance. We don’t have time to waste. We can’t hope for unity as a country if we won’t take a serious look at these issues.
Here's a list of movies that came out in 2018 that held a much more productive conversation about racism, and they're all better movies than Green Book:
If you're interested in resources that help educate on the problem of racism in America, here are some great places to start:
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (book)
I'm Still Here by Austin Channing Brown (book)
13th (documentary on Netflix)
Black and White: Racism in America (a conversation on The Liturgist podcast available on iTunes.)
