Baseball is viewed at large as the great American sport, and it has likewise inspired it’s fair share of movies, from inspirational like The Pride of the Yankees (1942), to the comical like Bull Durham (1988), to movies that do both like A League of Their Own (1992). But the other great American sport known as American Football hasn’t really left a cinematic mark in the same way Baseball does, despite being a much bigger and wealthier sports league. In fact, there are far more popular movies devoted to lower league football then there is of the NFL, at least when it comes to the ones that people remember. College Football left it’s mark with the classic Rudy (1993), about a plucky underdog who finally gets his shot playing for Notre Dame. High school football also has given us some memorable films, like Friday Night Lights (2004). But when we think of memorable movies about the professional football league, it usually centers on underdog stories about true life individuals who battled against the odds to get to the league. This is true of movies like the Mark Wahlberg headlined Invincible (2006). But, when inspirational movies are the things that draw people in for a movie about football, the tendency can sometimes be for the filmmakers to take some liberties with the story they are telling to make their narratives more cinematic. It’s harmless if the movie still sticks to the heart of what it needs to be about, namely how their subject beat the odds. But it also opens up the movie to become more manipulative too, and that can sometimes be a dangerous thing if there is an agenda behind the making of the film that intends to distort what really happened. Sadly this is the situation with a very flawed rags to riches football movie known as The Blind Side (2009). While it isn’t the only sports movie to ever play fast and loose with it’s history, the changes that were made to the true story of it’s subject have since revealed it to be a rather exploitative film over time, and one that gets even more problematic after learning all the things that have come to life since then about the subject as well.
The Blind Side tells the story of Michael Oher, a young man raised in terrible conditions who through the charitable support of the affluent Tuohy family was able to get a football scholarship to play for Ole Miss, which then led to him being drafted into the NFL in the first round. Oher would play 7 seasons in the NFL, including a Super Bowl winning season with the Baltimore Ravens, before he was cut in 2017 due to an injury. Oher’s rags to riches storyline caught the attention of author Michael Lewis, a non-fiction writer known for chronicling major financial events and scandals in his books. He had previously written a best-selling book about team management in Baseball with the acclaimed Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), which of course would be adapted into an Oscar nominated film in 2011 starring Brad Pitt. His follow-up book would stick in the world of intersecting sports with competitive strategy similar to those found in the financial world, and that book would be The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. Contrary to what you may think, Michael Oher is not the main subject of Lewis’ book, but is rather a featured player whose storyline is part of Lewis’ larger narrative about how professional football has evolved over the years, particularly with the way players are recruited now. While there was a lot of fascinating information detailed throughout the book, many people latched onto the narrative involving Michael Oher’s journey to the NFL. One of the main reasons why Oher’s storyline became such a prominent part of the book is because Lewis was familiar with the Tuohy family already; he was former classmates with Sean Tuohy, the father in the story. This access allowed him to observe Oher’s rise first hand, and that helped to give the book a more personal touch overall. Of course, Hollywood took notice of this inspirational story, and the book was quickly optioned for a movie adaptation, particularly focused on Oher and the Tuohy story. You would think that this would lead to a nuanced exploration of the way Oher’s rise to NFL stardom represented a shift in the way the sport of football rosters are managed these days, but sadly that is not what we ended up with.
The fundamental flaw with the movie is that it forgets who the movie should be about in the first place. Michael Oher is sadly treated as little more than a prop in this movie as it’s the Tuohy family that gets most of the focus. More specifically, the matriarch of the family, Leigh Anne Tuohy is the primary focus of this story. One of the reasons for this is because it made the project more attractive as an awards worthy vehicle for an A-list actress to take. And that’s exactly what led to the casting of Sandra Bullock for the role. Bullock, up to this point, had been one of the most consistently successful actresses working in Hollywood over the last decade. But, she was also viewed as something of a genre performer as well, seen as more comfortable performing in comedies and romances rather than in a “serious” role. This was the era of Miss Congeniality (2000) and Two Weeks Notice (2002), which gave her a lot of box office wins, but no gold on her shelf. All the while, Bullock was still building up the reputation of being one of the nicest and most charitable people in show business, so she wasn’t without her admirers. The industry wanted to show their love for Sandra Bullock, but the right role just never surfaced for her. And then came the big year of 2009, which was where Sandra finally seemed to break through. She had a critically panned comedy in the spring called All About Steve (2009) which bombed pretty hard, but on the heals of that was the surprise box office hit, The Proposal (2009), co-starring Ryan Reynolds. So Sandra Bullock was already riding a wave once her more “serious” movie The Blind Side was about to hit theaters. The movie itself was received with mixed reactions by critics, but it was warmly embraced by audiences, giving Sandra yet another box office win. And come awards season, Sandra seemed to be a clear front runner for the coveted Best Actress prize, and sure enough that momentum carried her all the way to Oscar night. After a long, storied career, Sandra Bullock was now finally an Oscar winner, and still being the ever self-effacing type, she opened her Oscar speech saying, “Did I really win this, or did I just wear you all down.”
