ABSTRACT
The Blind Side became the most successful sports drama in Hollywood history. The Blind Side is often read as a feel-good story extolling the virtues of athletics-as-uplift, in which the likely fate of a poor black urban youth is redirected by the intervention of a professional white woman and the institutional resources she accesses and affords. And yet, this work represents something more than an example of the patronage motif analyzed at length in Matthew Hughey’s The White Savior Film. “White people are crazy” is the provocative first line spoken by The Blind Side’s lead actor Quinton Aaron. Aaron plays the part of Michael “Big Mike” Oher, the central concern of this cinematic adaptation of journalist Michael Lewis’s biographical account of the accomplished National Football League offensive lineman. A comparative reading of Lewis’s text and Hancock’s film, reveals the considerable artistic license exercised in the biography and its screen adaptation.
