Positive Psychology

When Life Imitates a Made-For-TV Movie

The Bland Side of Heroism

Posted March 4, 2010

In "A Prayer for Owen Meany" John Irving writes "Doubt is the essence of faith." Whether or not this is true for religion we cannot say. But in movies, a touch of doubt (or selfishness, or fear) really is the essence of faith, selflessness, and bravery.

Halfway between A Serious Man and The Blind Side you would find the perfect movie. Both movies are about people of faith who have Getting Along as their primary goal. A Serious Man shows a middle- class college professor who can't catch a break, and who has become so paralyzed by doubt that he can't make a decision. The movie is fiction, but it feels real. As in real life, the main character ends up more or less where he started, and you may feel like you could have spent the time gazing at your navel.

The Blind Side, by contrast, shows people without the slightest trace of moral ambivalence. They make big decisions at every turn, and things keep working out well for them. It's a factual story that sounds too good to be a true: it's the tale of Michael Oher, an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens. After a childhood in foster homes, with a crack addict for a mother, Michael Oher is taken into the wealthy home of Sean and Leigh Ann Tuohey, who get him a tutor, help him win a college scholarship, and cheer him as he eventually goes on to win a multi-million dollar contract with the NFL. It's the story of a good kid, who gets adopted by a good family, and goes on to make good.

How to Disney-ize the Heroic

On the one hand, The Blind Side is a celebration of positive psychology - of astounding acts of kindness, courage, and overcoming adversity. It's about a really poor boy who overcomes incredible odds to Get Ahead, and it's about people of different races Getting Along in unexpected and admirable ways. And the movie does not deviate too far from the actual facts of the story. So The Blind Side is a movie we really expected to love. But somehow, and surprisingly, the movie doesn't quite live up to the real life story. Perhaps it's because the characters, as presented in the movie, are so fortunate, so brave, and so confident they're on the right path, that it's a bit hard to relate to them.

While reviewing the ten best picture nominees for this blog, we've been stressing that audiences like to see characters in movies Getting Along, Getting the Girl, Getting Ahead, and Getting the bad guy (links to our other reviews of Oscar nominees below). The Blind Side drives home an interesting point. We don't simply enjoy watching other people achieve these goals for the sake of watching them achieve these goals. We watch other people achieve these goals to see how we can achieve them ourselves.

But in The Blind Side everything comes too easily for the characters, and we weren't able to walk away with any profound lessons for our own lives. Every problem that arises in this film gets washed away. The Touheys take in a stranger, a poor Black teenager who weighs 300 pounts. There should be drama there, but although they initially have a mild concern about him stealing from them, they laugh about how well insured they are, and Michael Oher immediately turns out to be the perfect houseguest. He makes the bed, he eats at the table even when the family is eating in front of the TV, he never talks, and he saves their young son's life during a car accident by blocking an airbag. The people in this movie have no financial concerns, they all get along perfectly well, and people even let them cut in line at the DMV. They are, in short, nothing like us.

Micheal Oher suffered a lifetime of abuse, but it doesn't seem to affect him, other than making him a little quiet, and he gets over that as soon as someone gives him a bed. At first, he isn't very good at football (apparently true), but in the movie, that problem goes away quickly. Mrs. Tuohey makes reference to a career aptitude test in which he scored above the 98%ile on "protective instincts," and she uses this "insight" to convert him, in one scene, into a fantastic player. This test, as near as we can tell from reading the New York Times story that is the basis of the script, is something added to the real story, and a quick look online suggests that it's a score you can get if you take your dog to a canine psychologist, but not something your son will get from the high school counselor.

Although this movie is based on a true story, it is hard to imagine that the real story was really so much like an animated Hallmark card. The original story in the New York Times makes it seem like the real characters were much more complex. The Touheys were in fact rich, but apparently they also had a fair bit of debt. And Micheal Oher may very well be a nice guy. But surely there were more issues integrating him into their household. It's hard to have a friend visit for a week without thinking about how much they do or don't do the dishes, or worrying about what they think of how much we do or don't do the dishes. Over the course of a year, didn't they disagree at least once?

Draining the Energy out of a Moral Dilemma

There is a sub-plot in this movie about the NCAA trying to determine whether or not the Touheys had taken advantage of Michael Oher. The idea is this - the Touheys are all Alumni of Ole Miss, and big supporters of Ole Miss Football. He eventually went to play for their alma mater. So, - if the Touheys knew Michael Oher was good at football from the start, perhaps they adopted him in order to brainwash him into going to their alma matter. It's a great dilemma for a movie, and it pits two fundamental motives against each other - did the Touheys adopt Oher in order to be nice (and Get Along) or to win football games (Get Ahead). The movie brings up the issue of an ulterior motive, but not till the end, and then swept it away quickly. But it raises an interesting question: if they had adopted him, taught him to play football, and helped him do well in school just to send off to their favorite college, is that really so bad? Perhaps there was a desire not to make the Touheys look bad, but by avoiding this possibility, they just seem like a Disney family. The Blind Side thus takes a great story, and a great dilemma, and converts it into a cliché. The television series Friday Night Lights does a better job creating a sports drama with relatable characters.

In rating A Serious Man, we argued that it makes you think, but doesn't really make you feel. The Blind Side does make you feel (it's hard not to be touched by this story), but the movie characterizations don't quite stand up to serious thought. Is it a bad movie? Nah. Does it tap into basic evolutionary motivations? Yes. But does it deserve an Oscar for Best Picture, or even to stand alongside the other great sports films? No.

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