I'm generally happy when people fall in love with novels and want to talk about them. I love "Harry Potter" and think Oprah Winfrey's book club was a great thing (even if I didn't always agree with her interpretations). That said, I have never been as disconcerted by the popularity of a book as I have been by the success of "The Help." Random white women constantly want to discuss it with me, encouraging/demanding/hoping that I love the book. Between Obama and "The Help," I've never had so many white people I barely know look for ways to talk about race with me.
But I can't help but feel that "The Help," for all the talk that it is ostensibly about the racism that African American maids experienced under Jim Crow, functions just like Obama does in contemporary public discourse, to illustrate the end of racism. I know that's a funny thing to say about a novel depicting Mississippi in 1962, but the trajectory of the novel invites that feeling. One of the three narrators, Aibleen, says that she realizes she is more free than the racist character that destroys her livelihood, a claim that encourages readers to feel better about segregation because, in this logic, nobody can take real, psychological freedom from anyone. Freedom is really about how you feel, not about, you know, the law. It makes Jim Crow an inconvenience, not an obstacle. At the end of the film, Aibleen confronts the racist character, Hilly, who is overcome by tears at Aibleen's righteousness. The other black protagonist, Minny, is served a meal by her white employers, and the southern-belle mother of the film's white protagonist embraces her daughter's courage in confronting Jim Crow.
In short, "The Help" illustrates how people can embrace the humanity of others, even across difference. This is true. However, the century of black struggle for formal equality in the face of what was, literally, domestic terrorism every day more often teaches us how inhumane human beings can be to each other. I read an Amazon review of the novel that told a reader not to worry that they would have to read over 400 pages of depressing oppression. This is true -- "The Help" makes Jim Crow palatable. I don't think this is a good thing.
I know that some readers have truly felt that they understand something new from reading this book. I know that others are trying to come to terms, as Stockett was in writing this book, with the guilt and affection they felt toward their own black caregivers. Moreover, I know some African Americans have really enjoyed the book, as well. I have no doubt that the same responses will govern responses to the movie.
With this in mind, I've decided to stop bemoaning how much people love it. If you're not a cantankerous critic of racial representations like me, it is easy to fall into the pleasures of both the book and the Hollywood adaptations. Sympathetic narrators, sassy black women (and, in the film adaptation, those colorful, bold, white, Southern women that moviegoers like so much), individual triumph, bonding across lines of difference, and a discrimination story with a spoonful of sugar make it pleasurable. So go ahead, "Help" fans. Love it as a story that makes you feel good, and for some of you, that makes you think. But since someone told me that they actually read "The Help" in an anthropology class, I think it is important to remember, through your happy tears, what "The Help" does not help us know.
You can't know anything about the history of Civil Rights in Jackson, Miss. The Association of Black Women Historians has ably pointed out the failures on this front. People think they know about Civil Rights history, but we've barely scratched the surface. The slogan on the movie poster that "sometimes change can start with a whisper" is historically egregious, given the extraordinary activism leading up that moment. African American women had voices before Miz Skeeter gave them the idea (but we're not going to get a biopic about Ida B. Wells). The general story is that Rosa was tired, Martin had a dream, and after a few boycotts and marches, all was overcome. For the people who will say that I'm being overly critical, just think about all the amazing stories that have not been told, and then ask yourself why "The Help" is so popular, and what films we will never see.
You can't know about black women's lives in this place and time from this story. This represents only a portion of their lives. The movie offers a little more of their lives outside being the help than the books, by virtue of being visual. Did anyone who loves the book note that Stockett only gives Skeeter a full life because she can't imagine what black lives look like outside being the help? We hear about church, we hear about Minny's domestic violence situation and get a brief scene with her child, but the book is not about the complexity of their worlds. Some extraordinary literature about African American women is out there (and I'm not talking about "The Secret Life of Bees").
"The Help" should really be called "Seeing the Help." From observing the response to the book and hearing the applause after the movie, I think it was transformative for some white people to actually "see" these women at all, and for many African Americans, it is always pleasurable to have fictional representations that depict any aspect of our history. But we should remember that "The Help" gives pleasure largely through lying by omission.
