Why are some of the best and brightest black female voices in America so outraged over the new movie The Help based on Kathryn Stockett's best-selling novel?
Well, according to the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), and others like Professor Melissa Harris Perry of Tulane University, both the book and the movie represent widespread stereotyping and historical inaccuracies. They also take issue with the fact that Ms. Stockett's book which has sold over three million copies, and became a major motion picture that raked in close to $20 million dollars in its opening weekend debut has profited at the expense of the very women whose stories she purports to share so accurately in her novel. Couple this with the fact that Stockett is now being sued in a Mississippi court of law (on August 16, 2011) by a woman named Ablene Cooper, an African American nanny and housekeeper who works for Stockett's brother and sister-in-law, for stealing her likeness and story without her permission, and you have a perfect storm of emotions and resentment from a black female community that has often been silenced and shut out of "mainstream" book success and film adaptations when we share our own stories.
The ABWH further says in part in an "open" statement released on Friday, "that despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women's employment opportunities. Up to 90 percent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes. The Help's representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy -- a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families. Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low-paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.
While I agree with most of the sentiments expressed by the ABWH there is a larger, more contemporary issue that we need to consider--and that is this: some of the most poignant and heart-stirring stories of black women's lives both past and present have been told by the likes of Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Anne Moody, Alice Walker, Lorene Cary, Maya Angelou, Jill Nelson and now women of my generation (self included) are starting to share our complex journey as young, urban, professional, upwardly mobile black women in America, living in the "Age of Michelle Obama." Yet, very few if any of these books become mega-best-sellers or are adapted on film into a major motion picture.
Not to mention when we do get published, our books rarely get the marketing support and print runs of our white counterparts. This is not sour grapes, this is the reality black women live with everyday in America. And this is the real reason why so many black women are disgusted and maybe even angered by the success of a white female author who tells our story (as fiction) and is embraced and celebrated for doing so by the mainstream media, book reviews, film world, and the like.
This is no different than John Grisham's A Time to Kill, Mississippi Burning, or Ghosts of Mississippi and the like. In all of these books, turned to film, there is a white hero who saves the black people from the bad guys. Even portrayals of the Civil Rights era give the Kennedy brothers and others a heap of credit for somehow liberating black people. NOT TRUE.
The truth is that black people liberated ourselves. We organized, we marched, we protested, we put the USA's system of legalized segregation on trial -- and we won.
That is what I think is at the crux of what bothers us all so much. It is not that our white brothers and sisters did not play a role in our liberation from slavery and Jim Crow, they did. But the challenge for us as black authors, historians, and film-makers is that we cannot often get our stories told or shared on a broad national platform because the people often making the decisions to publish, support or fund these stories do not see them as valuable or relevant.
I will end by sharing that I know of what I speak. Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama is my first book. It has nationally commissioned research that costs over $30,000 dollars, it includes groundbreaking insights and trends for today's black woman, and it was published by a notable publishing house in May 2011 (but with a very small print run -- my publisher hedged its bets). The book did much better than expected (for a black woman's book), after being given a great reception by black radio, TV, and press and it has sold over 10,000 copies out the gate. The subject matter could not be more timely and relevant (it came out the same week Psychology Today said black women were scientifically unattractive), yet this book which tells the authentic story of modern-day black women of a new generation, our struggles, road-blocks, hopes and dreams has yet to be reviewed by a major news paper, or given time on a major morning show, or mainstream radio program. Those same producers and editors embrace Ms. Stockett and others like her so readily, while pushing those who live the reality into a corner to be silenced.
If I had a dime for every white female or white male editor who has told me or my publicist that the book is just "not for them" or that "it is nice but not for their audience," I would be rich. And this is what is really driving the furor of black women scholars, historians, and journalists who once again have to sit by and hear how wonderful a white woman author is for "telling our story," and watch her be embraced, validated, covered, and rewarded for doing so (even if inaccurately so). This is something that even in the year 2011, rarely happens to and for us as black women authors and screenplay writers.
Follow Sophia A. Nelson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/http://twitter.
Gina Barreca: Top 10 Books About Booze By Female Authors
Holly Palance: Growing Up With The Help: Esmus
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/index.php/site/comments/editors_note_of_anger_and_alternative_endings_081711/
It's a story folks. Everything doesn't have to be a political stance according to your personal whims.
