Even though the gala London premiere was cancelled and the Oscar-cursed Sandra Bullock was not there - because, according to the tabloids, she is "MARRIED TO A MONSTER" - The Blind Side premiered in the U.K. this weekend, prompting the Observer to unleash a torrent of arch, Anglican distaste.
Reviewer Philip French, who looks fatally offended in his column photograph, wondered Sunday if Bullock's "curiously clipped nose" was rather "more equine than bovine" looking, and pronounced her "insufferable."
He mentioned her separation from her husband, which is on the cover of every magazine this week, and wondered - here showing an insight unavailable in the torrent of good will toward this film - at the film's jerry-rigged construction of 'the new south."
I am, it would appear, on IBT: Irritable British Time, since I only watch movies when they are safely out of theatres, far away from large audiences (both a maddening distraction and deep persuasion) and away from the twin sirens, Dolby sound and popcorn drowned in butter that is obviously made of plastic and Quaaludes: delicious!
I just saw The Blind Side, and my added bonus was a stack of gossip magazines about a heartbroken superstar. The articles delve mostly into the suddenly dark and torrid past of Bullock's husband Jesse James - allegations include his being a stone-cold racist, a compulsive cheater and Nazi sympathizer. It's alleged a photograph exists of him making a Nazi salute, and using his fingers to form a Fuhrer mustache, but the tabs - uppity all of a sudden! - have "declined" to publish the shot. TMZ also claims to have seen the shot, which is being sold by an anonymous woman, looking to cash in on a picture of the Monster Garage star, caught in flagrante retardicus.
The big story is, of course, the fantastically named "Bombshell" McGee, James's alleged stripper-lover. Her life story seems to be a tissue of lies, but Michelle McGee's appearance is a wife's worst nightmare.
If James is cheating, this brings adultery among the stars to its lowest level yet, this story of the "Vanilla Gorilla" (James's own, apt, nickname for himself) married to a sweet, devoted Jewish girl who spends his spare time having an affair with a knockout who has posed in Nazi regalia and is covered in ominous ink, including the initials 'W.P." on her knees. (McGee swears they do not stand for "White Power" - they must indicate the civil-rights activist Walter P. Carter.)
But that is enough air time for the fugly moron, and it's truly time to stop before Bombshell gets a TV show (The Heil World?).
Bullock herself is now being asked the obvious: If a tenth of what is being said about him is true, how is it possible you didn't notice?
When she received one of her many awards for her portrayal of The Blind Side's Leigh Anne Tuohy, Bullock thanked James, tearfully, for "always having my back."
I did not know at the time that this is a reference to an emotional dialogue in the movie between the characters Michael Oher and Leigh Anne Tuohy, played by Bullock. (The movie is based on a true story about an affluent white family that takes in a black youth (Oher) from the streets and helps him achieve a professional football career.)
On the surface, the film is light, feel-good fare, a reprise of a can't-fail formula involving injustice and a flashy, mouthy lady, locked and loaded for justice.
Think of Cher, storming around in Mask and demanding respect for her Elephant Boy son; think of Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich, squeezed into skin-tight Walmart couture, mad as hell and ready to play mean, foxy David to a corporate Goliath.
These filmic women are all talk of course: Deep inside them beats a heart that Jesus Himself would be proud to reveal.
And Bullock is good in it, good enough. But why is this movie so successful? Is Philip French right? Does it have something to do with the way Americans would like to think of themselves, putting their history of slavery and de fact apartheid to rest?
Or is it worse? Do Americans now feel safe criticizing, if not reviling, black folks? I think they do. And I blame Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire.
On last week's episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a black woman was discovered savagely beating her disabled sister, and when she was caught, her response was pure Mo'Nique: a lot of hissed justifications, moral dishonesty and, of course, exploited government benefits. Her son, played by Quinton Aaron (the actor who also plays Michael Oher in The Blind Side), was yet again a somewhat gentle giant, peripherally involved in dog fighting. (After Michael Vick, the dog-fighting black man is the go-to cliché.)
Law & Order: SVU's Benson and Stabler rolled their Liberal eyes heavenward: I mean you try to help these people, and they just want to rip off the system and hurt each other. And innocent pit bulls!
Is Aaron going to make a career of playing black culture's Frankenstein monster?
Virtually every black person in The Blind Side is a low-down criminal, or too damn slow for Leigh Anne Tuohy.
And when Oher, as if competing on The Price is Right, wins the Tuohy Showcase Showdown (his own bedroom! a new car!), we are meant to applaud as if this is a deeper, ethical reparation; as if taking in troubled, adult black men as children (then threatening to castrate them if they knock up a white girl) is a more cheerful and casual form of reparations for slavery.
Sapphire truly did blow up the image of the good, black mother in pop culture. Maybe in some cases this has helped people who labour under stereotypes good and bad.
Unfortunately, it also helps people like Bombshell McGee who, one suspects, could strip to scenes from The Blind Side, lazily, and unremarkably.