If the intention of this movie was to give Sandra Bullock the kind of role that would finally win her an Oscar, than job well done. But, the shift that it took to put her character into the central role of the movie did so at the expense of telling the more compelling story of Michael Oher. Oher’s story is greatly reduced to him being found by the Tuohy family while he was homeless and having them build him into the star athlete that he would become. The Tuohys as a result, and more than anything the character of Leigh Anne, come across as much more of the driving force in his life, while Michael remains this passive figure in his own story. Of the many falsehoods told in the film, the biggest one would be that Leigh Anne was the one who introduced Michael to the sport of football. In reality, Michael had already been playing the sport for many years before he had met the Tuohy family. One crucial fact from the book that the movie leaves out is that Michael had been supported by multiple foster families over the years as he kept working on his talents as a football player. The Tuohys were only one of the families he had relied upon for support, and were the ones most crucial for steering him towards choosing Ole Miss as the school he wanted to play for, given that it was their own alma mater. He did live with Tuohys during his final year in high school, and they were the people he relied upon throughout his college career, at one point naming them as his adoptive family. But that’s where the movie deviates from the truth. This movie glorifies the Tuohy family much more than it does Michael. Michael is almost insultingly without personality in this movie. This would become a contentious point many years later, as Michael Oher would come to object to the way that he was portrayed in the film. The movie makes him out to be like a simpleton; a sad puppy that needed nurturing in order to become whole again. While the movie wants us to be inspired by Michael’s transformation, it forgets to treat him as anything other than an archetype.
The Blind Side unfortunately is one of the most blatant examples of what has been called a “white savior” narrative. It’s where Hollywood creates a story about an oppressed people, but frames it’s from the point of view of the un-oppressed person who takes it upon themselves to help those in need. Often it’s a white character whose personal journey intersects with a community of color, and they become the difference makers in the end in the pursuit of justice, while at the same time robbing the agency of the oppressed group themselves in their own struggle. Think movies like Dances With Wolves (1990), or The Help (2011), or Green Book (2018). Even a sci-fi flick like Avatar (2009) still falls into the same tropes. There are nuanced ways to portray these kinds of stories, like my favorite movie of all time Lawrence of Arabia (1962) where the oppressed group still has agency in their own destiny and the “white savior” is not without some major flaws. But the worst offenders of this type of film often are the ones where they seem to just exist to reinforce the power structure of race dynamics. We unfortunately are no where near resolving race relations in America, and if anything things are growing worse. And it just makes movies like The Blind Side come off as naive and pandering. It’s a movie made purely for a white audience to make themselves feel better about racial issues. This is largely what “white savior” movies do, which is to present a movie about racial issues, but make the audience identify most with the “good” white characters who stand up to the bigotry of the “bad” white characters, presenting a very superficial portrayal of what makes racism a societal problem that we still live with today. It unfortunately treats the minority characters as superfluous beings, there merely to be victims to be saved. As history has shown, minorities don’t rise up out of the generosity of enlightened white people, but often because they are brought to the point where they have no other choice than to take the initiative themselves. Sadly, Hollywood for the longest time has never seen the need to tell the story from this perspective, because they’ve always been under the mistaken assumption that a movie will only succeed if it caters to a white audience first and foremost. Thankfully with the rise of filmmakers like Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, and Ryan Coogler, we are seeing more movies being made today that tell the story of race in a America from the point of view of the oppressed, but unfortunately, there are still too many movies like The Blind Side that still get most of the money out of Hollywood.
