On Thursday evening we saw The Help. Neither of us had read Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same title. I'd read only an outline of it's storyline. We both thought it "a good movie, well-acted", and had little more to say to each other about it because, when we arrived home from the cinema, we found our hot water tank had sprung a leak - it was almost 10 pm.
We were unable to find any tap, valve or other device for stemming the flow now seeping through to carpeting indoors and out under the porch wall . My husband rang his son AJ, a heat and air expert, who lives quite close by. AJ came to our rescue. After examination it was decided that we'd need a new tank as the damage was internal and unreachable. He took out the old tank, coupled the water pipes to the cold water supply so's we could use all bathroom faucets. AJ was back next evening to complete the work, and we are now all-systems-go once more.
After mopping up and drying out, discussion of The Help, was far from our minds, overlaid by gratitude for our own helper, a tired but very willing AJ.
Before drafting this post I scooted around a few reviews and comment threads about the movie, and the novel. I was surprised to find that there's a sizeable body of dissent from what I thought was a fairly unanimous opinion that it's a good, entertaining movie -and that most readers had seen the novel as a darn good read.
For a passing reader unfamiliar with the storyline, The Help, starring Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, among others, is set in 1963 Mississippi, around the time of civil rights protests, the killing of Medgar Evers, assassination of JFK, etc. Those events feature only as background material, seen on TV screens, however. Focus is on the lives of some black domestic servants of wealthy southern households. The novel's sets "Skeeter" (Emma Stone) a daughter of one such wealthy household, something of a maverick among her peers, as "heroine". She comes home from college aiming to be a writer and looks for a job as a journalist locally. She obtains a very modest job on the town's newspaper, but as a sideline decides to try to write a book about how the local black women, domestic servants, view their lifestyles and their experiences in the town's well-to-do white households.
Skeeter's wet behind the ears, a tad too wet considering she's been in college for several years during some intense racial conflict. Yet she seems not to fully realise the can of worms she's attempting to open. The white women employers, her peers and "friends" are portrayed as uniformly horrendous - rascist, classist, selfish, self-obsessed snobs. I thought them caricatures but my husband assures me they are true to life for that era in that area of the US. There's only one half-decent white person, outside of that category, in the movie besides "the heroine": a ditsy Marilyn-type married to one of the local socialites, to the chagrin of local female socialites who class his Mrs. as pure trailer-trash.
It's probably pretty obvious from the above that the movie works basically via stereotype....both black and white. Which is alright, as long as that's kept in mind. Not all southern people were wealthy socialites, nor were they all racist - though in Mississippi in the 1960s it was the prevalent mindset I understand. Segregation, rascism and bigotry continued apace - black domestic servants were degraded in such ways that I began to wonder if I'd mis-read that bit of US history about "freeing the slaves". This kind of degradation was, to my mind, almost equally bad as slavery, it was wholly hypocritcal. I hated the wealthy white women on that silver screen with a hatred unbecoming to the peacelover I'm supposed to be.
The root causes of it all (and I do understand that a layer of racial prejudice was a substantial additon to the problem) the root is truly in class-distinction, which, in the UK we were always led to believe was absent in the USA; and in discrepancy in distribution of wealth. Today that two-headed hydra, class/wealth is rearing its head and roaring once again (not that it ever completely disappeared).
The gist of dissent about book and movie, often coming from African Americans, I discovered, is that the movie is patronising to African Americans, condescending. The scenario portrayed: a young white "heroine", would-be writer looking for a saleable book to make money - would be money off the backs of those suffering degradation. In the movie, though, some of the proceeds from Skeeter's book are shared among the black participants. (The objection could apply to novelist Ms Stockett.)
Skeeter, the young white writer figure, seems to many African Americans to be just another example of a regular pattern in novels of "white" rescuers coming to the aid of the black community. A novelist's tool to pander to the white guilt-soothing idea that there were some good white people ready and willing to play savior. Even that national treasure of a book To Kill a Mockingbird is mentioned more than once in commentary as using one of that ilk of "white savior" plots.
I'd have to argue that, though I can see what's behind the objection in general, it is an unfair objection to those kinds of novels. Logically - where would a black attorney have come from to fill the shoes of Atticus Finch? Were there any back lawyers in the US south of the 60s and before? It was no fault of the African American community, to be sure, but the fact is that black lawyers in the deep south in those days, would have been few and far between. Likewise, would a young black writer have dared to approach the subject matter presented in Ms Stockett's novel? I guess not. So, it was necessary for a white "helper" to step forward from time to time in order that tales of what went on, in fact, could be fictionalised in a credible way. Rosa Parks, for instance needed no white helper, nor did Dr. King, and countless others, but in the world of small town domestic servants, any stepping out of line by black people would be immediately dealt with in very unpleasant ways. The appearance of a white helper was possibly the one and only opportunity to "get the word out", in the case of The Help to show those horrendous travesties of the female sex for what they were.
While AJ was scrambling around our dripping water tank he asked about the movie we'd been to see. I told him: The Help.
"Was it a weepie or was it funny?" he asked.
"No not really a weepie, it was funny in parts, but serious. It's about black women domestic servants in the deep south in the 1960s and the white women they worked for who were all arseholes - and I suspect they really were back then."
