Review Paper #4 "Driving Miss Daisy"

“Driving Miss Daisy”

This is drama of a friendship between a 60-ish, strong-willed, independent, Jewish woman, Miss Daisy Werthan played by Jessica Tandy and Hoke Colburn, Morgan Freeman, her wise and good-natured chauffeur. The story begins in Atlanta, Georgia in the late 1940s and spans 30 years. The movie opens with Daisy involved in a driving accident. She is safe but her car ends up in the river. Subsequently, her son, played by Dan Akroyd, forbids her to drive any longer and against her wishes, hires a driver for her. Enter, Hoke Colburn. Daisy is not against blacks working as domestics for her – she employs a female cook/maid, Idella. She is furious, however, that a decision was made to hire Hoke without consulting her and as a way of sublimating this, is rude to him at every opportunity. What ensues is the development of an unlikely deep friendship between “Miss Daisy” and Hoke that crosses racial barriers and social castes.

Throughout the storyline there are examples of cultural stereotypes and social norms of the Southern whites and in Miss Daisy’s case, in her cantankerous reluctance to accept Hoke’s service first as her driver and eventual acknowledgement for he does not what she has pigeon-holed him to represent. At the start of their relationship, she stalks off to the Piggly Wiggly by herself, as he calmly follows her in the car, encouraging her to get in using every tactic he can think of. She finally relents but puts stipulations on everything. She rudely takes away the car keys when they arrive at the supermarket letting him know his place and that he is not to be trusted. Hoke does play the “yassah”, subservient driver to Miss Daisy, but he is no Uncle Tom. The examples of bigotry and racial tension first takes place on a road trip to Alabama when they are pulled over by the Alabama highway patrol/police officers. The police are immediately suspicious of the relationship when seeing a black and white woman and when after questioning realizing that they have come across not just a white woman, but a Jewish-white woman with a “nigger” driver. Miss Daisy’s stereotypical “slave owner behavior” is demonstrated in a scene while driving back home from the Alabama road trip late at night. He asks permission to stop and relieve himself but she, incredulously and selfishly, does not allow it. In her school teacher reprimand “well, you should have thought of that before we left”. It is is a turning point in the film where he makes it clear that she will no longer treat him with such disrespect.

In another scene, in another stereotypical behavior of a “Southern white slave owner” she phones her son to come to her home immediately. She wants him to witness the Hoke’s admission that he has stolen from her – that she has been counting the silverware, etc. but is missing a can of food. She never gets the chance. Hoke walks in and as she is ready to accuse him he offers an explanation before it is even asked of him saying that he borrowed a can of salmon the day prior but has returned with a replacement that morning. She just can’t seem to make him out to be the label she has attached; sneaky, shifty, lazy, etc.

There is a bit of refuting cultural stereotypes obvious in this film. Even though she is white, Miss Daisy is Jewish – a liberal-minded woman at that. She is sympathetic to Hoke because she, too, is a little bit of an outcast in her own society among Episcopalians. One day while Hoke was driving her to temple, they are turned around because her synagogue was bombed. Hoke draws a parallel to her synagogue’s attack and KKK attacks on black churches. She doesn’t want to accept this. The final irony takes when she has Hoke drive her to a Martin Luther King, Jr. fundraising event, and leaves him to sit in the car while she goes to the function to her him speak. The story ends with her deep appreciation for her “very best friend”.

I thought this was one of the most thought-provoking films I have ever seen. I liked it because it wasn’t your typical good guy-bad guy movie or a love story full of hearts and flowers where issues and roles are all very clear. “Driving Miss Daisy” was like life, not black and white but shades of gray that differentiate our values, our ethics and beliefs.