The Daily - What Hollywood Keeps Getting Wrong About Race

Episode Date: February 26, 2019

Three decades ago, the highest honor at the Academy Awards was given to a movie about a white passenger learning to love her black chauffeur. Sunday night, the same award was given to a film about a white chauffeur learning to love his black passenger. We look at Hollywood’s obsession with fantasies of racial reconciliation. Guest: Wesley Morris, a critic at large for The New York Times and a host of the podcast “Still Processing.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Three decades ago, the Academy Awards gave its highest honor to a movie about a white passenger learning to love her black chauffeur. On Sunday night, it gave the same award to a film about a white chauffeur learning to love his black passenger. Times culture critic Wesley Morris on Hollywood's obsession with fantasies of racial reconciliation.

It's Tuesday, February 26th. Good evening and welcome to the one millionth Academy Awards. We are not your hosts, but we're going to stand here a little too long so that the people who get USA Today tomorrow will think that we host it. So last night when I was watching the Academy Awards, I was struck that it was John Lewis, this congressman, but most importantly, this legendary civil rights leader who introduced Green Book at the awards ceremony. I can bear witness that the portrait of that time and place in our history is very real. And basically endorsed him. And I hadn't seen the movie, but his stamp of approval made me think that I should have. And then after Green Book won Best Picture,

later on in the evening, I'd read that Spike Lee, the Black director, he walked out of the room in protest. Yes. And that the award generated a fair amount of controversy. So my question to you is, what exactly happened here? Okay, well, where do you even want to start? How far back in history do you want to go? So my question to you is, what exactly happened here? Okay, well, where do you even want to start?

How far back in history do you want to go? Well, wherever you think we should in order to really understand this. Oh, man. Let's go back to 1990, which is the Oscar year for the films that came out in 1989. Okay. And you have a Best Picture slate that is full of movies that we still are with in some ways. If you build it, he will come. Build a dreams and dead poet society.

Because we are food for worms, lads. Because believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing. Born on the 4th of July. People say if you don't love America, then get the hell out. And My Left Foot, which we don't really talk about enough, but it made Daniel Day-Lewis a star and gave him the first of his zillion Oscars. And... Driving mistakes. My mother's a little high strung. The fact is, you'd be working for me.

She can say anything she likes, but she can't fire you. And remind me what that film was about. Driving Miss Daisy? Yeah. Driving Miss Daisy. Driving Miss Daisy is the story of an old Jewish lady, played by Jessica Tandy, whose son insists that she's too old to drive her car,

so he hires a black guy to drive the car for her. Now, Miss Daisy, you needs a chauffeur. Lord knows I needs a job. So why don't we just leave it like that? His name is Hokies, played by Morgan Freeman. And over the course of, I guess it's maybe 30 years, this professional relationship deepens into a kind of friendship. You're my best friend. No, I'm gone.

No, really. You are. It is a fantasy set during Jim Crow in the South about an impossible friendship that is based in work. And that makes us feel good because you see this prejudiced woman in a racist climate become friends with this Black man who just wants to drive her around. Basically, what happened that year

was that Kim Basinger at some point comes out. Hello, the world. We've got five great films here. And they're great for one reason. Because they tell the truth. But there is one film missing from this list that deserves to be on it. Because ironically, it might tell the biggest truth of all. And she says, oh, wait a minute.

Something's not in this category. And it's the movie that tells the biggest truth of all. And that's Do the Right Thing. So Kim Basinger comes in. Kim, famous white actress, and says, something's amiss here. Do the Right Thing should be nominated. Never met Spike Lee.

She is dating Prince at this point. Spike Lee is one of Spike Lee's favorite people on the whole planet. But I don't think that really matters. Anyway, she comes out and says this

and it's a controversial thing. The room is sort of unsure what to do about this. And what's the basic plot? The basic plot is... Fight the power! Fight the power! It is a parable

set on the hottest day of the year in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. And all kinds of racial tensions bring people to converge on this pizzeria. And you just have all this tension and things boil over. There is a melee. Someone dies at the hands of theia. And you just have all this tension and things boil over. There's a melee. Someone dies at the hands of the police. Then you have a riot. Doctor.

Come on, what? What? Always do the right thing. By Spike Lee. It's his best movie. That's it? That's it. I got it.