"Yes... and even now", he replied with a rueful grin.
We were unable to find any tap, valve or other device for stemming the flow now seeping through to carpeting indoors and out under the porch wall . My husband rang his son AJ, a heat and air expert, who lives quite close by. AJ came to our rescue. After examination it was decided that we'd need a new tank as the damage was internal and unreachable. He took out the old tank, coupled the water pipes to the cold water supply so's we could use all bathroom faucets. AJ was back next evening to complete the work, and we are now all-systems-go once more.
After mopping up and drying out, discussion of The Help, was far from our minds, overlaid by gratitude for our own helper, a tired but very willing AJ.
Before drafting this post I scooted around a few reviews and comment threads about the movie, and the novel. I was surprised to find that there's a sizeable body of dissent from what I thought was a fairly unanimous opinion that it's a good, entertaining movie -and that most readers had seen the novel as a darn good read.
For a passing reader unfamiliar with the storyline, The Help, starring Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, among others, is set in 1963 Mississippi, around the time of civil rights protests, the killing of Medgar Evers, assassination of JFK, etc. Those events feature only as background material, seen on TV screens, however. Focus is on the lives of some black domestic servants of wealthy southern households. The novel's sets "Skeeter" (Emma Stone) a daughter of one such wealthy household, something of a maverick among her peers, as "heroine". She comes home from college aiming to be a writer and looks for a job as a journalist locally. She obtains a very modest job on the town's newspaper, but as a sideline decides to try to write a book about how the local black women, domestic servants, view their lifestyles and their experiences in the town's well-to-do white households.
Skeeter's wet behind the ears, a tad too wet considering she's been in college for several years during some intense racial conflict. Yet she seems not to fully realise the can of worms she's attempting to open. The white women employers, her peers and "friends" are portrayed as uniformly horrendous - rascist, classist, selfish, self-obsessed snobs. I thought them caricatures but my husband assures me they are true to life for that era in that area of the US. There's only one half-decent white person, outside of that category, in the movie besides "the heroine": a ditsy Marilyn-type married to one of the local socialites, to the chagrin of local female socialites who class his Mrs. as pure trailer-trash.
It's probably pretty obvious from the above that the movie works basically via stereotype....both black and white. Which is alright, as long as that's kept in mind. Not all southern people were wealthy socialites, nor were they all racist - though in Mississippi in the 1960s it was the prevalent mindset I understand. Segregation, rascism and bigotry continued apace - black domestic servants were degraded in such ways that I began to wonder if I'd mis-read that bit of US history about "freeing the slaves". This kind of degradation was, to my mind, almost equally bad as slavery, it was wholly hypocritcal. I hated the wealthy white women on that silver screen with a hatred unbecoming to the peacelover I'm supposed to be.
The root causes of it all (and I do understand that a layer of racial prejudice was a substantial additon to the problem) the root is truly in class-distinction, which, in the UK we were always led to believe was absent in the USA; and in discrepancy in distribution of wealth. Today that two-headed hydra, class/wealth is rearing its head and roaring once again (not that it ever completely disappeared).
The gist of dissent about book and movie, often coming from African Americans, I discovered, is that the movie is patronising to African Americans, condescending. The scenario portrayed: a young white "heroine", would-be writer looking for a saleable book to make money - would be money off the backs of those suffering degradation. In the movie, though, some of the proceeds from Skeeter's book are shared among the black participants. (The objection could apply to novelist Ms Stockett.)
Skeeter, the young white writer figure, seems to many African Americans to be just another example of a regular pattern in novels of "white" rescuers coming to the aid of the black community. A novelist's tool to pander to the white guilt-soothing idea that there were some good white people ready and willing to play savior. Even that national treasure of a book To Kill a Mockingbird is mentioned more than once in commentary as using one of that ilk of "white savior" plots.
I'd have to argue that, though I can see what's behind the objection in general, it is an unfair objection to those kinds of novels. Logically - where would a black attorney have come from to fill the shoes of Atticus Finch? Were there any back lawyers in the US south of the 60s and before? It was no fault of the African American community, to be sure, but the fact is that black lawyers in the deep south in those days, would have been few and far between. Likewise, would a young black writer have dared to approach the subject matter presented in Ms Stockett's novel? I guess not. So, it was necessary for a white "helper" to step forward from time to time in order that tales of what went on, in fact, could be fictionalised in a credible way. Rosa Parks, for instance needed no white helper, nor did Dr. King, and countless others, but in the world of small town domestic servants, any stepping out of line by black people would be immediately dealt with in very unpleasant ways. The appearance of a white helper was possibly the one and only opportunity to "get the word out", in the case of The Help to show those horrendous travesties of the female sex for what they were.
While AJ was scrambling around our dripping water tank he asked about the movie we'd been to see. I told him: The Help.
"Was it a weepie or was it funny?" he asked.
"No not really a weepie, it was funny in parts, but serious. It's about black women domestic servants in the deep south in the 1960s and the white women they worked for who were all arseholes - and I suspect they really were back then."
"Yes... and even now", he replied with a rueful grin.
