WHITE SAVIORISM: Analysis of the Mainstream White Savior Trope in Popular Films and Media

What is white saviorism or the white savior trope? In his book, "The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption”, sociologist Matthew Hughey defines the white savior trope in film as belonging to a genre in which “a white messianic character saves a lower or working-class, usually urban or isolated, nonwhite character from a sad fate.”¹¹ To understand where this comes from, we need to better understand the concept of the '“white man’s burden”, a phrase made popular by British author Rudyard Kipling ¹¹ ¹².

In his poem “The White Man’s Burden”, Kipling describes the moral responsibility of the white man: to uplift and govern the people of color around the world who do not know any better¹³. The poem was originally written in 1897 for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee but was later modified and republished in 1899 as a call to action to the United States encouraging them to conquer the Philippines¹¹ ¹² ¹³. This poem produced an image of the superior white man and his subordinate, the person of color was often used as a rationale for the atrocities committed by colonial powers. According to Hughey, “The white savior film perpetuates, in subtle and friendly terms, the archaic paradigm of manifest destiny, the white man’s burden, and the great white hope.” It is, in other words, a vestige of continued attempts to assert white dominance in an increasingly multicultural world where white people may feel as if they are losing relevance. Carving out this role of savior allows them to participate in racial dialogues from a place of comfort and security, as opposed to the vulnerability it demands from the people of color involved¹¹. To paint a clearer picture of this definition, I present two examples: The Blind Side and The Help.

The Blind Side

The Blind Side is an award-winning film based on the real-life story of NFL player Michael Oher and the Tuohy family, a well-to-do Southern family who fostered Michael Oher and ultimately welcomed him into their family. In the film, Michael is portrayed as coming from an unstable household with no support from his family or friends. Wanting to help him, the Tuohys take him in and help him with academics and athletics, uncovering the true athlete within him. Ultimately their efforts change his life and he commits to Ole Miss for football and goes on to the NFL. While this narrative is touching, it is not an accurate depiction of the events that happened according to Michael Oher himself.

In his memoir, Oher shared that his situation was dramatized and made to be worse than it was. In the movie, Michael had no one to help him in his life, was seen as not intelligent, and was ignorant of the complexities of football. It was the Tuohys that give him all of these things that his Black neighborhood couldn’t. In reality, Michael’s family and friends, outside of his parents, sought to support him to the best of their abilities, he was actually quite bright but went to a poorly underfunded school, and was extremely athletically gifted and knowledgeable before he ever met the Tuohy’s. Being accepted into their lives helped him gain opportunities because of the immense privilege they held ¹⁴.

These opportunities did change Oher’s life, but the dramatized depiction of his situation made it seem like the only way he could achieve success was with proximity to whiteness as opposed to equity. This depiction of his initial situation as being entirely hopeless helps to craft a narrative that fits the white savior trope: a character of color had very little and was waiting to be discovered and until he was discovered by a white character he could not reach success. His intrinsic value was unlocked by his proximity to whiteness through being fostered by the Tuohys. At multiple points throughout the movie, the Tuohys, particularly Michelle Tuohy, are given more importance than Michael and become the accidental main characters. This film satisfies the definition of the genre: a messianic white character, Michelle Tuohy, saves a lower-class nonwhite character, Michael Oher, from his circumstances.

Article about Michael Oher’s account of the depiction of his life in the Blind Side ¹⁴

Trailer for the movie The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron¹⁵

The Help

In this extremely popular book-to-movie adaptation starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer, the main character Skeeter helps the Black maids and nannies of the town of Jackson tell their stories of mistreatment by their white bosses and empowers them to tell their stories of injustice. While the narrative of the film is meant to empower its Black characters, so much of the film gets wrapped up in redeeming problematic white characters and derives the Black character’s worth from their ability to be beneficial to their white employers. Again, a white character, Skeeter, brings Aibileen and Minny, Black maids, a sense of success that they would not achieve alone. These two films are just two of many examples of media dominated by white savior tropes. Other examples include Dangerous Minds, Django Unchained, Freedom Writers, and Gran Torino as well as To Kill A Mockingbird ¹².

Trailer from The Help (2011) starring Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, and Viola Davis.¹⁶

WHY YELLOW ROSE HAD NO WHITE SAVIORS

To best explain how this movie doesn’t follow the mainstream, we needed to first understand what that mainstream narrative was. By pulling in definitions from Matthew Hughey’s book on the white savior trope and examples of white savior films like The Blind Side and The Help, we now have a clear idea of what white savior films are. Through reference to some historical archives and information, we also can better situate the Filipino American experience in the context of Spanish colonization, American imperialism, and current-day immigration patterns. With all of this information, I now invite you to take a critical look at the film with me.