I'm gone. It's one of the greatest movies ever made in the history of American cinema. So in 1990, which film ultimately wins Best Picture? Michael, I told you what they were. What do you think won? And the Oscar goes to... Driving Miss Daisy, Richard Dizanek,

Willie T. Dizanek. And what does it mean that Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture in that year? That it's the continuation of a long trend of a kind of racial reconciliation fantasy. And what does that phrase mean? Well, it's this idea that you've got a white character who typically tends to be racist or bigoted or prejudiced or whatever. typically tends to be racist or bigoted or prejudiced or whatever. And that person is going on this journey courtesy of this relationship to a Black person who has no journey to go on. It's just there to morally be a center that this white person can return to or like make his or her way toward. And just to be clear, break down this word fantasy for me. What is the fantasy?

The fantasy is that prolonged exposure to a Black person is going to cure you of your racism. The Black person just has to sit there and take your money and you're basically buying a friend who will then absolve you of every horrible thought, every racist deed you've ever had or done. And what does that look like? How does that fantasy, this dynamic you're describing,

how does that show up in pop culture over the next few years and maybe even decades? Well, let's just skip to the 80s. What do you give the kid who has everything? Daddy said anything I wanted, anything in the store. So there's this one movie that I remember very clearly. It's called The Toy. For Eric Bates, it was the only toy in his father's store.

You know what I want. That wasn't for sale. What you're offering me is not a job, sir. It's an insult, and I'm insulted. Richard Pryor, who at this point, if people were taking a poll and saying, name the greatest living comedian, Richard Pryor would probably be at the top of almost everybody's list.

He is recruited in this movie by Jackie Gleason to be the best friend of his estranged son. Pays him money. $10,000? That kind of money, if Eric blows his nose, you wipe it. And the idea is that he's going to befriend this kid. If you want a friend, you don't buy a friend. You earn a friend.

Richard Pryor. Who's initially pretty obnoxious. Meanwhile, the guy who Jackie Gleason's character is a bigot and a racist and at some point has to be taught by Richard Pryor's character that that's not cool. And being a father is pretty okay, too. Why would Richard Pryor's character that that's not cool. And being a father is pretty okay, too. Why would Richard Pryor take this kind of a role? Your guess is as good as mine. But it's like, why does anybody take any of these roles? Because

there's nothing else for them to do if they want to be in movies. You don't have a lot of Black people writing and directing movies. Most of the people writing these shows and directing and writing these movies are white people whose ideas about Black people come from popular culture that existed before the popular culture they're making. It's usually not coming from actual relationships

with actual Black people. And if it is, it's compromised by the idea that there's only so much that they can imagine a Black person doing in the first place. So this idea of behind-the-camera representation becomes important during this period, too.

But, I mean, for our purposes, it's white people imagining Black people for white people. And then in the 2000s, you have a very easy classic example of this problem. I got a job today writing for the Jackson Journal. In a movie like The Help, another Best Picture nominee. Abelene, you spilled some.

Forgive me, Lord, but I'm going to have to kill that woman, Abelene. And it is essentially the story of some maids in a southern town. You said you write about what disturbs me, particularly if it bothers no one else. I'd like to write something from the point of view of the help. I want to interview you. Who wind up being written about as an expose. I'm gonna help with your stories. We all are.

Of the poor treatment they receive at the hands of their white mistresses. It's quite scandalous. Sounds like Jackson, if you ask me. And the book becomes a hit, but it then winds up imperiling the lives and the safety and comfort of the women themselves. You tell Abelene. Do I have plans for her? You are godless, woman. And what is the fantasy in The Help? Well, the fantasy is that you can make the lives better of oppressed women during the Jim Crow era, in which, you know, Black people were treated all kinds of horrible.

Death, dehumanization, any kind of inequity you can subject a person to. Black people phased under Jim Crow. And by writing this book, which is what the white main character of this movie does, it's supposed to make these lives better. And the fantasy is that this woman can come in, interview these Black women. They will give their stories to this white woman who will write a book,

sell a bunch of copies, and these Black women are going to be left to fend for themselves. But the fantasy that this woman is allowed to have about her do-gooderness is that she actually is making a difference and is going to create a means by which these women can be treated better by the white women they work for. When in fact, in some cases, she makes it worse. She makes it worse. The last shot of that movie is really kind of tragic. May Mobley was my last baby.

