The Help

I sat down to watch “Miracle” for about the eleventh time when I had a change of heart. I mean, how many points could I find to question in a movie I grew up adoring. I scrolled through my memory of recent Hollywood “based on a true story” or period films and suddenly had an idea. I watched “The Help” for the second time and to my surprise I picked up on a few subtleties I had not the first time. 

The movie is set in a highly racist Mississippi town in the early 1960’s. Skeeter (Emma Stone), a wealthy Southern society girl, recent college graduate, and aspiring writer, decides to interview black housemaids who have spent their entire lives taking care of prominent southern families and their children. One interview turns into two, and soon two turns into a jaw-dropping book.

The first time I watched “The Help” I couldn’t help but get choked up. The cast was incredible and the storyline seemed as accurate as any other film about the same time period. But, this time I realized I had been inserting history from my own knowledge the first time I watched the movie. This enhanced my experience. When I stopped doing this the movie seemed to go from “very good” to “average” pretty fast. What bothered me was the lack of resolution for the black women who risked their jobs and to an extent, their lives to participate in the interviews. They helped Skeeter and she got a great resolution out of it, but what did the housemaids get? They do not have the means to move out of danger and some of them lost their jobs but this doesn’t seem to upset the housemaids. To me, this did not sit well so I did a small amount of research to see if anyone felt the same way. My results were flooded with film review and historians who beliefs were similar to mine.

Touré is the author of five books and is also a avid movie critic for TIME magazine. He was appalled by, “The Help.” His critique took an even deeper dive into discontent. In his review is his relentless about how racist, inaccurate, and Hollywood the  “Magical Negros” role is and yet it is played more and more these days. He even calls it the “Hollywood staple” and defines the role as, “blacks who arrive in the lives of whites with more knowledge and soul and go on to teach whites about life, thus making white lives better. Magical Negroes exist so that the knowledge and spirit that comes from blackness can enlighten or redeem whites who are lost or broken.” This role was definitely fulfilled in “The Help,” and I am sure it will continue to be played in movies to come. I looked up a few more of Tourés reviews and read a bit of his book after reading his though provoking review of “The Help.”

 Many critics criticized the help for making this “mistake.” Most called it “racist” but some called it “unfortunate” or “troublesome” that Hollywood finds it necessary to fill this unrealistic role.

TIME Magazine (Touré): http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/02/is-the-help-the-most-loathsome-movie-in-america/#ixzz2PQZMTYab

The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/the-help,1175294/critic-review.html

Martha Southgate: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20516492,00.htm