Spring 2015 #12: Driving Miss Daisy (1989) - Bruce Beresford

I love when gifs of title cards are readily available on the internet.

Okay! More Best Picture winners that are nowhere near the IMDb Top 250 or the AFI 100 Films list. This film also won Best Actress, Best Makeup, and Best Screenplay.

So if you don’t know the story of Driving Miss Daisy, here it is: Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) gets hired to become the personal driver for an uptight and aging Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy). The film starts in 1948 and ends in 1973, as it covers the bizarre relationship of an old white Jewish woman and her black chauffeur. 

This gif is basically the entire movie summed up. While Miss Daisy is incredibly reluctant to invite this man into her life, she repeatedly reminds her son that she is “not prejudiced.” She is, obviously, but the film begins this weird journey of actually trying to convince us that she learns the error of her ways.

Exactly Titus. 

And YES the acting is great. And YES the cinematography wonderfully captures a mid-twentieth century Georgia. However, Driving Miss Daisy is part of a disturbing trend of white Hollywood patting itself on the back for even the most minor of progressive attitudes.

But Driving Miss Daisy’s lasting power is obvious, as evidenced by this reference in the seminal teen movie, A Cinderella Story, which came out fifteen years later.

I’m thinking about recent movies that situate black narratives in the context of a white lens, like The Help (which definitely dives deeper into these issues thanDriving Miss Daisy). To me, it feels like Hollywood is insistent on this watered-down attempt at tackling hard-to-swallow issues of race relations in twentieth century America. And the Academy, a voting body that is almost exclusively white and male, does award these easily digestible takes on these issues, and that’s probably bad for everybody involved. In issues such as this, I think it is a problem that the director, producer, and screenwriter are all white men. Why does their voice on this topic have any clout whatsoever?

But the Oscars do matter, unfortunately, because the movies that win go on to make bank at either theatrical rereleases or DVD releases. That sends a message to the industry that these are the types of movies that they should be making, and that’s when having almost exclusively white nominees is a problem.

But does awarding movies like 12 Years A Slave (based on a novel by a black man and directed by a black man) and Selma (directed and produced by black women) correct that problem? If the goal is to have the people whose voices have been in the background of American history for centuries get to tell their stories, then yes, I think it can’t hurt.