In Yellow Rose, the main character Rose is an undocumented Filipina immigrant who aspires to be a country singer and whose mother cleans motels to provide them with an income and a place to live. When Rose goes on a one-day trip with her friend Elliott, she comes home to find that her mother has been detained by ICE. Her mother asks her sister, Rose’s aunt, to take care of her in her place. Rose goes to live with her aunt but is faced with a roadblock: her aunt’s white husband doesn’t really want Rose around. Already feeling lost without her mother and uncomfortable with being unwanted, Rose enlists the help of Elliot and moves her stuff to a temporary place to stay - the Broken Spoke - the bar she and Elliot visit on their trip. Working here, Rose becomes friends with an undocumented immigrant that works at the bar and she becomes close to the bar’s owner, Jolene, an elderly white woman. In her time at the bar, Rose turns to music to cope with losing her mother and taps into the bar’s rich country music culture by fraternizing with the local talent. ICE once again derails her sense of safety and finds and deports multiple undocumented immigrants at the bar. Rose is almost deported but after the choice of one ICE agent to wilfully ignore her presence, Rose escapes deportation. Realizing she is no longer safe, she bids Jolene goodbye and is taken in by a musician from the bar Dale Watson. Rose works with him on country music and flourished under his guidance and hopes to be adopted by him, but is disappointed when Dale explains that he can’t. Rose runs away with the realization that she must find independence. She starts working in a motel gaining financial stability and shelter while studying for her GED and continuing to write music. After she feels she has gained some stability, she goes back to meet Dale and starts working towards performing and recording again, ultimately gracing the stage at the Broken Spoke as a singer.

In the film, Rose has three potential white saviors: Elliot, Jolene, and Dale. Elliot, who was already Rose’s friend, acts as a mode of transportation for her in the movie. Though he expresses wanting to save her, the relationship between the two of them isn’t conducive to the white savior narrative. The power imbalance between them that exists has more to do with him having a car and not being undocumented than it does with him being white or morally upstanding. Rose and Elliot are already in a somewhat equal relationship, a friendship, making the small power imbalance between them difficult to exploit. He is more of a character that happens to be white. With Jolene, her beneficence towards Rose isn’t without ulterior motives. Jolene greatly benefits from housing Rose because Rose provides valuable labor in return. Though Jolene helps Rose, the help doesn’t have a messianic quality to it. She helps Rose as much as she is able to without risking her own neck and utilizes her network to continue her support. When Rose leaves the Broken Spoke, she does so to assert her own agency in response to the powerlessness she felt when facing the threat of deportation. Rose and Dale both benefit from each other’s company but Rose quickly realizes that Dale has no intention of acting as long-term support for her. This realization spurs her to leave and find independence and when she returns to work with him, it is on her own terms. Even though Rose wants Dale to save her to some extent, Dale does not. It is Rose who ultimately saves herself.

What saves this movie from falling into the trap of the white savior narrative is nuance. Rose is developed to be a multi-dimensional character with complex motivations. Her undocumented status is a result of complex motivations and psychological landscapes that result from the colonial mentality⁶. Her upbringing is dominated by emotional themes of emotional separation from her mother at being raised in a different country, and eventually, physical separation from her mother due to deportation. Rose’s response to this loss of a support system falls in line with the example her mother set her and the example set by many Filipina women, with a small twist. As described in the paper by Valerie Fransisco-Menchavez, there is a strong culture amongst Filipina women who seek to gain financial independence for their families by taking jobs abroad in an effort to send home money. While the situation is reversed in Rose’s situation (she is left behind), the ethos in her desire for financial independence is similar and encouraged her to stand up for herself¹⁷. Her indignation at being treated badly by her aunt’s husband and lack of ease in accepting help is a reflection of a phenomenon described by Gupta wherein Asian Americans, a group associated with the model minority myth, are less likely to seek help in difficult life situations. Rose’s already present hesitation to receive help is actually what helps her leave situations that do not serve her¹⁸.

Read Lena Wilson’s review of the film here.¹⁹

Given the complexity of the storyline and the motivations behind Rose’s choices, I was surprised to find that some critics found the movie to be another white savior film. In a film review by Lena Wilson, the reviewer decries the usage of the trope in the film saying that it was filled with white saviors, but I find this take to be highly reductionist²¹. This approach to film reduced Rose’s identity to a few labels and fails to see the ways in which her identities collide. While it is easy to point to her obvious disadvantages and claim that she was saved by white characters, Rose’s situation as an undocumented child put her in a spot where she could not easily refuse help. Even so, she asserted her agency and refused help when she felt that she was unwelcome or when the help did not match her expectations. In white savior movies, characters of color are made to be endlessly grateful for the actions of the white savior, but in this film, Rose is both grateful for the help she received and motivated to forge her own path. The definition of white saviorism in film form earlier, a messianic white character who saves a lower class, a non-white character from a sad fate, doesn’t apply here. Rose has no messianic white character, she has white characters who offer her temporary aid with ulterior motives. She isn’t saved by any of the white characters, she is ultimately saved by her decision to start working and studying. Calling this movie another white savior film does the story and Rose a great disservice. It invalidates her assertion of agency and sends the message that despite the strength she displayed and the lengths she went to secure her safety and future, it was the passive and more comfortable choices of the white characters that mattered more.