{"id":36436,"date":"2014-05-15T04:56:35","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T04:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36436"},"modified":"2014-05-15T04:56:35","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T04:56:35","slug":"can-belle-end-hollywoods-obsession-with-the-white-savior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36436","title":{"rendered":"Can \u2018Belle\u2019 End Hollywood\u2019s Obsession with the White Savior?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/05\/04\/can-belle-end-hollywood-s-obsession-with-the-white-savior.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Can \u2018Belle\u2019 End Hollywood\u2019s Obsession with the White Savior?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Daily Beast<\/a><br \/>\n2014-05-04<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/keligoff\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Keli Goff<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>The black characters in films like \u2018The Help\u2019 and \u201912 Years A Slave\u2019 always seem to need a white knight. But the black protagonist in \u2018Belle,\u2019 a new film about racism and slavery in England, takes matters into her own hands.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The film <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Belle_(2013_film)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Belle<\/em><\/a>, which opens this weekend in limited release stateside, is inspired by a true story, deals with the horrors of the African slave trade, and its director is black and British. For these reasons, comparisons to the recent recipient of the Best Picture Oscar, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/12_Years_a_Slave_(film)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>12 Years a Slave<\/em><\/a>, are inevitable<\/p>\n<p>But there are some notable differences.<\/p>\n<p>Among them, <em>Belle<\/em> is set in England, while <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> is set in America. <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> depicts\u2014in unflinching detail\u2014the brutalities of slavery, while <em>Belle<\/em> merely hints at its physical and psychological toll. But the most significant deviation is this: whereas <em>12 Years a Slave<\/em> faced criticism for being yet another film to perpetuate the \u201cwhite savior\u201d clich\u00e9 in cinema, in <em>Belle<\/em>, the beleaguered black protagonist does something novel: she saves herself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Belle<\/em> marks the first film I\u2019ve seen in which a black woman with agency stands at the center of the plot as a full, eloquent human being who is neither adoring foil nor moral touchstone for her better spoken white counterparts,\u201d the novelist and TV producer Susan Fales-Hill told <em>The Daily Beast<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/05\/04\/can-belle-end-hollywood-s-obsession-with-the-white-savior.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can \u2018Belle\u2019 End Hollywood\u2019s Obsession with the White Savior? The Daily Beast 2014-05-04 Keli Goff The black characters in films like \u2018The Help\u2019 and \u201912 Years A Slave\u2019 always seem to need a white knight. But the black protagonist in \u2018Belle,\u2019 a new film about racism and slavery in England, takes matters into her own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,10],"tags":[15678,15271,12666,13384],"class_list":["post-36436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-amma-asante","tag-dido-elizabeth-belle","tag-keli-goff","tag-the-daily-beast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}