Green Book Has Great Acting, a Misleading Title and Palatable Racism for White People
When I sat down to watch the movie Green Book , I was expecting to get a visual education on the historical use of The Negro Motorist Green Book by Victor Hugo Green. Green published the guidebook from 1936 to 1966 for black travelers in the Jim Crow era whose trips took them through areas that were openly racist and discriminatory toward black people. This film was not about the actual Green Book . In fact, the actual Green Book is more of a day player or under-fiver in this film. The film Green Book is a dramatization of the real-life friendship formed between Dr. Don Shirley—a Jamaican-American world-class pianist—and Tony Vallelonga, an Italian-American night club bouncer from New York City who Shirley hires to be his personal driver and bodyguard during a concert tour that takes him through the Jim Crow South. In her review for Shadow and Act , writer Brooke Obie calls the film a “poorly titled white savior film” that centers ...