Netflix's DVD service boosted the profile of many films, but none were as popular as this Oscar-nominated 2009 hit.
The Big Picture Somebody break out a 10-gun salute — or maybe just 10 radios blasting out the "you wouldn't steal a car" piracy ad — because the age of Netflix's DVDs-by-mail service has come to a close. While Netflix was founded on the principle of giving people access to movie rentals through the postal service, the company has moved away so much from this concept that it has finally abandoned physical media altogether.
All of this is to say that The Blind Side, even though it arrived on Netflix 28 days after its DVD premiere, was debuting just as those red Netflix envelopes were more popular than ever. It was just the right movie to drop at the right time on this service. After all, it was a feel-good inspirational drama, the kind of project mainstream audiences are always craving.
By 2013, the entity’s subscriber base for DVDs had decreased dramatically and Netflix was now crowing about its original streaming programming like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The Blind Side was one of the last theatrical titles to drop before Netflix began publicly distancing itself from physical media. It was a last hurrah, in hindsight, for a business endeavor that put Netflix on the map but wasn’t perceived as valuable enough to maintain eternally.
What is clear, though, is that the history of American cinema is populated with massive hits that were “crowdpleasers” but also deeply racist. Dating back to the days of The Birth of a Nation, many pieces of “comfort” cinema for largely white viewers have included imagery, plotlines, and characters that dehumanize non-white communities.
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