Where the story of The Blind Side takes a darker turn into an even more loathsome place is the reality that has come in the wake of the movie being released. Fourteen years after the movie came out, Michael Oher was ready to tell his side of the story when he began to write his memoir. In 2023, he made a discovery while researching his time with the Tuohys that has fundamentally changed his relationship with them, and reframed everything he thought he knew about his time with them. He had always thought that the Tuohy family had formally adopted him when he turned 18, shortly before he graduated high school and went off to play for Ole Miss. But in his research, he found out that the paperwork that they had him sign back then was not for adoption, but instead was to put him legally into a conservatorship. In a conservatorship, the guardian has full control over the the conservatee’s personal affairs, including all financial decisions. This meant that the Tuohys had final say over Michael Oher’s future earnings, especially with regards to the rights over his own life story. Despite having significant control over Oher’s financial future, they thankfully never exploited it once he made a lucrative career in football, which is perhaps why such a thing went unnoticed for so long over the years. But, upon learning of his conservatorship status, which at the time was still active in 2023, Oher began to wonder how much he was actually being denied over the years in compensation as the Tuohy family gained fame and recognition off of his name due to the success of the movie. Oher took it upon himself to file a lawsuit against the Tuohys, seeking an end to the conservatorship and issue an injunction barring them from ever using his name or likeness in their own self promotional dealings. He also wanted them to stop them from calling themselves his adoptive family. This was certainly a blow for the Tuohys, considering the fact that they’ve used the success of the book and film to boost their own profile, particularly as motivational speakers and celebrities in right wing political circles. Loosing their connection to Michael Oher’s story would be significant to their profile, but they indeed misled the public about their true relationship with Michael by repeatedly stating that he was adopted into their family. In 2024, both sides settled, with the Tuohys removing all references to their “adoption” of Michael Oher from their website and pledging to honor that agreement moving forward.
All of this points to The Blind Side being not just a bad “white savior” story line, but also a dangerous one, because it’s based around a blatant lie. The Tuohy family made Michael Oher believe for years that he was adopted when he wasn’t, and that their financial success over the years was built around the fact that they owned the rights to Oher’s life story, and he did not. Oher did not pursue holding them financially liable, given that he himself had already done well enough because of his time in the NFL. What his lawsuit was meant to do was to give him back control over his own narrative. That’s the reason why The Blind Side feels so icky now, because it’s not insightful about the issue of race and instead uses it as an ego trip for the white people who had control over the story from the very beginning. The movie makes it appear that the Tuohys were responsible for giving Michael Oher the talent to play football with their financial support and stable household, which is just a flat out lie. The most shameless moment in the movie is where Leigh Anne sidelines the coach and tells Michael the fundamentals of the game. It’s a moment purely there to make Leigh Anne look like a badass mama bear and to give Sandra Bullock another highlight reel acting moment. But, as Michael Oher has pointed out in telling his own story, he lived with many other families who all supported his pursuit in playing the game of football. By the time he met the Tuohys, he was already a star athlete. But the even more damaging thing that happened to Michael Oher is that the movie presented him as this pathetic individual who needed to be saved. It took a toll on people’s public perception of him, with many believing he was uneducated and a loner. In an interview during his lawsuit, he stated that “when you go into a locker room and your teammates don’t think you can learn a playbook, that weighs heavy.” So, in controlling the narrative around Michael Oher’s life story, the Tuohys may have ended up driving him further away, because his life has not been made better by the movie, but theirs had.
The movie itself is mediocre at best, but it’s made all the worse when you discover the whole truth around it. Michael Oher may not have been exploited by the Tuohys before the movie came out, but he certainly was after. The Blind Side is purely built to reinforce the idea that racial harmony has been achieved in America, but all that is now shown to be a lie. Michael Oher had to put a stop to the Tuohys using his story for their own aggrandizement so that he could finally tell his own story from his perspective. In doing so, he’s shone a light on the still existing lack of agency that minorities still have in talking about racial issues in a media landscape. The rise of the internet has allowed for better access to hearing stories from all kinds of oppressed groups around the world, but Hollywood is only just recently getting around to allowing people of color to be the ones to tell stories from their point of view. Before, the “white savior” perspective was the only way to draw attention to racial issues on film, because the industry was still under the mistaken impression that a white audience must be catered to first and foremost in order for a movie to make its money back. While movies like Dances With Wolves, The Help, and The Blind Side may have been made with good intentions, they nonetheless come off as patronizing to the minority characters who don’t seem to matter as much. Things are changing for the better though, as witnessed by Sinners’ record breaking 16 nominations at the Oscars; a movie where the only prominent white character is a literal vampire. People of color have more platforms to tell their stories their way, and that is thankfully making movies like The Blind Side more antiquated than ever. The best thing you can say for the movie is that it did finally get Sandra Bullock an Oscar, though her much better career defining performance would come later in Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity (2013), a movie where she would’ve deserved her Oscar a lot more. But, the worst part of this movie’s existence is that it robbed Michael Oher of the chance to have his story told the right way on the big screen. In the end, we see a version of him that makes him look weak and sad, which is an insult to his true achievements as a star NFL player. At least in the end he managed to reclaim his agency and put a stop to people like the Tuohys who were boosting themselves up over his success. That’s a positive sign that the “white savior” trope is loosing it’s hold in Hollywood, because this movie showed us all the harm it truly does to someone who has lost control over his own image.
