Green Book, White Fists, Black Plight: A New Take on the Deep South

Green Book (2018) is a recent race-themed film that continues the long tradition of the social problem film, initiated after World War II, and featuring the position of the minorities across US society. The plot presents a rough white bouncer turned driver and his temporary em- ployer, a world-class African American piano player, through a number of unpleasant situations around the Midwest and the South in 1962, with racism as the main motive at their core. The paper relies on postulates by Frantz Fanon about the internalised inferiority complex coupled with the pianist’s homosexual guilt, and also draws on Kemal Malik’s view of the subjugated race being forced into the infantile position of entertainers to whites. The pianist Don finds it even harder to endure institutional segregation, due to which he asserts his dignity and breaks the obedience circle at the climax of the storyline. Significantly, even his driver Tony discards race and class differences and embraces Don as a bosom friend in an idyllic Christmas atmosphere on their return to New York City.