In just 10 minutes, the only life I knew was done. It's just Viola Davis walking down a road with no job, by the way. God says we need to love our enemies. They're hard to do. It kind of creates this sense that Emma Stone is kind of off the hook and Viola Davis is on a hook. And the fantasy of the reconciliation is that the conscience clearing and the act of expressing empathy or sympathy or something is enough. I guess I want to push you on this. Doesn't inherently spending time with people who are different than we are make us more empathetic?

And why would that be anything other than a good thing? Hmm. That's a deep question. The immediate answer, though, is that it's on the terms of white people. There's nothing mutual about any of these movies, any of this work. It's not mutual at all.

You aren't going into the houses and lives of these Black characters. And they're presented as so good as to have no agency. Now, The Help sort of pushes back against that a little bit. But to be fair, I mean, if a movie works and it works as a movie,

it's very easy to overlook a lot of these problems. A well-made movie is effective as a spellcasting mechanism, right? You know, you watch a movie like The Help, and you're like, but she wrote the book

she got that she got the truth out there about how bad it is for these maids and what more do you what more can she do what more do you want her to do she did her job i just feel like that is a that is a great way to feel but i love to see a black woman's version of the help but i don't think you'd ever see that because Black people don't want to tell that story. And the other thing about these movies that's really worth noting, especially the ones that get near the Oscars,

these racial reconciliation fantasies are almost always set in the past. They're all set during the Jim Crow era, in the South for the most part, and involve something about the relationship between the white person and the Black person being unequal, whether it's the Black person's IQ in the Green Mile or the social standing of the Black person in The Help.

These are movies that would say they believe in inequality, but there's nothing equal about the races in them. There's an inherent imbalance. And the fantasy, of course, is just acknowledging that Black people exist and giving them some lines and casting a good actor to play them is a kind of argument for inequality. But it's not if you look at the way they function within the system that the movie created for itself. So lay out for me specifically how you see this racial reconciliation fantasy playing out in Green Book. And I haven't seen the movie, so

keep that in mind. You're in for a treat, my friend. So here we are in 2019. And just imagine all this progress in 30 years. So this is the year where like the movies have just never been blacker and the black movies you get have never been this good, right? As a class of movies. You've got a movie like Blindspotting, Sorry to Bother You, Black Panther, Black Klansman. You've got If Beale Street Could Talk. You've got Widows. This is coming a year after Get Out was a hit. And that's coming a year after Moonlight won Best Picture. All having major Black protagonists. Major Black protagonists. They were written and directed by Black people. It's a huge deal.

It's meaningful. So here we are, 2018. This movie called Green Book starts to make its way around the country. And it should be the story of a man named Don Shirley, a Black musician who was no longer with us. And the trip he decides to take through the Deep South in 1962.

1962. Like Jim Crow Deep South, 1962. And he needs somebody to be able to get him from place to place. Some guy called over here, a doctor. He's looking for a driver. You interested? I am not a medical doctor. I'm a musician.

I'm about to embark on a concert tour in the Deep South. What other experience do you have? Public relations. It's got to be somebody who's tough, has a little bit of muscle, isn't afraid of anything, but is also obviously white.

Do you foresee any issues in working for a Black man? You and the Deep South? There's gonna be problems. And so he decides that the man for the job is a guy named Tony Villalonga, a kind of bouncer from the Bronx. Now, what I just said to you is the opposite of what the movie actually is.

The movie is actually the story of Tony Villalonga and how he gets a call one day from somebody for a job. And he goes and meets Don Shirley, who he sees and is like, I'm driving for you? No way. I'm not doing that. And Don Shirley, of course, is like, but I need you. You're my man. You seem to be the most qualified person for the job. Please do it. Drive me. He consents. Thus begins a friendship almost completely from the vantage of Tony Villalonga. The white guy. Yes. Tony is the protagonist of this movie. We spend the first 25 minutes of it with him. And I saw the poster for this movie. And the poster is Viggo Mortensen in the front seat, Mahershala Ali, who plays Don Shirley in the back seat.

