The Help (2011)

(Dir. Tate Taylor Starring: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer)

The cast had a spectacular wardrobe.

And really? Yay, a film about racism! In the South. This could get super duper political, but I’ll try my best not to, I swear. Brownie’s promise.

Ok, I lied.

The Help, and even its source material (novel by Kathryn Stockett), is riddled with white guilt and oh hey, let’s make ourselves feel better by saying that even down there in the South, arguably the main racist hub in the States, there were people (just like us!) who wanted to help and didn’t just sit by and watch while their black neighbours (HAH!) drank from a different water fountain, went to different schools, ate at different restaurants, and swam in different swimming pools.

Yeah, sure. Let’s just go with that idea. So aside from being uncomfortable about the blatant ‘cure racism!’ message throughout the entire film, I didn’t find anything truly spectacular about it. Skeeter (Stone) , though filled with good intentions and allegedly loving her own black nanny, essentially uses Aibileen (Davis), Minny (Spencer) and a myriad of other black maids for her own gain, and then once she’s satisfied her publisher up in New York, ups and skips town to avoid any potential backlash (and to of course, further her writing career).

 Pictured: another white lady taking advantage of a minority.

What kind of message is this? Taking race out of the picture, this is what many American politicians would like to call a Class War, and what many others would call Capitalism-using others for your own gain; the rich get richer while the poor remain still, stagnant, left behind.

Luckily, this story isn’t actually based on any truth whatsoever (though the real life Aibileen may have a few things to say still to author Stockett), because with the tag line being ‘Change begins with a whisper’, writing an actual tell-all for your audience in the segregated South from the black maid’s point of view? Well, what difference would that actually make? No one in the South reading it would really change their views on race, just how other people might view them treating others. Does anyone honestly think that people who believe Mammy from Gone With The Wind was a common occurrence would read a book about mean white people and think ‘hmm, this anonymous black person is right-I’ll just change my ways now’?

Because the answer is no. A big No.

That said, this film is riddled with a manipulative story designed to make white people feel bad and then good again, and for black people to just feel ignored and marginalised. There are amazing performances from Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, which will probably nab them a couple more awards this season (remind me later to get into how sad it is that black women are only ever considered/win for playing the maid, will you?), but it’s only from those performances that you can really enjoy this film in any way.

New film idea: CIA Operatives Undercover as Maids to Stop Segregation.