Green Book: Insult to a Virtuoso

Imagine a black man, born in the American South in the 1920’s, to Jamaican immigrants. He started playing piano at the age of two, traveled to the Soviet Union to play at a conservatory at the age of nine, had his concert debut at 18, and his compositions played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 19. He held two doctorates, lived in an eclectically decorated apartment above Carnegie Hall, and performed at the White House more than once. Now, imagine making a film from the perspective of his chauffeur. This is done due to the first adjective I used to describe Don Shirley, “black”. I believe that the filmmakers of Green Book were able to get away with this portrayal due to the fact that the majority of modern America is unfamiliar with the name of Don Shirley. Though crazier things have happened, I do not think the same sort of story could be told if the musician in question was Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, or Miles Davis. I hope that I am not proven wrong in the future. Instead, the film takes the point of view of an undeniable racist, who oh-so-bravely teaches Shirley how to be a black American through feasts of fried chicken, and boldly overcomes his own proclivity for prejudice by spending several weeks with a literal phenom of a human, an unfortunate example of the "magical negro" archetype. While Mahershala Ali performs with precision and thoughtfulness in a role that gives him no room to breath, lest his character should have actual motivations and nuance, Viggo Mortensen appears to be doing an impression of an impression of a caricature of an Italian-American.

I neglected to mention that Shirley was gay, or may have been, it is hard to confirm such a fact about a person who would have gone out of their way to hide it several decades ago. The manner in which the film portrays Shirley’s queerness is at best objectionable, and at worst offensive. There is no hint of Shirley's desires or identity until we see him and and another man, naked, handcuffed to water pipes in a YMCA shower. Queer love and desire is reduced to brutality and shame. Thank God his white chauffeur is there to quell the flames. Green Book is the classic white person overcoming personal racism story set enough decades back so that current white audiences are able to live vicariously through the white saviour protagonist, contently reassuring themselves that "it's not like that anymore", they aren’t racist because they aren’t as bad as cross-burning klan members, and like the protagonist, “would have done something”.