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John Brown is going to be the next anti-slavery partisan who will be branded a "white savior" isn't he?
Trust me, he will. Mark my words. Screenshot this as a receipt if you have to.
Trust me, he will. Mark my words. Screenshot this as a receipt if you have to.
"White savior" is actually a legit concept. Even many mainstream abolitionists despite their opposition to slavery, did have a smiley faced paternalistic racist view of blacks as children who they had to "act for" rather than "act with". You can find other examples elsewhere.
But, particularly in cultural & film criticism, "white savior", is simply deployed as a meaningless term of abuse by more radical than thou poseurs who suddenly have tapped into their inner Malcolm X/Marcus Garvey. You end up pathologising decent expressions of human solidarity.
For example, I keep on reading the "white savior" criticism of Glory & in more recent times Free State of Jones. I get instinctive sensitivity to 'race' films where the main characters are white, but I don't see how anyone who has watched both films could honestly...
designate them as just another addition to the "white savior" genre. They just aren't that. Critics & commentators who do so are just robotically regurgitating these hackneyed talking points & catchphrases to polish off their "radical" pretensions.
Now, for a film such as The Help, that's different. We're talking about garbage in that case, regardless of the racial and gender politics, its simply a garbage film.
