Great Moments in Representation: How Wesley Morris Helped Expose The 'White Savior' Trope For Good

Greg Ehrhardt, OnScreen Blog Editor

This article is part of our “Great Moments in Representation” series, where we look back at important performances from underrepresented groups in Theatre, TV, and Movies.

Martin Scorsese made news last week when he revealed that he had to rewrite his latest film, ‘Killers of The Flowers Moon’, a movie about a series of Oklahoma murders in the Osage Nation during the 1920s, once he recognized that his initial treatment made the movie ‘all about the white guys’. The movie will now center around a love story between Ernest and Mollie Burkhart and the Osage community.

In a movie starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Robert Deniro, directed by one of our greatest film directors ever, this was a stunning admission; it was a sign that we have made progress in recognizing that not every movie has to be about a white character saving the day.

So, how did we get here?

Many things happened, but one of them was a film review from 2011.

Yes, film criticism does have that power when used well.

Film criticism is a funny thing. We all pretend like it should be a perfectly objective exercise. Either a movie is good, or it is bad. One of the great social media exercises is to get all riled up if a few film critics write negative reviews for a movie with a 98% or higher Rotten Tomato score; we get all hot and bothered that there’s a film critic out there that could possibly hate a movie we all love.

“This critic is stupid! This movie deserves a 100% rotten tomato score!!” is a common paraphrased refrain.

The opposite is also true (and usually leads to funnier jokes).

But the truth is, film criticism is an art, and everyone’s perspective on the film is valid, provided they are taking the movie as seriously as it intends.

Movies, by definition, will mean different things to different people.

To best understand movies, listen to how different groups interpret them.

For example, I liked the “Black Panther” movie, and I gave it a positive review but didn’t particularly like the CGI fest at the end, thus giving it three out of four stars. However, most African-American communities reacted differently, calling it the most important and best superhero movie they had ever seen.

At the time, I didn’t understand that type of reaction, but I shouldn’t have understood it because, to me, a white critic who watches superhero movies for entertainment reasons, it was ultimately just another superhero movie, albeit done and executed very well and very differently than those that came before it.

Now, there will be a variety of opinions for a single movie within a homogeneous group. Still, a homogeneous group will watch it from viewpoints far more limited than those held across America.

This wasn’t a well-recognized concept for decades among film critics. Remember that the film critic communities from the 1950s to the 2000s were filled with white, middle-aged men, with movies often looked through those same lenses.

I believe the most important moment this century for understanding the importance of representation in the film critic community was in 2011, when the movie “The Help” came out. Generally well received, and given the subject matter (a movie about a white reporter exposing the racism black maids faced during the civil rights movement) and the cast pedigree, it was thought to be an Oscar contender at the time, especially considering recent history, when The Blind Side, Avatar, District 9, all white savior movies, were smash hits and all nominated for Best Picture.

That is until Wesley Morris reviewed ‘The Help’ for the Boston Globe.

Wesley Morris is an African-American film critic who started reviewing movies in an era with few African-American film critics in prominent positions. The best estimate is that between 5%-10% of published film critics were African-American then, and very few worked for a major metropolitan newspaper.

(NB: The stats have not improved greatly since then, with a 2018 study showing 82% of published critics were white, and Zippia claims African-Americans represent 6% of critics today. Critic positions are even more imbalanced towards men, but that’s for another column)

Wesley Morris is a gifted film critic for both blockbusters and art house movies; he brought not only his concise prose that cut to the core of the movie in a digestible manner but also an ability to dissect certain movies for their racial attitudes and representations and give a unique perspective to his readers who are typically watching movies for things other than that.

When ‘The Help’ came out in 2011, it was generally expected that this was a movie that black audiences in particular would like because it showcased the importance of the civil rights movement to society.

Except for Morris, the most notable black film critic of the time did not like this movie AT ALL.

You can read the whole review here, but here are the pertinent excerpts:

“The Help’’ joins everything from “To Kill a Mockingbird’’ to “The Blind Side’’ as another Hollywood movie that sees racial progress as the province of white do-gooderism”

“The Help’’ comes out on the losing end of the movies’ social history. The best film roles three black women will have all year require one of them to clean Ron Howard’s daughter’s house. It’s self-reinforcing movie imagery. White boys have always been Captain America. Black women, in one way or another, have always been someone’s maid. These are strong figures, as that restaurant owner might sincerely say, but couldn’t they be strong doing something else? That’s the hardest thing to reconcile about Skeeter’s book and “The Help’’ in general.”

“On one hand, it’s juicy, heartwarming, well-meant entertainment. On the other, it’s an owner’s manual.”

It’s a fantastic piece of film criticism and one that was credited for Morris’ Pulitzer win the following year.

Morris’s review took off on social media and internet publications, giving audiences a pause for what was generally considered an awards contender.

Morris exposed the movie for what it was: a regressive White Savior movie disguised as a progressive black empowerment movie, something even Viola Davis now admits.

White critics making criticisms of ‘The Help’ centering around pandering were not taken as seriously because what would a white critic know about a movie involving the black experience in 1960s Mississippi?

However, Wesley Morris's argument from a major metropolitan newspaper (at the end of the era when that still mattered) gave this line of criticism legitimacy. Because this opinion ran counter to expectations, it was taken seriously.

Remember, white savior movies were very popular, especially white people saving black people movies: ‘Dangerous Minds’ and the aforementioned ‘The Blind Side’ are just two examples. They were popular not because the layperson recognized them as specifically white savior movies but because the character arc is satisfying, and everyone loves a good underdog story.

Today, we recognize white savior movies as generally entertaining but very problematic in messaging.

Most importantly, white savior movies make us ask the same question Morris asked us to ask with The Help:

“Is the white character’s story really the story we need to be telling in a story about a minority character?”

‘The Help’ was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning Octavia Spencer an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Still, I firmly believe without Morris’s review, this movie would have joined the long list of White Savior movies to be nominated for Best Picture and maybe win.

If ‘Killers of The Flower Moon’ was made in 2010, no one, including Scorsese, bats an eye about centering the movie around a white character’s investigation of the crimes instead of the underrepresented Osage community.

Eyes are being batted now, and since we’re remaking almost every movie these days, perhaps we can remake The Blind Side or Dangerous Minds and focus it around the characters the story really belongs to.

That’s why representation matters, especially in film criticism.

FilmChristopher PetersonGreg Ehrhardt, Great Moments in Representation