I'm not going to get into a point-by-point rundown of why I think many of the criticisms being hurled at The Help are just-plain wrong. First of all, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman already did just that, so I'll merely link to his piece. Second of all, much of the outcry over The Help comes not from what is in the movie itself, but rather what isn't in the film, and (more importantly) what isn't in the marketplace. It is a clear case of film critics (and social commentators) reviewing not the movie itself, but everything outside the film. As a stand-alone film, it works as a solid, if not awe-inspiring character piece involving a number of women (black and white) who exist in an employer/employee relationship during the middle of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. If the picture were one of a dozen films being released by a major studio that centered around African-America actors, its flaws would be less of an issue, merely reasons for calling the film good rather than great. There may be a dearth of African-American-centered major studio releases. But it is silly to condemn the one 'shining' example and punish it for the non-existence of other pictures like it.
Much of the problem comes from critics who want to pretend they are political pundits and judge a film as if said film is supposed to represent an all-encompassing picture in regards to its subject matter. Precious was just about one single young woman and the struggles in her life (her problems would be little different if she were a poor white teenager born with equally awful parents). Closer was a character study about four messed-up people in some form of romantic/sexual relationships, it was not an all-inclusive and generic 'this is how men and women operate always!' fable. I rather enjoy Crash as a series of individual character studies that delves into race relations as opposed to a sweeping generalization on race relations. Twilight is about a single young woman and her choices in regards to the men in her life, she does not represent every young teenage girl ever. And, as such, The Help is NOT an all-encompassing story about the Civil Rights Movement. It does not portend to represent every single black woman who suffered under Jim Crow. It does not portend to claim that African-Americans were only able to take their institutionalized freedoms because of plucky white women of the era. There is of course a trend of African-American stories that are told from the point of view of the White Outsider Who Must Learn A Lesson, but I'd argue that this is not one of them.
The Help is a true ensemble piece, with meaty arcs for Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, and Jessica Chastain, among others. It is narrated by Viola Davis, and it is the very-real plight of the film's 'help' (represented mostly by Davis and Spencer) that makes the film work as an emotional heavyweight. Sure, you've got Emma Stone as a young woman who chooses to write about the mistreatment of African-American maids, but she is merely a narrative device. Aside from a climactic scene where she learns just why the maid who raised her was arbitrarily fired (a devestating cameo from Cicily Tyson), the movie isn't really about her in any emotional sense. She may be the storyteller, but it is not her story. In fact, once she sets up the primary narrative in the first act, she pretty much disappears for much of the middle of the story, leaving the film in the hands of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, with assists by Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chaistain. Stone does have an eye-rolling romantic subplot, but even that is only present so she can have something taken away by the end of the film (the implication that she is an outsider in her own community, which is why she is willing to buck the status quo). From the end of the first act onward, it is absolutely a film about Davis and Spencer's respective characters.
More importantly, it is not the responsibility of The Help to be the be-all, end-all big-studio movie involving the Civil Rights Movement. It does not concern itself with those who actively fought for freedom because that is not the story being told. It is a story about those who merely endured during a time of social injustice, and that story is every bit as relevant as the struggles of The Freedom Riders or the indiviudual portraits of iconic characters such as Medgar Evers or Rosa Parks. The film, for example, does not contain details of the sexual abuse that certain maids suffered at the hands of their white employers because that apparently did not occur in the households that are presented in this specific story. It does not detail the activist responses to the assassination of Medgar Evers because the characters in question did not get active after said murder. The most thoughtful and audience-challenging aspect of The Help is indeed its presentation of the white characters. Bryce Dallas Howard's villain may be a cruel and willfully hurtful human being (to everyone she encounters, it should be noted), but she does not consider herself a racist. She does not burn crosses, she does not physically harm those under her employ, and she considers herself a progressive who merely accepts one portion of her life (the subverviant relationship she has over her maids) as the status quo if not moral nessessity. Rather than present a bunch of mustache-twirling villains, The Help points out that even those who thought themselves politically and socially progressive were accepting of the casual and institutional racism of their society.