The first thing I thought was, oh, my God, you got to be kidding me. It's driving Miss Daisy all over again. This is 1989 all over again. I can't believe this. Kentucky fights again. In Kentucky. When's that ever going to happen? I mean, it's a comedy all in the service of making you feel good about the idea that racist Tony Villalonga

can become increasingly less racist by driving Don around a place that the movie wants you to understand is more racist than Tony. No, I got the bucket so you could have some. I've never had fried chicken in my life. Who are you bullshitting? You people love the fried chicken, the grits and the collard greens.

I love it too. Negro cooks used to make it all the time when I was in the army. You have a very narrow assessment of me, Tony. Yeah, right? I'm good. No, no, you're not good, you're bad. I'm saying just because other Negroes enjoy certain types of music,

it doesn't mean I have to, nor do we all eat the same kind of food. Bro! Tony is like a nice, friendly, like, lovable cartoon racist. But, I mean, he's nothing compared to these Jim Crow people. You know, these Confederate racists who use the N-word every 15 minutes and have Confederate flags everywhere and will beat Don up for coughing. We've never seen Tony do that. This entire movie is a, oh my God, it's a literal vehicle to get Tony from racism to reconciliation in under two hours.

I can't do that. Eat it. Come on. Take it. Take it. Take it. I got to drive. Turn him through on the wheel. Come on. Take it. Take it. Take it. Come on. Here you go. Huh? I can't do this, Tony. Eat the goddamn thing. Jesus.

So this year's Academy Awards happens on Sunday night. 30 years after Driving Miss Daisy wins Best Picture, and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is not even nominated for Best Picture. What's going through your head as the evening unfolds? I assume you're watching it. Oh, yeah, I was watching it. I was watching it. I mean, I have to watch it.

Here are the nominees for Best Picture. I mean, obviously, there's a juiciness, right? There's a kind of moral juiciness. You've got Green Book nominated for Best Picture and four other Oscars. And then you've got Spike Lee back at the Oscars in a competitive way for the first time since that Oscar loss in 1990 for Do the Right Thing. He was nominated one other time,

but this is like, this is the big boys table if you're Spike Lee. So here we are. We're having a little bit of PTSD because a movie that's just like Driving Miss Daisy is up against a movie in Black Klansman. There's never been a black cop in this city. We think you might be the man to open things up around here.

That features a black guy in the Colorado Springs Police Department who basically, via telephone, infiltrates the KKK pretending to be a white guy hoping to join. Hello? This is Ron Stallworth calling. Who am I speaking with?

This is David Duke, Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. That David Duke? Last time I checked. What can I do you for? And it obviously is trying to depict a more accurate racial scene than Green Book is trying to depict.

We must unite and organize to fight racism. Are you down for the liberation of Black people? Power to the people. All power to all the people. All power to all the people. It's right, sister. So this is very much, in a sense, a rematch of 1989, 1990. It is a spiritual rematch involving one of the actual participants

but in different categories, right? And so, the stakes are this. If Green Book wins and you've got a movie like Black Klansman nominated for Best Picture,

what on earth is that telling you about where the Academy is as a body and what its priorities are in terms of whose point of view matters to the most people.

Oh, and the Oscar goes to Green Book. And so I feel like I really understand why that movie won. It really does believe that Don Shirley's insisting that Tony Villalonga be in his life makes Tony a better person. That feels good, right? It feels good to see a person make a positive change from a bad place to an arguably good one. And I don't know, there's's just there's very hard to resist that I mean for the people who do like it it is a really good movie it's entertaining

and it's funny and it's made by Peter Farrelly of the Farrelly brothers the people who brought you something about Mary and Shallow Hal and me myself

and Irene these guys know how to make a comedy that's what they do and that's what this movie is 100% it's a comedy and I don't think most people watch movies that morally make a comedy. That's what they do. And that's what this movie is 100%. It's a comedy. And I

don't think most people watch movies that morally. And there are people who you bring this up and I'm like, but who is Don Shirley to this movie? People get upset. Listen, it's about interracial friendship. It's about healing the divide between the races. How dare you? This is a good movie. And it's saying something positive. Right. Why do you want negativity in the races? How dare you? This is a good movie and it's saying something positive. Why do you want negativity in the world? And I never have a good answer for that because those people, those people aren't wrong.

But I also feel like this movie is not the solution to anything. It is the perpetuation of the same problems our entertainment's been giving us since it started. So, Wesley, what is significant about this Best Picture award?

