It’s hard to imagine why Hollywood is still filtering minorities’ stories — like the one in Disney’s new sports drama, about a Latino high school cross-country team — through the experiences of its white characters. But these may be some of the problematic reasons.
1. Well, he is Kevin Costner.
Ron Phillips/Disney Enterprises
And Kevin Costner has harbored a soft spot for white ambassador and savior roles since making his directorial debut in 1990 with Dances With Wolves, the movie that established him as a filmmaking talent as well as an acting one, and that portrayed the Sioux by way of Costner's Union Army lieutenant. He's already played the gruff white guy who understands race better than characters of color this year in Black or White, the queasy Mike Binder drama about a racially charged custody battle that Costner financed himself.
In the based-on-a-true story McFarland, USA, directed by Niki Caro (North Country) and hitting theaters on Feb. 20, Costner plays a character named Jim White (seriously), who arrives with his blond family — wife Cheryl (Maria Bello), teenage daughter Julie (Morgan Saylor), and younger daughter Jamie (Elsie Fisher) — in the Central Valley town of the title to take a position at a mostly Latino high school. The Whites look askance at the world of taquerias and backyard chickens in which they've ended up, the adults arguing in heated whispers under the covers, "We're not staying here!" as lowriders blasting music roll by outside. Then, naturally, they come to appreciate the closeness of the community and the difficult, impoverished lives many of its members, most of whom are farmworkers, deal with.
2. It's about American hero torch-passing.
Disney Enterprises
Costner portrays Jim as the all-American patriarch: He's consumed with providing for and protecting his family (though he can be distant from his daughters), he's frustrated from his last gig coaching an overprivileged football team at a white school, and he's better with discipline than displaying emotion. The kids Jim takes on in McFarland are anything but overprivileged — his biggest issue with them, beyond their shaky sense of self-worth, is scheduling practice around the hours they put in helping their families in the fields before and after school.
A direct line is drawn between the runners' abilities on the track and the hardships they've endured. Their scrappiness allows them to be better at what their principal describes as a "private school sport" than the obnoxious kids against whom they compete. And the importance of family in their lives forces Jim to be a better, more present parent to his children. If the movie's well-intentioned but patronizing positioning of the team as the new embodiment of the classic American underdog story wasn't clear from the title, the moment in which Jim phases out into memories of their training days together in the middle of the national anthem underscores it in red, white, and blue.
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