A friend and Green Book have forever ruined the idea of being a tourist.
My suitemate from last year dated a girl from Hawaii for a few months. At some point, the topic of her home came up. It was at that point she told me about the love-hate relationship most Hawaiians have with tourists. Tourists to the Hawaiian islands have a tendency to not only be incredibly rude and disrespectful to locals (obviously a big no-no), but also highly disrespectful to the local flora and fauna. If you’re looking for a way to make Hawaiians hate you, it’s disrespecting their nature. She also told me that as much as most native Hawaiians hate tourists treating their home like crap, at this point Hawaii’s economy depends so much on tourism they have no choice but to grin and bear it.
After she was finished talking, I blinked and said, “Well, never going to Hawaii.”
The conversation was dredged up from my memory a few weeks ago when I saw Green Book.
There’s been a lot of conversation on the unsavory aspects of the film. Having seen the film myself, the nicest term I can come up with as a description is “tone-deaf.” The film shows a fictionalized version of the relationship between black pianist Don Shirley and future The Sopranos actor Tony Lip. Lip acts as a driver and bodyguard for Shirley while he does a tour through the Deep South.
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with the movie. Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali have great chemistry, the dialogue is good, and the film’s aesthetic is a good one. It’s what is under the surface that presents a problem.
Green Book is a white person’s civil rights movie. Previous films about civil rights issues, films like Selma and Detroit, did not shy away from the human rights violations black people could face at the time simply because of their skin color. They didn’t shy away from the violence or the verbal abuse or the humiliation brought about by racist policies or how their families or non-black allies were put in racists’ crosshairs. Green Book does.
Despite wanting to project an anti-racism message, the brutal reality of the racist South is downplayed in the film, seemingly to not make the viewer uncomfortable. Don is beaten up once and harassed by police, but these matters are quickly resolved. He rides comfortably in the backseat of Tony’s car for scene after scene. And the internal turmoil Shirley experiences in a racist society is relegated to one or two scenes.
While it would be accurate for a white man to have some bigoted ideas in the time period, it’s the writing of Tony Lip’s character that really makes the film qualify as “tone-deaf.” In one of his first scenes, Tony and several of his male family members loiter in his apartment as two black workers renovate their kitchen (an obvious reference to the “black men can’t control their sexual urges around white women” idea) and throws away drinking glasses that the workers drank from. A few scenes into his tour with Shirley, he stops at a Kentucky Fried Chicken and all but forces Shirley to eat a couple of wings, claiming that Shirley’s “people” love the stuff, and in spite of Shirley voicing his dislike of the food. And a few scenes before the previously-mentioned “internal turmoil of Don Shirley” scene, Tony labels himself “blacker” than Shirley, listing off several stereotypes of black people that he fits and Shirley doesn’t. Even the seemingly-happy ending–where a changed Tony Lip invites Don Shirley to Christmas dinner–rings hollow. Society has not changed, Shirley will still experience racism, Jim Crow laws still loom over African-Americans, and the titular green book (a safety guide for black people traveling through the more openly hostile parts of America, which is relegated to a few brief shots and one cursory glance by Tony) will continue to be needed for years to come.
Whatever message Green Book has about racism is drowned out by its bending over backwards to cater to a white audience.
*exhale*
Sorry, this blog post briefly turned into a review of Green Book. There was a purpose to it, though.
For my Calvin class in Spain, we read a book called There and Back. Chapter 2 of the book provides a definition of what I’m talking about in this post: tourism mentality. I quote:
“A tourist seeks to escape from his or her life situation and circumstances in a search for entertainment and the exotic. […] Even though tourists want to empty themselves of their routine or imposed timetables, they remain separate from the culture they visit and like moviegoers observe rather than participate.”
If you don’t quite get it, here are some of the things I found when I Googled “tourist”:
Obese American tourist who forced a flight attendant to wipe his bottom dies overseas
Barcelona is more willing to welcome migrants to Catalonia than tourists
Tourists make a stir by streaking at the most sacred temple in Cambodia
Tourist almost loses an arm after reaching into a cage to pet a lion
And of course, all of the people who have lost their lives in the pursuit of the perfect selfie.
This is tourist mentality: the entitlement, narcissism and sometimes life-threatening stupidity towards other cultures that demands a whole culture kowtow to your wants. Tourist mentality permeates through Green Book, which glosses over the dark parts of America’s past to pander to a white audience.
But despair not, reader. There is an alternative to tourist mentality: pilgrimage.
Unfortunately, There and Back is on my bookshelf in my dorm room, and I type in my bedroom, so definition of “pilgrimage” instead comes from a Patheos article:
“Now the pilgrim takes joy in the journey with the understanding that the journey only exists because of the destination. […] The pilgrim — somewhat idiotically, I suppose — is interested in some thing at the end of his pilgrimage.”
I don’t know if my time in Spain could be called a pilgrimage. I definitely enjoyed the journey, but I’m not sure what the thing at the end of my pilgrimage was. Better comprehension of Spanish? Making a tight-knit circle of friends? Gain a new appreciation of Calvin College because holy crap, Spanish universities are for the birds?
Who knows? But here’s what I do know: I hope to travel again, some day.
And it won’t be as a tourist.
The Keene Chronicles 