In Search of Utopia...: Movie Review: "The Help"

"The Help" What have we learned from watching?

Why I went to see “The Help”:

When I first saw the advertisement for "The Help" I was on Facebook. I briefly glanced at it then said to myself, “Now why would anyone make a movie like that?” I just shook my head, clicked onto something else, and said to myself, “Definitely won’t be seeing that!”

It was just that simple. I didn’t know whether the movie was a comedy or a drama, and I didn’t even want to find out! Why not? Well from the cover I could see the implied racism with the two Black women standing in their maid uniforms while the two White women dressed in their Sunday best, sat on a park bench looking a little bit ditsy. The secondary status of the Black women is obvious and as if we needed some extra help, the title reads, “The Help.” Hmm... They pretty much spelled it out for us... The phrase, “the help” is most often used in a derogatory way to express the secondary status of domestic workers in relationship to their employers.

Well, a week after first becoming aware of the movie, I started to hear people talking about it. One of my Facebook friends said she thought it should be a movie that every black person sees. Also, the month before it came out, Viola Davis was featured on the cover of my favorite magazine, Essence. So basically this movie was brought to my attention over and over again in many different ways. I was getting the idea that it would contain important lessons about my history, African-American culture, so I went to go see it!

Background Info:

“The Help” was first a best-selling novel (2009) by Kathryn Stockett. According to Wikipedia, Kathryn Stockett was born in 1969 (she’s 42yrs old) and was raised by an African-American domestic worker. Although Ms. Stockett was born and raised in the deep south, she didn’t actually witness the Civil Rights Movement. Most likely, her earliest childhood memories are of 1973.

My thoughts and feelings while watching "The Help":

1.) Make no mistake. This movie is definitely about WOMEN. The men in it play tiny, unimportant parts. It is a story told about the lives of women through the eyes of a woman...and she covers just about everything a woman might experience in life.

What kind of women topics? Miscarriage, Domestic Violence, Marriage, Dating, Child-rearing, Fashion, Girl bullying, Family vs. Career... You name it, it's in there!

The Civil Rights theme is almost secondary to the Feminist History kinda theme...but they kind of move along together...as does real life.

2.) My only criticism is that there was so much going on, especially towards the end. At 1st it's easy to maneuver through, but towards the end, all of my emotions were conflicted. I didn't even know what I was sad about! :-(

I was being hit with such sentimental and emotional experiences, I probably said "Aww" 20 times! It is a tear-jerker, but really funny and heart-warming too!

3.) I’ve read a lot of the reviews but I am here to tell you that life in Mississippi is probably not a whole lot different than that today! I was actually surprised at how similar the movie was to my experiences living there!

4.) I did like the movie because I felt it was just funny enough not to cause anyone to have nightmares yet it didn’t gloss over the Civil Rights Movement like “Remember The Titans” did.

5.) One question I came away with, “Have we ever figured out how and why this type of hatred was able to exist? The movie doesn’t answer that question. However, it does show how delicate and unbalanced the Jim Crow situation had become and the lengths that many white people had to go to in effort to ensure that blacks remained in secondary status.

In the movie, all of the characters were being challenged. Blacks and Whites were being challenged to cross the line. It is as if boundaries were being set. It was almost like watching a dance occur, symbolic of the relationship between Blacks and Whites...they were carving it out and defining it.

Moving into the future:

Many criticisms that I’ve read about this movie suggest that it leaves the Blacks in secondary status as domestic workers, therefore doesn’t really support any real change. My opinion: If you look at the movie from the historic point of view you might walk away with that, but I challenge you to look at the movie and consider it from a present-day point of view. How do your thoughts change? Consider the fact that we still have minority race domestic workers who are treated as 2nd class citizens. Even worse, we now have domestic workers who are not even citizens!

So the question again is, “What have we learned?"