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Content advisory: untagged spoilers for like a dozen movies below!
The other day I watched A Man Called Otto, Tom Hanks' 2022 remake of a Swedish movie (En man som heter Ove, based on a book of the same name) about an elderly man whose suicide attempt is interrupted by an Iranian immigrant, who gradually teaches him to live again. The Hanks edition hits a variety of CW notes; the Iranian is replaced with a Hispanic woman, the Swedish ending depicting Ove's reunion with his deceased wife in the afterlife is gone, and a homosexual character is replaced with a trans character (hashtag-gay-erasure). But there is one CW note in particular that really stood out to me. At the end of the movie, Otto dies and leaves his house and his car to the Hispanic woman, as well as enough money to fund the education of her three Hispanic children.
Maybe this would not have stood out to me had I not coincidentally recently re-watched the 2013's middling dystopic sci-fi, Elysium. If you've not seen this one, it is a story about an unusually talented blue collar laborer played by Matt Damon, presumably because everyone liked him as an unusually talented blue collar laborer in Stillwater, Good Will Hunting, and, uh, that artist guy in Titanic maybe? (Kidding!) Anyway this time blue-collared Matt lives in a Los Angeles peopled entirely by Mexicans (except for him), who spend most of their time trying to cross the border of space (illegally) so they can get high-tech medical treatment aboard the space station where all the billionaires moved when Earth got too crowded or warm or, who knows. For unimportant reasons, Matt finds that he's dying, so he goes to his
coyoteuhhuman traffickerspaceship launching ex (crime) boss to... Jesus Christ, who wrote this movie? Anyway, the moral of the story is that Matt gives his life to save the life of a young Hispanic girl while also making everyone on Earth a "citizen" so that suddenly the boundless healthcare resources the billionaires have been hoarding for no reason at all can be immediately deployed to cure all illness on Earth, the end.So this got me thinking about other movies I've seen with the same central beat: selfish single white male with nothing to lose learns to care again by temporarily filling the role of mentor or savior to a not-white young person, then gives (often, loses) everything so the not-white youngster can inherit a brighter future. Gran Torino (2008). Snowpiercer (2013).
But while many lists of "problematic white savior" movies include these titles, I feel like there's a distinction to be drawn where the not-white character is treated as a successor, rather than as a success. In Finding Forrester (2000), there's a not-white successor, but the "white savior" doesn't especially give anything up. In The Blind Side (2009) the "white savior" isn't looking for a successor (despite the professed concerns of the NCAA).
And I don't think that it's quite the same phenomenon as "expendable man dies for the woman he loves." Never mind that I already mentioned Titanic (1997)--the Bond movie No Time To Die (2021) might be what I'm talking about if Bond had died to save Nomi instead of Madeleine, but (to the best of my recollection!) he did not. I suppose Luke Skywalker biting it to preserve Palpatine's bloodline might be an example of what I'm talking about--definitely would if Rey was not-white, and definitely would if the sequels had focused more on Finn becoming a Jedi.
So I feel like I've identified four clear examples of the trope I'm spotting (to review: A Man Called Otto, Elysium, Gran Torino, Snowpiercer). I know better than to expect TVTropes to have a "non-straight-white-hypercapable-male successor" trope, but I did look around and do not think that Changing of the Guard, Take Up My Sword, Taking Up the Mantle, White Man's Burden, or similar tropes quite apply. Likewise, many people will identify the trope I have in mind as a (correspondingly problematic) "white savior" story, except that most "white savior" stories aren't BIPOC successor stories. Rather, this is taking the expendability of men--long a cultural staple in the West--and mixing it up with a not-even-remotely-subtle hint at White Replacement.
I think the reason I even noticed the pattern is that I have a long fascination with Rudyard Kipling's infamous poem, "The White Man's Burden." Specifically, the people I know who regard the poem as highly racist almost always also talk a great deal about "privilege," without ever seeming to notice the noblesse oblige implied by the idea of checking that privilege. There seems to be a deeply unresolved contradiction in "woke" spaces, whereby whites are simultaneously obligated to elevate others, and forbidden from even imagining they have the capacity to do so. In the trope I'm trying to track, the acceptable excuse seems to be that the (grizzled, lonely, etc.) white man gets something from the successor, namely a "new lease on life," such that he can then return the favor by then literally dying and dedicating his entire legacy to assure the future of someone else's children, children who are not even his co-ethnics.
(TVTropes does have a Cuckold page, but this is also not quite what I'm talking about... I think!)
So here are your discussion questions for the day:
Is there a name for this trope already? Have I missed a TVTropes pages somewhere? A RibbonFarm article? An obscure media studies dissertation?
I can't watch every movie, or even remember all the movies I've watched. Can you think of any other movies/TV shows/other media to add to the four I've identified?
I also can't think of any inverted examples. Can you think of any media in which the trope is inverted? How often do hypercompetent heroes "of color" learn to love whites and then give up their lives to ensure that several white children can afford to go to college? (Does the Wizard from Shazam! count, maybe, kinda?)
Perhaps most importantly... is there any possibility at all that the phenomenon isn't blatantly deliberate agenda-pushing?
Naturally, you are not limited to these questions--this is a discussion board, not a MOOC. But I've managed to stump myself so I'm interested in what you all make of this.
