Actress Sandra Bullock played the lead actress and produced “The Blind Side” (2009). She promoted it as:
The remarkable true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. …
As a football player and student, Oher works hard and, with the help of his coaches and adopted family, becomes an All-American offensive left tackle.
The movie was a blockbuster, earning over $300 million. It also generated all kinds of ancillary benefits. A bestselling book by Leigh Anne Touhy, the White “adopted” mother, and an Oscar for Bullock were most notable among them.
Oher blindsided
The African-American youngster whose story this film portrayed was Michael Oher. Of course, given the generally accepted prerogatives of artistic license, nobody expected this “true story” to be completely true. By the same token, however, nobody expected it to be a complete lie.
Except that the license the movie producers took in depicting his life on screen paled compared with the license the Tuohys took in exploiting him in real life. But Oher had no idea. Indeed, what’s truly remarkable is that he only found this out months ago “to his chagrin and embarrassment.”
Here is how the Associated Press reported today on this real-life Hitchcockian twist:
Michael Oher … filed a petition Monday in a Tennessee probate court accusing Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy of lying to him by having him sign papers making them his conservators rather than his adoptive parents nearly two decades ago. …
He accuses the Tuohys of enriching themselves at his expense by continuing to ‘falsely and publicly’ represent themselves as his adoptive parents to the date of the filing of this petition.’
In other words, the Tuohys misled the world to believe they loved Oher, so much that they adopted him and treated him like a son. Instead, they effectively took him in as an indentured servant and exploited him for all he was worth.
Oher is asking the court to terminate the conservatorship and force the Tuohys to fully account for the money they made from his name and story. He also asks to be paid what he is due along with interest.
For a little perspective, consider that Britney Spears petitioned the court to terminate a similar conservatorship. She accused her own father of using it to exploit her like a slave. She claimed that he made her perform under duress for years but did not give her one red cent.
In a similar vein, Oher claims that, even though the Tuohys, Bullock, and others made hundreds of millions off him, they did not give him one red cent.
‘Truth often stranger than fiction’
Mark Twain made that famous observation. Oher’s petition gives truth to it. Because even Hollywood’s most creative screenwriters could not have created a plot twist like this.
As it happens, I picked Bullock to win the Oscar for her portrayal. Yet, in congratulating her, my instinct was such that I expressed misgivings about the way the film portrayed Oher.
Specifically, in “82nd Annual Academy Awards. And the Oscar Goes to” on March 6, 2010, I decried the subtext: the trope of Whites civilizing Blacks. No doubt that’s why Oher never liked this movie.
Was Sandra Bullock blindsided too?
Bullock’s own life is imitating her art. It’s putting a remarkable twist on Twain’s observation. Because the irony of ironies is that Bullock emulated the Tuohys by adopting her own Michael Oher, a Black baby boy, the year after “The Blind Side” premiered, in 2010. She adopted a Black baby girl five years later, in 2015.
Make of that what you will. But all indications are that hers were legal adoptions, not conservatorships.
Reports are that Bullock is grieving the loss of her partner after nursing him through a three-year battle with cancer. But she would be well-advised to issue a statement expressing dismay over Oher’s allegations.
After all, the crowning achievement of her career had her profiting off a big lie. And, even if she was as blindsided as Oher was, now she knows.