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They say hindsight is 20\/20 and, historically, stories about real BIPOC characters in both mainstream film and television have had an obstructed, blurred, or blinded view\u2014depending on the topic. This hindsight is better known as<\/span> “<\/span><\/i>The White Gaze<\/b>.” This refers to <\/span>the assumption that the default observer, i.e. the film’s viewer, is coming from the perspective of someone who identifies as white, or that people of color sometimes feel the need to take into account the white observer’s reaction.<\/span><\/p>\n “One of the oldest literary devices in fiction involves using a central character as a proxy for the audience,” wrote David Dennis, acclaimed writer on race and culture, for <\/span>Uproxx<\/span><\/i><\/a>. “Unfortunately, the newcomer-as-audience trope rears its head far too often in movies about Black culture, and Hollywood loves making that newcomer a white person. So what happens is the Black culture is seen through a white gaze, silencing the Black perspective.”<\/span><\/p>\n This \u201cgaze\u201d can be seen in characters portrayed by Hattie McDaniel in <\/span>Gone with the Wind<\/span><\/i> and Viola Davis in <\/span>The Help. <\/span><\/i>Both films<\/span> depicted women of color as stereotypes: subservient domestic help with no agency, a typical view in cinema of BIPOC women who are of a lower economic and social status. [Davis later expressed regret for making <\/a>The Help: <\/i>“At the end of the day that it wasn\u2019t the voices of the maids that were heard.”]<\/span><\/p>\n Publicity photo for Gone with the Wind featuring Hattie McDaniel, Olivia de Havilland, and Vivien Leigh<\/p><\/div>\n Though there have been incredible strides toward diversity over the past decade, this short-sightedness persists in many mainstream Hollywood films. To understand the lens through which this gaze creates false identities, let\u2019s start with the obstructed view in a trope known in critical circles as \u201cThe White Savior.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n A 2016 Oscar nominee for Best Picture,<\/span> Hidden Figures<\/span><\/i> (written by Allision Schroeder and directed by Theodore Melfi) is a classic example of a white savior movie. This film is about three Black women who were exceptional mathematicians at NASA during the space race. In the film, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) saves the leading lady, Katherine Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), from running a mile across the Langley campus to use the Colored Only restroom. He was the one who saved her from the public humiliation of either relieving herself in a cup, or sprinting to another building because she couldn\u2019t use the whites-only restroom in the facility she worked at. When I saw this on screen, it didn\u2019t ring true that she wouldn\u2019t stand up for herself. This character had the confidence to get an advanced degree in mathematics but didn\u2019t have the gall to demand equality in the workplace.<\/span><\/p>\n From Harriet Tubman to Stacey Y. Abrams, Black women have an extensive history of being activists and catalysts for social change. In reality, Katherine didn\u2019t passively wait to be saved.<\/span><\/p>\n *In real life, Johnson did refuse to use the Colored bathrooms, noted Dexter Thomas for <\/span>Vice<\/span><\/i><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c’I just went on in the white one,’ she said. She asked the film\u2019s director, Theodore Melfi, why he had chosen to include a scene that never happened, and whether he thought portraying Johnson as being saved by a benevolent white character diminished what she did in real life.”<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c[The director] said he didn\u2019t see a problem with adding a white hero into the story. \u2018There needs to be white people who do the right thing, there needs to be Black people who do the right thing,\u2019 Melfi said. \u2018And someone does the right thing. And so who cares who does the right thing, as long as the right thing is achieved?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"Publicity](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/8\/8d\/Gone_With_The_Wind_featuring_McDaniel_%26_de_Havilland_%26_Leigh.jpg\/1024px-Gone_With_The_Wind_featuring_McDaniel_%26_de_Havilland_%26_Leigh.jpg\")
“The White Savior”<\/b><\/h3>\n