What does it mean that the Academy chose a film like this, one with, to use your words, this racial reconciliation fantasy, as so central to its plot, as the best film of the year it's a fantasy and it does nothing to address or acknowledge the infrastructural problems that keep the races divided if anything the enthusiasm for a movie like green book only makes it kind of makes the problem worse in some ways. Because it makes it seem like the movies

don't care about the way racism actually works. They just want to make racism go away. I mean, let me just put it this way. I'll put it in the most human terms I possibly can. Personal terms. I have white friends. I see very little art about the kind of friendships I have with white people. I have friendships friends. I see very little art about the kind of friendships I have with white people.

I have friendships with white people that don't involve making them feel better about their racism to the extent that they have it. We talk about that stuff. Like, why did you say that? Why did you do that? These are not cataclysmic conversations. These relationships are about a mutual curiosity.

These people want to know what my life is like as a Black person. They want to know what my family is like, what my family history is like. There is a give and take. There is a real questioning of the larger systemic problems in this country that affect the relationship that I'm even able to have with these white people. And that is not the thing that you see discussed in these movies. I think that the movies have an obligation to entertain us, but I think they also have an obligation to be fair to certain aspects of social reality because people take lessons from this stuff. All I'm saying is Green Book is another version of a movie we've been watching for a hundred years.

Well, I'm really struck that I think it was about a month ago you wrote an essay for The Times in which you kind of laid out everything we're talking about now. You reminded us that 30 years ago, Driving Miss Daisy won. And that this idea of the racial reconciliation fantasy remains prominent in Hollywood and was at the center of Green Book. And you seem to kind of presciently suggest that that movie might win and that it

might carry the day because of the power of this concept that you were describing. And that is exactly what happened. I mean, listen, there's a part of me that's like, I never am right about the Oscar winners, but I just felt this one.

I felt this one. I felt like there is a way in which the thing that happened on Sunday does mirror whatever is happening in this country right now. Where a segment of the population is feeling really paranoid and a little bit endangered and is worried about feeling displaced

or unseated by change. And to the extent that the people who make our movies are a microcosm of the nation writ large, the Academy is undergoing some changes. And it is becoming less white and less male. And I think they're going to cling even more tightly to things that feel safe and familiar. And this is a movie that feels safe.

And it feels comforting in some way because it lets them believe that on the one hand, they can say they're giving their top honor to a movie about an interracial friendship. And about racial reconciliation. Right. But to me, what that says about them is also a fantasy. Right?

It's also a fantasy that says this symbol of excellence and this symbol of our tastes and our belief as a body, for at least the people who voted for it, really does sort of reflect what we should be as a nation. And that's not what we are. So the aspiration that we can just make this racism go away by running out and finding the nearest Black person to pay us to be better people, is absurd.

And I think that's what happened on Sunday. Wesley, thank you very much. Oh, it's my pleasure. Wesley talked about Green Book, race, and the Academy Awards with his co-host, Jenna Wortham, in the latest episode of their podcast, Still Processing. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. A week after President Trump declared a national emergency to fund his border wall, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a resolution today that would effectively reverse it.

With Democrats in control of the House, the resolution is expected to easily pass, but supporters believe that a large enough number of Republican votes might give the resolution enough momentum to pass in the Senate and perhaps overcome a presidential veto. On Monday, with that math in mind, 26 former congressional Republicans and more than 60 former national security officials wrote letters urging the House to back the resolution, arguing the emergency declaration is an illegal attempt to circumvent Congress and that there is no real emergency at the border. And the United States has imposed sanctions on more than 50 top officials, as well as

on Venezuela's state-owned oil company. On Monday, in the latest attempt by the Trump administration to force Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, from power, Vice President Mike Pence announced a wave of new sanctions against the country aimed at Maduro's allies. There can be no bystanders in Venezuela's struggle for freedom. Maduro's hold on power, amid growing international calls for him to step down, appears to be weakening. On Monday, dozens of Venezuelan soldiers defected, fleeing across the border to Colombia. The White House is encouraging such defections.

In a tweet on Monday, National Security Advisor John Bolton wrote, quote, to officials that are living in fear of Maduro, make the right choice and side with your fellow citizens. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.