the movement of culture as seen in cinema

I remember back in the 90s when it was okay for Michelle Pfeiffer to make a movie like "Dangerous Minds," a film based on the true-life story of ex-Marine LouAnne Johnson. The film chronicles Johnson's first year as a teacher at an urban school filled with disaffected minority youths. LouAnne's natural toughness (she teaches the kids some martial arts to get their attention) and her determination to get through to the kids wins them over, and the film ends with LouAnne deciding to re-up for a second year of teaching. (The real-life LouAnne Potts taught at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California, for four years before moving on to grad school in New Mexico.)

Could a film like "Dangerous Minds" be made today? Because not long after "Dangerous Minds" came out, politically correct thinking, already an influential undercurrent in American society, became huge, and people started talking about the need to steer clear of what was critically referred to as "white savior" narratives—a denigrating label applied to films like "Avatar" (in which blue aliens stand in for native people). In fact, here's Wikipedia's incomplete list of movies featuring the white-savior trope: "Glory" (1989), "Dangerous Minds" (1996), "Amistad" (1997), "Finding Forrester" (2000), "The Last Samurai" (2003), "Half Nelson" (2006), "Freedom Writers" (2007), "Gran Torino" (2008), "Avatar" (2009), "The Blind Side" (2009), and "The Help" (2011). (I have trouble seeing how "Gran Torino" makes this list. That's utterly baffling to me.)

Anyway, I haven't seen any movies like "Dangerous Minds" out lately. Have you? And I don't think we're going to see such a movie anytime soon. The non-white fantasy is all about empowerment and self-actualization—more wishful thinking than actual reality given current crime statistics in the States. I actually agree with the self-empowering message that "we don't need white help." Races that don't ask for handouts can find dignity by earning their place in society through their own effort, whatever racial prejudice they might encounter along the way. But races that do receive handouts never find their way out from under the seething resentment that comes from realizing they needed someone else's help to make it. 

And that's where Hollywood, with its empowerment fantasies, comes in. We don't need Whitey. The fantasies themselves aren't actually bad if they're thought of as ideals to aspire to: there's absolutely nothing wrong with pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Now we just need to see more people—way more people—make those fantasies a reality instead of holding out their hands and demanding handouts like beggars.