I guess my hope would be that any time people of different races are depicted as respecting, collaborating, liking or loving each other it would chip away another piece of what separates us and remind us of the things that bring us together. If even one person sees the Help maybe a child or an insensitive adult and leaves with a new respect for or yearning for brotherly love it will have been worth making and seeing. That’s my perspective anyway.
What some publishers/marketers still don't get is that EVERYONE wants to be a part of something special. NO ONE wants to be the last to find out about something hot or amazing. Not just "mainstream" (read 'white') audiences; not just audiences "of color." EVERYONE.
So let that frustration inspire your own creativity in marketing your book/film/tv show, or whatever. Less time complaining, and more time innovating & promoting - that's my view.
Skeeter did not save the maid, she save herself from a life of oppression... marriage to an idiot.
The maids saved themselves by exposing the horrors of their work lives. I am a minority who grew up in the Civil rights era. I remember seeing whites marching right beside us. Whites helped my parents buy a house in an all white neighborhood that had good schools. Whites employed my sisters in their shops so that we would not have to be domestics like my grandmother.
Those times existed and continue to exist. We would be foolish to pretend otherwise.
and we need to face up to it. i am not excluding our black brothers and sisters who have their own rascist ways regarding color.
If we won, they why does it never get left alone? Why keep fighting? It seems that many are fighting themselves and their own personal issues. Why does it always seem that something so simple as a work of 'fiction' is picked apart and not just accepted for the nice work that it is?
It can't be "left alone" when you have an industry that won't leave it alone. In Hollywood, we never "won", because they won't allow it. Until Viola Davis is on the short-list to play the same roles as Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep, which she is CLEARLY capable of...these kinds of movies, no matter how well they are done, will be a point of contention.
I never raised this point, though I thought of it before now. Why couldn't this movie have taken place in the modern era, with the same actors...instead of the Jim Crow period? With the current economic downturn and the growing divide between the wealthy and the middle-class, this could have been much the same movie dealing with racism AND classism.
Instead, we were once again given the spectacle that we are all too familiar with. Hollywood has been updating old movies and TV shows like crazy, of late. Why couldn't this story have been one of them? I can think of a million other ways for a group of black women to find their strength...and I wouldn't need to go back 60 years to do it.
Viola Davis has yet another stunning performance to add to her criminally short resume.
My problems lie with its very existence. In 1939, the first Oscar ever awarded to a black person was for portraying a domestic slave named "Mammy", of all things. And here we are, 72 years later, in another century, with a black family occupying the most famous house in the world...and there is talk again of an Oscar going to a black actress for again playing a domestic...this time during the Jim Crow era.
Many have argued that movies, especially non-autobiographical works, should not bear the weight of historical accuracy, as it is just "escapist fare." What if the portrayal hits far too close to home, as it does in my case, as my mother does exactly that kind of work in Mississippi.
Where, then...is my escape?
Revisiting roles like these are akin to having a serious wound stitched up...and right before it heals...you remove the stitches and the wound opens anew. Neither Hollywood nor our communities are far enough removed from these portrayals to allow that wound to completely heal. We are so much better than this.
I feel its eyes over me, tension mounting, a palpable sense that I am about to be assaulted and mauled.
And there is no escape.
I often feel this way because race seems to permeate every pore and facet of nearly every project to which we are at the helm...and obviously those. like 'The Help', in which we are not, as well. I am rarely afforded the opportunity to apply the "law of universality" to these endeavors.
What that means is...can I insert an actor of any race into this role and it works just the same? No is too often the case when we create opportunities for ourselves. All audiences can identify with Will Smith saving the planet from destruction. But how many could identify with Brad Pitt playing 'Madea'? When everything is filtered through a black prism, we will never grow...and the old lion will never die.
Hollywood could, but they don't, cast Denzel Washington in any role written for George Clooney, because the characters are an "every man". But could you see Hollywood, or our own community, casting Leonardo DiCaprio as "Smokey" in 'Friday' instead of Chris Tucker?
I think you know better than that. You seem to be subscribing to the premise that an actor is an actor is an actor. We are not there yet, neither our community or Hollywood...and that is CLEARLY evident by the castings on most "hood" movies, and most "romantic comedies". What color are the protagonists usually in both those genres?
Do white people not live in their own "hood"? Can Hollywood not find two attractive people of color to star in at least a quarter of the "rom-com's" that they put out ad nauseum? They typecast us, and when we get our chance to do something...we typecast ourselves as well. Change is needed.
(btw, white chicks was way, way more offensive that the help.)