Michael Oher, retired NFL star and subject of The Blind Side movie, has petitioned a Tennessee court, alleging that the Tuohy family never adopted him, despite the story the movie has spread around, and instead tricked him into a conservatorship that would allow them to control his finances. Oher apparently did not discover the length of this deception until February of this year, which is why the petition is being filed now.
Oher was already a football player at Briarcrest Christian School when he met the Tuohy family; the family claims to have adopted him in 2004, but Oher’s 2011 book I Beat the Odds made it clear that they used a conservatorship in place of an adoption and claimed it was due to Oher already being a legal adult. At the time, Oher seemingly believed that justification.
Conservatorships are meant to provide financial guardianship to individuals who cannot handle their own finances, usually those who are mentally unwell/incapable, but they have been used to financially control individuals, as with the case of Britney Spears. Oher’s conservatorship eventually led to the book and the Oscar-winning film The Blind Side.
The Blind Side controversies
The movie itself has been controversial, due to playing into a white savior narrative where a wealthy white family “rescues” a young man from the streets, with Sandra Bullock being the real main character of the movie. Even more ironically, the film itself addresses the accusation that the family organized the adoption specifically to get a talented Oher to play football for their alma matter, University of Mississippi, which the film argues against, instead portraying it as Oher simply following in his family’s footsteps.
Oher himself has previously voiced frustration with how the film affected how others viewed his intelligence and leadership skills, as well as with how the movie has defined his career as much as any of his personal successes. Oher has won a Super Bowl and written two books, but the film based on the book the Tuohys wrote is still where many people know him from. This, combined with the newfound knowledge that he may not have received any royalties from the film due to his conservatorship—despite the family’s financial profits from the film and the opportunities it has generated for them, along with using Oher’s name to promote their work—definitely casts the film, and the family, in a new light.
While it doesn’t seem that his new book, When Your Back’s Against the Wall, goes into the conservatorship, the Tuohy family does appear to be notably absent from the media surrounding the book.
In any case, Michael Oher is 37 years old with a wife and four children. The idea that the conservatorship has continued this long is baffling. Oher’s petition seeks to end the conservatorship and barr the Tuohys from using his name and likeness, and that should be the minimum. As the petition was just filed, it’s hard to say if/when the conservatorship will end, but we’ll be watching it closely, to say the least.
(featured image: Thearon W. Henderson/Stringer/Getty Images)
