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‘The Good Lord Bird’ Is White Allyship Done Right
The antebellum series serves as a case study for properly retelling Black liberation by avoiding White messiahs
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
In Hollywood, White people love casting themselves as heroes, historical accuracy be damned. You’ve seen the trope before: the White saviors in film and television who, in one way or another, always manage to swoop in and save the day, uplifting (or outright liberating) Black folks left and right. How rewarding it must feel to watch characters who are so… redeemable. Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird, which wrapped on Sunday, could have all too easily succumbed to that facepalm-worthy pitfall — but instead, the miniseries soars by challenging depictions of White allyship to do better at a time in which the message is especially needed.
Brown was a fucking loon, and Hawke’s depiction of him as an obsessive, spazzed-out, furious evangelical is out of this world. But he was a loon who was spot-on in his shaming of American hypocrisy.
