How come "white savior" movies are getting a bad rep lately?

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When I suggest to my friends that we could watch a movie like District 9 or The Last Samurai, they say they don't want to watch those movies cause they are white savior movies. I had to look up that term as I was unfamiliar with it, but it seems to be growing pretty popular now, after looking it up. But why are white savior stories bad really?

Isn't the white savior ideal more dramatic and powerful in the sense, that since the white race has colonized so many areas of the world, that it makes it more accessible to have a white hero turning against their own people? That way you have a dramatic betrayal, instead of a total 100% of us vs. them philosophy.

I mean if in To Kill A Mockingbird for example of Atticus Finch was a black attorney, I think the story would have actually been worse, cause then no white person sees what is right then, and it's too black and white then, pardon the unintentional pun.

Does that make sense?

And the theme of stories like District 9, Avatar, Dances with Wolves, or The Last Samurai is how not everyone in the race of villains is going to see things there way. So I think it's a powerful theme, but for some reason, the movies are giving a bad rep cause of this 'white savior' stigma.

But what do you think? Do I have a point, or would movies be better off if it was one race against another, and there were no betrayals at all?

No, and what you posted could be construed as a racist statement.Wrong. Atticus Finch was portrayed by Gregory Peck, who was white.Not to me."The Last Samurai" feature Asians. "Avatar" featured blue-skinned space aliens. "District 9" featured space aliens that could infect Terrestrials and turn them into space aliens.I think that focusing on racist topics could get you banned.

Oh sorry I didn't mean to come off as racist, I certainly am not, I just thought I would ask about it since these types of movies are being categorized in a certain stigma by people it seems.

And I know Atticus Finch was white, I was just using that as an example, if he wasn't that that would not have made the movie better if he wasn't a white savior.

But I don't mean to stir up any anything inappropriate when discussing it though.

Why are we even talking about such doggerel? The very reason I won't watch movies produced later than about 2000 is that they're all infected with PC nonsense.

McCarthy thought Hollywood had a Marxist problem in the 50s - he was off by fifty years.

From the Hollywood standpoint, it makes more sense if the hero is white. Movies are expensive to make; studios know they would lose a fortune if, say, the heroes of The Last Samurai, Great Wall, Blood Diamond, The Power of One, Prince of Persia, Dragonball: Evolution, The Last Airbender, Genghis Khan, Ghost in the Shell, or even Green Book weren't white.

Hell, even TV utilized this formula when they whitewashed Kung Fu with David Carradine as Kwai Chang Cain or thought it was better if Bruce Lee wore a mask in Green Hornet because people weren't ready for an Asian hero.

The bad rep comes from the fact that, here we are in 2019, and this sort of Hollywood behavior persists. To wit: Tilda Swinton's character in Doctor Strange is supposed to be an old Asian man from the Himalayas. Emma Stone's character in Aloha is supposed to be a mixed Asian woman.

Abstracting away from the racist and false implication that non-whites were too inept to overthrow their colonial oppressors without a white guy leading them, the problem with white savior stories is they are over done, and don't necessarily take into account global audiences, which is bad business in this era of globalization.

To be fair white savior movies were an effective way to introduce white audiences to new worlds. Thrusting an audience into an unfamiliar setting all at once can be confusing. By making the hero of the story white, movie creators could start white audiences off with a familiar setting and then have them gradually explore a new setting through the eyes of the protagonist. I myself am guilty of this with my own writing. The first chapter of my fantasy novel starts with an elf named Arevelion visiting, what is to him, a new continent, but its clear from the onset that elfin culture and society are modeled after 1800s England. So in a way I am starting the novel from the point of view of white culture. To be fair to myself, I diluted the effect by making Arevelion one of five main characters, and by having the proceeding chapters focus on the other main characters who are native to the continent. In addition Arevelion is no more a "savior" than the other main characters. Still I must confess the essence is there.