To paraphrase The Naked City, there are millions of stories about the Jim Crow era, and The Help is merely one of them. Its focus on those who merely existed in such times is indeed relevant as most of those who live during 'bad times' do just that. How many of my readers actually attended an Iraq War protest? How many among us would risk arrest by actively protesting a political convention? How many of us actively engage in the political process in any way other than reading or writing like-minded commentary, signing petitions, occasionally cutting checks, and voting? The Help is not a story about those on the frontlines, and it is not a story about a great social victory that was won. It is a character study, full of small victories and larger defeats (note that the Howard's character goes generally unpunished, while Davis suffers a final, arbitrary defeat). It is a sad, depressing story about people who did not rise about their times or their lot in life, but merely lived with as much dignity and humanity as their situation would allow. Anyone who calls it 'happy' or 'life-affirming' or any of that silliness just wasn't paying attention. It may not show every horrible thing that occured during the 1960s, but the film absolutely captures the heavy weight of living under such conditions.
But in the end, all of this would be irrelevant if there were more films centered around minority characters. If The Help were one of several big-studio films that starred African Americans. But, alas, it is one of a few thus far (along with Jumping the Broom and Madea's Big Happy Family), and it is the only one given a high-profile release by a major studio. Thus, like all-too many high-profile films involving minority and/or female characters at its center, it is being scrutinized in a fashion that implies that it must represent the respective minority or gender film experience all by-itself. It is also being held to task on moral grounds on which we would never hold most other (white male-centered) films on. The characters are not representing every African American woman who lived in the 1960s. If the film fails in a certain way to represent the African American experience in the time period in question, then the solution is to demand more movies about that period that deal with what this film does not, not to trash the one film that does attempt to tell such a story on grounds unrelated to whether it works as a movie.
The Help is merely a single movie that tells a story about a specific group of people who lived during the 1960s Jim Crow era. Its narrative is not all-encompassing and its characters are not placeholding representations of everyone who lived during that time. It is a standalone movie, a character study that cannot and should not be held up as the defining movie about its time. It is both unfair to the movie and frankly unfair to those who actually suffered (or prospered) under Jim Crow. The solution is not to accuse The Help of being something it is not and then tearing it down on the grounds that it does not exhaustively meet the standards of what you wish it to be. The solution is to point out its success as a win for big-studio dramas and big-studio pictures starring African American women and use that success as a reason for Hollywood to make more dramas with African Americans at the center (Tyler Perry can't do it alone). The solution is to vigorously counterattack when a pundit denigrates the real artstic and commercial achievements of Tyler Perry by merely referring to him as Madea or 'the guy in the dress'. The solution is also to point out when movies like Jumping the Broom (which, to be fair, wasn't very good), nearly matches the domestic gross of the far-more high-profile and expensive romantic comedy Something Borrowed ($37 million versus $39 million) and ask why Paula Patton doesn't get the same scripts or offers as Kate Hudson.
The Help is just a decent, well-acted period drama that is playing well with audiences because (among other reasons) big-studio dramas are an endangered species during the summer season. It offers no great insights and offers no solutions to the racial problems of yesterday or today. It is merely a character piece that exists to entertain and educate those otherwise uninformed about the era. It is not the end of anyone's education about the Civil Rights Era, but it certainly works as a starting point. As pundits, critics, or social commentators, it is our job to point out its flaws, both as a movie and as history. But its flaws as history do not count as an automatic disqualification for the movie as a whole. Those flaws merely serve as jumping off points for further education and discussion about how far we have and haven't come as a racial melting pot.
Scott Mendelson
Follow Scott Mendelson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ScottMendelson
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on your hands?
I don't care who makes it, the director Ang Lee was from Taiwan, and yet has made incredible films about 19th century society (Sense and Sensibility), 70's America (The Ice Storm), and gay cowboys (yes, Brokeback mountain).
