The Blind Side is a movie we have all seen and loved. It is a beautiful story about a football player, named Big Mike, who is adopted by a white family. He has drifted in and out of schools for years. The character Leigh Tuohy and her husband Sean become his guardians who open up Big Mike’s opportunities to do better in school and football.
However, recently it has appeared in the news that the “true” story based on Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy and Michael Oher is not what it seems. Fox News explains that some people believe that the Tuohy family never really adopted Oher, only forced “him into a conservatorship for their own monetary benefit.” A conservatorship is a legal agreement that gives someone’s personal, financial, and legal decision-making authority to other people. This means that Oher gave the Tuohy’s power over him. Conservatorships can be a good thing when certain people need higher care (like Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes), but they can also be a really bad thing when people don’t want the conservatorship or when they don’t know about it.
According to Fox, Oher claims that he didn’t learn about his adoption status until 2023, which is why all of this controversy is appearing now. He believed that he was adopted for almost two decades when in reality, he wasn’t. Oher felt tricked into this conservatorship right after his eighteenth birthday. Oher also claimed that the Tuohy family exploited his name and only wanted to follow the ‘white savior complex.’
“The Blind Side” made over $330 million at the box office and has acquired more since its release back in 2009. The Tuohy’s were paid millions of dollars because of the movie and now it is being questioned if the movie is even true to the story in the first place. Oher filed a petition against the Tuohy family requesting to end the conservatorship, to receive all of the money that the Tuohy’s made since the conservatorship, and to pay Oher his portion of the earnings.
The Tuohy family is responding, saying that they are upset that he is responding this way. The Tuohy parents would never want to make money off of their children. Sean Tuohy, the biological son, is exclaiming that Oher was aware of the conservatorship before 2023. He also explains that he is upset that Oher feels the way he does. The question is did the Tuohy family manipulate and use Oher, or did they really give him a place to live and love him?