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Movies were big on “white devil” narratives in 2018

In Green Book, the story of a Black concert pianist (Mahershala Ali) who stubbornly embarks on a tour of the Jim Crow south, is supplanted by the story of the white guy (Viggo Mortensen) who drives him there.

Sure, Peter Farrelly’s odd couple comedy has charms, but that doesn’t break Green Book away from perpetuating the classic white saviour narrative, along with the exceptional Black man trope. I was surprised it could still exist at a time when we have The Hate U Give and If Beale Street Could Talk tackling racism from a Black perspective, and refusing to centre whiteness.

But not only does it exist, it won the People’s Choice Award at TIFF and best picture at the National Board of Review. Despite Green Book’s popularity, the white saviour’s inverse has risen to prominence in recent years, particularly in 2018.

Terence Nance’s HBO sketch series Random Acts Of Flyness satirized white saviour movies like Blood Diamond and Avatar with a segment about a white actor/producer named Joel (Paul Sparks) who wants to make a movie about Africans in a war-torn country. Joel scours footage for a peripheral white person to centre the story on so he can star and go for Oscar glory.

The same episode includes a visual essay on “white devils” in an extension of an abstract Nance published two years ago called White Angel/White Devil.

“The function of the persistence of the white angel archetype (the same as white saviour) in film is to mythologize and romanticize whiteness throughout a history in which it had no (heroic) part,” the New York-based filmmaker wrote. He goes on to explain how the archetype soothes white guilt while also consolidating economic and social power.

White devils, according to Nance, are the Walter Whites and Tony Sopranos – antiheroes who reassert white (usually male) dominance, but as criminals.

That Nance sees a connection between the white angel and white devil narratives is interesting. He argues that when the former feels outmoded, Hollywood flocks to the latter as an alternative way to re-centre whiteness.

The fascinating thing is that white devil narratives seek out exceptional white criminals in the same way that white saviour narratives look for an exceptional Black man to warm the bigoted heart of both a lead character and the audience.

I would argue that white male supremacy already exists not because “white people are the best at everything,” as Nance, playing devil’s advocate, puts it, but because society must ensure they succeed at everything – in movies or real life.

Two years ago, Toronto activist Desmond Cole wrote a withering take on how police and the media painted “The Lunchtime Bandit” in rosy hues by making pleasant assumptions about the suspect just because he was white.

Police Inspector Mike Earl described Michael Lilly, who was eventually charged in connection with five bank robberies, as “preppy” and “a clean-cut individual that probably doesn’t fit this mould.” The rest of his comments sound like a movie pitch: “Maybe [the suspect’s] an educated individual and this is his only hope to get some kind of money.”

Privileging white criminals in Toronto goes all the way back to 60s-era bandit Edwin Boyd – aka “the gentleman bank robber” – who was the subject of Nathan Morlando’s 2011 movie Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster.

That white criminals are considered exceptional was entirely the point in the Safdie Brothers’ brilliant 2017 thriller Good Time, starring Robert Pattinson as a low-level crook who gets away with shit simply by shifting attention to Black people who cross his path.

So how are white devils faring in 2018?

This year, they were the subjects of The Mule, White Boy Rick, The Old Man & The Gun and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, all films that treat Caucasian culprits with an empathetic eye rarely afforded to non-white criminals. On TV, there was also Ben Stiller’s prison break series Escape At Dannemora.

Director Marielle Heller’s biopic of literary fraudster Lee Israel, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, doesn’t fall into narrative clichés, partially because the characters  – played so winningly by Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant – are queer and marginalized from vaunted New York literary circles. Rather than a celebration of their criminal exploits, their money-making enterprise becomes the abrasive Israel’s gateway to meaningful companionship.

White Boy Rick centres a white criminal’s story – that of drug dealer and teen FBI informant Richard Wershe Jr. (Richie Merritt) – but it also recognizes the privilege he enjoys. There’s an emphasis on the “white boy” in the title. Without calling attention to itself, the movie observes how the FBI nurture Wershe’s drug-dealing career so that he can be their informant against his Black counterparts in Detroit.

Nance could probably dedicate an entire paper to Clint Eastwood. The actor and filmmaker was a white saviour in Gran Torino, playing an aging racist who finds redemption in protecting a young Asian boy from falling in with the wrong crowd. And he was angel and devil in his Oscar-winning western Unforgiven.

He plays a white devil in The Mule, inspired by Second World War veteran Leo Sharp, who was busted at age 87 for drug running for the international Sinaloa cartel. Eastwood’s Earl comes off more dignified than his real-life counterpart. But the film does make a point about Earl/Leo’s privilege – his success predicated on his age, skin colour and “folksy style,” which allowed him to run drugs undetected for a decade. The DEA, hunting for a trafficker driving a black truck, kept looking past Eastwood’s character while targeting POCs.

The Showtime series Escape At Dannemora addressed privilege that led to real-life inmates Richard Matt (Benicio Del Toro) and David Sweat (Paul Dano) escaping from a max security prison. They had help from employee Tilly Mitchell (Patricia Arquette) who has sex with them in secret. The show presents a stark contrast between Mitchell’s attraction to Matt and Sweat and her disdain for Black inmates. The exceptional circumstance that led to their headline-making break was predicated on who a white prison employee deemed fuckable.

The year’s most fawning portrayal of a white criminal is David Lowery’s The Old Man & The Gun, made with a 70s varnish that romanticizes the exploits of real-life serial bank robber and prison escape artist Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford). Never questioning how Tucker’s whiteness helped him get away with his long list of crimes, the film blushes at Tucker’s charm, closing in on every wrinkle in his smile, indulging his politeness and wit, and conflating his refusal to quit with the aura around Redford’s final movie role. Lowery even uses clips from old Redford films in flashbacks, the love for the criminal’s exploits fully merged with Redford’s storied career.

Lowery also casts Danny Glover in a conspicuous role. The former Lethal Weapon star plays Tucker’s associate Theodore Green, who in real life was white. Lowery doesn’t meaningfully probe this racial re-write apart from casting a Black man to be the inferior criminal. Green is the reason Tucker gets caught.

Diversifying The Old Man & The Gun’s story reeks of white guilt: it inscribes a Black presence in the film without having a conversation about white privilege.

Here’s where Nance makes a connection between white angels and white devils. White saviour narratives assuage “white guilt,” giving audiences a narrative about racism while also centring a white conduit they can identify with. White devil stories find new ways to assuage white guilt – whether acknowledging privilege in Good Time, White Boy Rick and Escape At Dannemora, or by adding diversity into a cast where it matters least.

You couldn’t escape white guilt this year, but the best refuge from it might be – oh, I don’t know – a film made by someone who’s not white.

@JustSayRad

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