Critical Media Literacy: The Blind Side Michael Oher is portrayed as an outsider throughout The Blind Side. Oher is the biggest kid a Briarcrest Christian Academy and comes from an impoverished family from the inner-city neighborhood Hurts Village. Michaels Ohers acting during the film is depicted as extremely shy and lonely as he is not sure how to fit into his new surroundings, or how to make friends with his new wealthy white classmates. Opportunity for success is equally available to anyone, yet the film The Blind Side preserves a myth of white superiority and has a heavy-handed undertone that portrays people of color to be destined for lives of crime unless they meet white people. The Blind Side strengthens racial ideologies against people of color as a threatful and an abandoned …show more content…
The few scenes from Sandra Bullocks perspective in Hurtsvillage shows all the black men near Oher’s home are depicted as violent and thuggish, as seen in the photo bellow. This leads to the scene in The Blind Side where Sandra Bullock threatening to shoot and kill a black man that spoke out to her with the gun she is “always packing.” If the roles were to have been reversed the entire scene would be played out differently. Charges would be pressed against him, and he would have been found guilty promptly and be sent to prison. The man in the photo was showing no physical aggression to Sandra Bullock, yet she felt that him talking to her was enough to promptly use a sign of defense, claiming that she could shoot him if she so pleased. These portrayals are implicitly racist, originating from stereotypes of urban blackness. Threats about life should not be taken lightly, yet Sandra Bullocks threat is not seen as so. As quoted from the movie, “I’m in a prayer group with the DA, I’m a member of the NRA,” this apparently immorally excuses her for wanting to shoot a black