Let me say that I normally agree with your take on films and issues surrounding them but your privilege is showing. It's great that all these white reviewers love the movie. They loved Driving Miss Daisy too. I have no wish for white people to carry my water, and to make my arguments about race, film, the industry or even this particular film. What I insist on however is that you recognize that being white and male you might have a different perspective than black and female and black and male...that your perspective isn't neutral, isn't obligatory, and that your frustration with and analysis pales in comparison to the frustration of African Americans that the vast majority of appologists for this movie are white.
Race exists. The issues of publishing or producing movies exist, but sans that, the issues within the film of white heroism and black infantilism, where a white child helps black women find voice, are not external issues. They are functional problems with the story telling.
It is understandable why white people don't have a problem with this type of myth making... I call it Last Samuraiing -- where a drunk becomes capable of fighting the second best samurai in the world to a draw in three months. So it is obviously not incredible that white writers and audiences would enjoy a 20 year old white girl "rescuing" black women in the 60s.
CONT
This is and has been my main issue with not only the film but the book itself. This constant characterizing of blacks as the victim and white as the proverbial "white" knights is in and of itself offensive. And not factual or accurate.
J
But the story is historically flat and shallow, while purporting to be deep. It is demonstrably incredible and flawed in easily seen ways, and it is wildly ironic that in a push to assert resistance to hegemonic forces of privilege the author reinforces them in so oblivious ways. But it is a feel good movie for the uninitiated. I get that.
What I don't get is why reviewers and critics, who are paid to be, well, critical -- to think beyond the obvious -- not only champion the movie but refuse, in similar ways to the author, to recognize their own privilege in reviewing it. Your defense of the project, similar to almost all white defense of it, rests on flawed arguments. The issues are not external, no one is being unfair to he white people making their living off of black stories and appropriating our voices. The author and the film are not being victimized by angry black people. Rather, they exist, function, and flourish in a biased privileged place with a host of media defenders who can't see the forest for the trees.
What I say to the reviewers who have made a cottage industry out of defending this work is when you start "coming" with the clients it is time to get out of the business. And yes, that is gendered speech. And yes I use it consciously to make a point.
J
Those 2 projects set the serious information bar. There ARE a million stories, but the audience just isn't there to support them.
Let this book and movie fill in the gaps. Sadly the movie goers want escapism - not a history lesson.
This outcry over what The Help represents probably wouldn't exist if there were more movies that showed other sides to minority life. There is no balance.
This is from a person that still hasn't watched the movie "The Blind Side". I want to read the book first because I heard that there were many things left out of the book pointing to the supportive black people in the characters family...that never made it to the movie. I will read the book, and then watch the movie to come to my own conclusion on that one...but I will say there was just as much controversy on this movie. The sad thing is that Hollywood won't change...and there are many Black actresses that can rarely get jobs - outside of a few exceptions.
You know, just a few weeks ago, after watching "Love and Basketball" followed by " Brown Sugar"..I thought the same thing...what happened? The mid to late 90's and early 2000's saw a plethora of thoughtful, middle-class, respectable black films, many focused on Black love in a realistic way. Where are they? I am tired of seeing Tyler and Martin in dresses...I don't want to have to sit, cringing, at anymore "Lottery Ticket" type of goofball time-wasters. I am sick of the "Friday's" (even though they are feel-good funny) and anything put out by a Wayne's brother.
I def join you in your yearning for something of substance again. Something I, as a middle class, college-educated, professional black woman can relate to, and would spend $10 of my money to go see.
So then, to cut to the heart of the matter, the controversy really becomes whether or not the specific story of The Help is one story out of millions of potential civil rights stories available to be told. To conclude that the answer is no, then explain why is a totally legitimate argument, and not a misunderstanding of the context of the storytelling as Mendelson seems to be claiming.
So then, to cut to the heart of the matter, the controversÂy really becomes whether or not the specific story of The Help is one story out of millions of potential civil rights stories available to be told is WORTH being told.
Our mainstream movies are filled with this nonsense because of the right-wing double-standards of the MPAA. F*** the MPAA.