Still, white savior movies are becoming obsolete. The growing world economy, and the advent of online streaming means there is increasingly more money to be made by taking into account non-white audiences. Besides with good writing throwing your audience into a new culture and nation is possible because of our shared humanity. For example, I am not Indian, but I can empathize with the characters of the ancient Indian epic the mahabharata because of our shared humanity. This would even be possible with the aliens of district 9 or Avatar, because the aliens of both of those movies are very human-like in their behavior and emotions.

It's overly PC nonsense. There's no shortage of actual 'white saviors' in real life, because generally white people are in more positions of power and influence. The notion that there's an overabundance of these stories in fiction bears merit and discussion, but to discount the worth of art entirely on containing that premise is absurd reductionism, and in itself racist and ignorant.

I don't think it's fair to call Atticus a "white savior", he was just a guy trying to do the right thing (unsuccessfully I might add) who happened to be white.

And I can't stand white savior movies either because it's racist politically correct BS. It implies that non-white people are incable of helping themselves without the help of a white person.

There's a HUGE difference between not being racist and wanting another race to look up to you as their "white savior" because you want to prove you're not racist while at the same time looking down on people of color with condenscending compassion.

Slightly off-topic, but re. The Last Samurai; I've seen this criticism before, by people who saw that movie and came away with the impression that "the last samurai" refers to Cruises character, which I find bizarre.

A few examples of white savior movies I personally can't stand:

The Magnificent Seven
Glory
Daernery's subplots in Game of Thrones
Avatar (they're aliens but it still implies the same crap)

And I love The Green Mile and To Kill A Mockingbird (well I like the book version of TKAMB ).

I don't really see those as white savior stories because the two main characters Paul and Atticus were unable to save John or Tom. In fact Paul really wasn't even concerned about trying to save John from death row until the very end but John refused to let Paul help him escape because he actually wanted to leave this world because people "are so ugly to each other" and he also didn't want to get Paul into trouble.

Neither Atticus nor Paul wanted to be viewed as heroes for trying to help a black man, they just wanted to do the right thing because they knew that Tom and John were innocent.

I haven't really seen the movie, but I did read To Kill a Mocking Bird in high school. I sort of took the story as Scout, the main character, being show the moral integrity of her father through his actions, regardless of how much the system was against him. Not about being a saviour of black people, since it ends badly, but Scout seeing true strength of someone against injustice.

Wikus of District 9 is not much of a saviour either, I thought it was pretty clear that the guy is meant to be flawed and against how he likes to think he is rational at the beginning, his bias comes out and only really starts to change some opinions when it personally affects him. Most of the stuff too he does for selfish reasons of getting back to normal, and the end has him alone in the trash, relying on the good nature of the real hero acting better than him.

I agree about To Kill A Mockingbird, children live through example and Scout and Jem had a great example for a father.

SPOILERS WARNING

And I never saw District 9 but that sounds kind of like what Paul was going through in The Green Mile. He could be pretty selfish himself taking advantage of John's miracle healing powers even putting John at risk to help a friend of his, and even though he was a lot nicer to the death row inmates than Percy he still did things that were kind of not nice like when he lied to Del about taking his pet mouse Mr. Janggles to a mouse circus after his execution just to keep him from being upset and when Percy told Del the truth just to hurt his feelings right before his execution you could see the look of shame on Paul's face.

Towards the end of the movie Paul had to take a long look in the mirror and realize he wasn't really as nice as he thought he was and when he was cursed with a very long life after executing John he saw it as his punishment for "killing a miracle of God".

Less of an example of being a saviour, and more of an example of being right goes beyond not just being outwardly hateful.

I recommend checking out District 9, TW1ZTY. It is a good turn on the expected alien invasion story, that humans can be monsters, still keeping the aliens feel pretty alien that you could see why people may act such a way, but still connect with them.

I dunno... I kind of hate all these "humans are the real monsters" movies lately. They're so depressing and cynical and it's like they discourage everybody from making any kind of effort to do the right thing.

I prefer hopeful movies about people or individuals reedeming themselves and trying to do better. There are indeed monsterous people in this world who are completely hopeless (sociopaths and narcissists), and then there are people who do monsterous things but are still capable of feeling remourse and regret. I prefer to focus on the later.