By Audrey Fox

Copyright slashfilm

“The Blind Spot” tells the true (well, sort of) story of Michael Oher, a professional football player who was taken in by a white family and encouraged in his athletic endeavors, allowing him to be the successful NFL alum he eventually became. But there are a few problems with this. First of all, it plays fast and loose with the truth. And not in a “well, we had to condense these parts of the story for time” kind of way. Instead, we’re expected to believe that Michael Oher — a talented athlete — didn’t understand rudimentary concepts of football until his white foster mother (Sandra Bullock) explained them to him in terms he could wrap his head around.

The white savior narrative is strong, sending the message that Black people can only succeed by the grace of white benefactors. It may have won Sandra Bullock a Best Actress Academy Award, but it also earned a mountain of criticism, not least of which came from Michael Oher himself. Public figures are often dissatisfied with the way that they’re portrayed in biopics, but in the case of Oher, the changes to his character are too racially tinged to ignore. He claimed that the film made him look dumb rather than academically disenfranchised and white-washed his relationship with his foster family, who never formally adopted him and allegedly took financial advantage of him once his football career took off. So much for an inspirational sports story.