Terence Nance Remixed Dozens of White Savior Scenes So You Don’t Have To

By Sameer Rao Aug 31, 2018

How often do you see a White movie character arrive at a struggling high school, an Indigenous reservation or  a Middle Eastern or African country to save the day? Too many times. This is why Terence Nance, creator of HBO’s "Random Acts of Flyness" takes on the White savior trope with WhitePeopleWontSaveYou.org.

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Visit the website to immerse yourself in scenes starting in the 1960s. These scenes play at a neverending pace as a chorus repeatedly sings, "White people won’t save you," with dramatic intensity.

Nance tells Colorlines that the scenes play "ad infinitum," and that the "algorithmic" project will pull from new productions with similar tropes. 

"It’s not going to end unless people stop making White savior movies and TV shows," Nance explains. 

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When asked about how he’d categorize WhitePeopleWontSaveYou.org, Nance says, "it’s a film, it’s a website, it’s everything." The site grew out of conversations with his colleagues at MVMT, his production company. Nance emphasizes this in his filmmaking and music, which he developed in collaboration with his brother Djoré and composer Emile Mosseri,

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Without going into specifics, Nance teases that tonight’s (August 31) episode of "Random Acts" will feature "a very related segment" involving the project’s themes. Until then, visit WhitePeopleWontSaveYou.org and see how long you can last. 

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