I think there are still books to be written and films to be made about this group of women. I am not someone who believes that African Americans can never depict people in service. We should not devalue the people today and yesterday who hold these jobs and have complicated stories that are rarely told. The one shining spot in "The Help" is the magnificent performance of Viola Davis, who depicts Aibleen with dignity and grace. Do I wish that she could finally get a leading role in which she is not maid? Of course I do (and so does she). But "The Help" actually makes me want to see more stories about black maids, more multifaceted than the one that Stockett and Hollywood provide.
In the order of our critiques: 1.) I talk about how the book is largely about how white southern women have seen understood black women, which ends up making the book, about white women. I went through about 1500 Amazon reviews that suggest that the book structurally supports my reading of these responses. Of course, many people have varied responses to this book, which I also suggest. 2.) The bold southern white women is in the film, not the book, in which the mother's of HIlly and Skeeter are more prominently in the vein of these representations. 3.) I think the point of many critics is that it is unlikely that African American women would have written a book that looks like this, as we have read fiction in which African American women are maids, but it is not the major force of their lives. Many people hate Tyler Perry for his representations of black people, so being a black creator does not make you immune from negative criticism.
The book however did give me a thumb print of the humanity of the era; the good and bad of it and in my view, as the main character said, helped (no pun intended) give the 'maids/helps' a voice, in the process asserting their importance and contribution (abused as it were), to the society they lived in.
I hope Ms. Wanzo, that as a media figure, this post and your position will influence and trigger more stories of this historical nature, where a broad spectrum of voices can be heard.....would very much love that.
Shalom - ⎝⏠⏝⏠⎠ -
you raised some interesting points. I must admit although I thoroughly enjoyed the comical value and the brief anthropological insight into the relationships that existed across the social and people group structure of the time. I did feel uneasy that it was a eurasian lady facilitating a voice for these ladies, but i guess that's how the cookie of history crumbles. A hu(e)man being has to be the one, not any other of creation, cause at the end of the day we are all colourful humans, all the same. Regardless of the fact that history and ruling establishments has sought to separate us, by state lines, country & county boundaries and by our creed and ethnicity. It is these stories and experiences we are hearing of, that shows us dispite racism, segregation, prejudice, apartheid and the like, we are all red blooded, skeletal, sinewed, capacitated grey mattered individuals, who have the potential to think GoOD, have a heart of compassion, and be mindful of each other, our fellow human brothers and sisters, no matter where they come from. Not forgetting, we all experience the same bodily functions - ⎝⏠⏝⏠⎠ -
tbc'd.................................
“It’s a crying shame that white conservatives from the Midwest and the Koch brothers would come into the South and pump millions of dollars into our elections to go back to segregated schools,” she said. “They need to get their nose out of our business.”
The Koch Brothers And The Battle Over Integration in Wake County's Schools
As long as you are aware that the so-called "corporate voice" aka "person"-hood has umpteen Billions in profits from the manufacture of paper-goods to buy elections in the indeterminate but white South against the interests of non-white residents in states like North Carolina.
This attitude was invented when Sam Alito was allowed on the Supreme Court by "W" Bush. Alito is that miserable excuse for an influential human being who sat loudly mumbling throughout President Obama's State of the Union Speech some years back and embarrassing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is at least two years older than I am and was appointed by Bill Clinton. For the record, ...
t.b.c.
I think what I gathered from the reactions in the theatre was that the story was easier and more palatable for these women who had never really confronted the other side of their history before, and it seemed to make them feel better about themselves to enjoy a movie where the evil white woman gets her deserts (or desserts, as the case was) and the black women wind up feeling empowered.
My friend enjoyed the movie (she grew up in a small town on the MS border), as did her daughter. But other friends who lived through it in Mississippi, who are old enough to have been there, felt it was entirely too shallow. They give kudos to the woman who wrote it for trying.
Here, though Jim Crow is no longer the law of the land, the reverberations of it still fester. Many whites here still hold the attitudes that were present then, but you only hear about it when they think you think like they do.
* I just wanted to make clear that this stuff doesn't only happen to,"The Help". In our country this Southern snobbery has occurred while the President's wife had a scholarship to New Jersey's prestigious Ivy League school.
Anyway, I made myself a list when somebody pointed out to me the products produced by Georgia-Pacific; that marking is on all packages, products of the Koch brothers, who must have had a reason for naming their paper-cups: Dixie cups..
There is a lot of writing by sisters about this topic, but apparently the only person we hear on the subject of Black maids is the voice of a White employer's daughter.