Whiteness In The Green Mile

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From the eighties to the late nineties the film industry produced a number of films with a dominant theme of whiteness–encompassing stereotypical ideas of African Americans. Frank Darabont directed the film, The Green Mile. The films core’ John Coffey, is an African American inmate who is falsely convicted of rape and murder against two young white girls. John Coffey is a god like personage with the ability to read souls, capable of sensing suffering and joy, and is able to heal others by touch. Coffey was found guilty, and as a result is sentenced to death via electric chair. While on death row Coffey performs a series of healing acts to white people. These acts have an outward appearance of sexual assault and murder. This film has constructed …show more content…

The article, “White” by Richard Dyer explores both sides of the black and white paradigm in mainstream films –while addressing racial inequalities. Dyer talks about the “…property of whiteness to be everything and nothing [and that this] is the source of its representational power…the way whiteness disappears behind and is subsumed into other identities…”(Dyer 825). Also, according to Dyer “…stereotypes are seldom found in a pure form and this is part of the process by which they are naturalized…”(Dyer 826). Through the application of binarism to the film, The Green Mile, this essay will critically analyze the identities of black and white people. For instance, specific examples of the films mis-en-scene will serve as evidence to show the visible binarism and racial symbolism that exist in this …show more content…

Possible explanations could be the bluntly racist remarks the director makes. It is also important to note that The Green Mile is set in a 1935 South, and there is no way Coffey would have gotten a fair trial. Now, we have Coffey, who seems to have been sent by God to save white people. The purpose of all this is for Coffey to fix and save the belief and souls of the white people, no matter what their racist beliefs are. This type of representation is what constructs binarism in a film. This depiction engrains the minds of the spectators, and lets them know that black people are different and are only here to help whites accomplish their goals at the cost of black people being embarrassingly stereotyped. In this film, for Coffey to be depicted as magical is not a complement to black people. This rather infantilizes black people and offends them, since it suggests that black excellence is unheard of and the only way it could happen is if it comes from a supernatural

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