Children of Men is the most striking example for me - the political parallels are so on the nose that they gave me an almost visceral reaction to what was happening on screen.
I think you're making the same mistake as @naraburns is with Gran Tourino in that you're trying to interpret a more conservative or right-wing story through an explicitly left-wing lens and it's causing you to miss the point.
It's not a coincidence that the chief villian/antagonist of the film is not the police-state but Chiwetel Ejiofor's radical Marxist who wants to use the first pregnant woman in 17 years as a means to a political end. While the Christian symbolism in the film is substantially toned down compared to that in the book, both are an explicit rejection of the sort of nonsense you see espoused by guys like Land @The_Nybbler and @KulakRevolt. "What are your principles worth if this is the end they bring you to?" They ask, and Children of Men offers an answer. The lord lays before us blessings and curses. Those who live by the sword may die by the sword but there is also an argument to be made that selling out any hope for the future in exchange for worldly riches and comfort is an even worse fate.
Clive Owen's character, Theo's whole arc (and that name is not a coincidence) is going from a nihilistic alcoholic/hedonist to being someone who actually cares about people other than himself. The contrast between hopelessness and hope.
Edit: Clive Owen, not Owen Wilson, but there is also an image.
I'm not interpreting this movie from a left-wing perspective at all - my self-described political position is populist distributism, and my personal view is that the left/right distinction is increasingly and effectively meaningless in the modern day, a relic that is slowly being replaced by the far more meaningful distinction between populism and elitism. Of course, the fact that I believe in HBD, oppose immigration in nearly all forms and am not a fan of Islam means that I wouldn't be welcome on the left anyway - do you seriously believe that a reading of the film that could uncharitably be described as "cuckservative pornography" would be acceptable in a left-wing context?
Irrespective of that, I think my interpretation of Children of Men is actually right wing - if you accept that Trumpian conservatism is right-wing, and while I'm very open to the idea that Trumpism is not actually a conservative ideology, I think it most definitely qualifies as right-wing. I make no bones about my distaste for the conservatism of the era, but I also think the movie is actually a perfect encapsulation of those values.
"Your people are not having children - this problem cannot be fixed and trying to do is a waste of time. But these other people are having kids, and if you give them your values then you don't need to feel bad about not having or mistreating your own children, because it is your beliefs that really matter and not your own posterity."
The only way I could make this a more pure summation of the conservatism of the time would be to somehow work "go get involved in forever wars in the middle east and support the outsourcing of productive industry" into it! My view of the conservatism of the time is that the Republican party was the manifestation of the values of conservatives, and a vehicle for them to effect political change and have their views represented, but that manifestation was co-opted by others who directed those desires for representation into little more than a cover for graft, venality and military adventurism which was not in the best interests of the party's base.
It might not be a coincidence but it absolutely confirms my own reading - how many of the immigrants conservatives were throwing open the doors for in those days were coming from socialist or marxist countries? The conservatives are given a windmill to tilt at, and the unsophisticated base (just to be clear I am not targeting conservatism specifically here - the base of both wings is relatively unsophisticated) eats it up because a significant portion of the conservative identity of previous years was defined by opposition to communism, socialism and marxism.
Yes, and the answer that Children of Men offers is the same weak cuckservatism that was crushed in the eyes of the public by the Trump campaign. "The ending of your bloodline and people is not something that can be stopped. The Key to Tomorrow is refugees and immigrants, and you should give up your life to make sure they continue to have kids in the hope that they remember and carry forward your ideology." The wages of this view is death - what more can be said? If you're a believer in HBD then the utter futility and fecklessness of this view is made even clearer by an understanding of the genetic foundations that underpin political beliefs and positions. Oh, look, the name of his dead child gets reused for the one he saved - what a perfect summation of the cuckservative position! Sure, none of your children will be around in the future, but you get to make sure that the people who dispossess yours keep using some of the names you used, and they aren't on the side of your opponents in the culture war. That is the end that those conservative principles were headed towards, and I think it is a wondrous blessing for the world (and, to say the least, the conservative base) that such a suicidal ideology has been demolished and a Trump tower built on the ashes.
The very premise of the movie is a giving up of hope for the future - the British are a defeated, dying people who have no hope of restoring themselves. There's no dealing with or grappling with the question of why, or any attempt to reverse this - their posterity has been given up and abandoned, and this is one of the background assumptions underlying the entire movie. They don't even get worldly riches or comfort in exchange for the trade! They're just dying out, and don't you dare ask questions about why or how - THAT is hopelessness, a refusal to even begin to analyse the existential problems facing you because you believe that there is no possible answer.
Theo at no point earnestly cares about anyone other than himself in the movie. He is not a heroic man who is moved to care about others, but a defeated man who jumps at the opportunity to perform the role and identity that he created for himself, even though the original motivating reason for that role is no longer present. He cares about Key solely to the extent that doing so allows him to revive and perform his own identity, and this is something more important to him than his own actual physical life. Self-sacrifice is a powerful concept and deserving of respect in the right context - but this is not that context. Unmoored and disconnected from his own dying culture, he gives up his life in the preservation of another because he has no real values and no hope for the future at all, viewing the act of giving up his own life for the sake of another as a noble deed worth doing despite the lack of context which makes self-sacrifice worthwhile.
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