Based on your viewing of the movie Lean on Me, what did you see as the most important ideological aspects of the film? What messages about race, American society, or any other themes that are relevant to this course, did you find pervading the movie’s script, characters, details, dialogue, plot lines, etc.? What messages about Structure(Nature) or Agency(Nurture) are pervasive throughout the movie? What do you think the overall message about race in America is of Lean on Me? Also, how does the fact that Joe Clark is Black have any effect, if at all, on a movie that strongly utilizes, at least on the surface, white savior tropes? Finally, in your conclusion, assess whether or not you would describe Lean on Me as anti-Black propaganda, or not, and why?
Common Elements(Tropes) of White Savior Movies
Crossing Color/Culture Lines (protagonist plus some other whites sometimes)
Saving People of Color from Tragic Fate
White Suffering/Hard Work/Agency
Bad Whites/Negative Communities of Color-Resistance (whites individualized, nonwhite group)
Meritocracy—Black Uplift by emulating hard work of WS—America works
White civility, Black Savagery
Use of history to make meaning
White savior-agency; white savior not always white; Black not always Black
Last Completed Projects
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