"The Charge of the White Brigade"
In a clip that received continuous play on Oscar night - featured on both the Barbara Walters special and as a favorite of the Awards broadcast when highlighting the nominated Blind Side - Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock), a blonde, beautiful, sassy Southern housewife with wealth and attitude to spare, confronts several young black men sitting on a stoop in the projects. Leaning forward after one of them calls her "bitch," she stares him down and fires back with everything in her arsenal. She lets him know that if he comes to her side of town, he's in for a world of hell, that she lunches with the D.A. on a regular basis, and that she's a full-fledged member of the NRA who's always packing. Earlier we've seen the sinister youth threaten gentle giant Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), Leigh Anne's adopted son, with his own gun, all while boasting about his criminal operations and salivating over Leigh Anne and her teenage daughter. Yet now, confronted with a woman in heels, surrounded in his own territory, he cowers. Whatever his own prowess and presence in the ghetto, he can't touch the threat a pistol-packin' mama with an open line to the enforcers of political authority. And how are we supposed to feel about this? After all, as the young man is written, he deserves to be threatened and "put in his place." Yet the racial elements are impossible to ignore - as is the reflection that the film must know this, but proceeds anyway, without acknowledging the diatribe's deeper implications.
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