The Help: A Conversation (Part 1)

Photo credit: Tim Ellis

Below is Part 1 of a conversation between me and Vanessa (who I am sure you all remember from our discussion of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution last year) regarding the film The Help. Obviously this is a popular movie right now and I assume a lot of you have seen it, so please comment on the post and add your voice to the discussion.

And now, without further ado...

Hey V, 

How are you? Remember how we went to see The Help last Friday? After it was over, I believe the first thing I did was turn to you and say "Soooo... that was a thing I just saw." And that is about as positive as I am going to get when we discuss this movie. Well, that's not entirely true: there were some lovely performances and some even lovelier dresses. Say what you will about Jim Crow era Mississippi, those gals did racism in high style! Now, as for the rest of the movie... saying it was "problematic" is probably too generous, right?

Love,

Roxy

Hi Roxy,

Yeah, so that was totally something that we saw...I was there so I can verify that we saw a well acted movie with moments that elicited empathy from the audience. We laughed. We cried. We said, "oh my God," when the "sassy" character, Minnie, punctuated her sentence by taking a bite from a fried drumstick that seemed to appear from thin air. That was a thing that we saw.

Well, we saw it and so did the rest of the country. It's a hit. People love it. Some of those people are even black people. Women at my church are raving about it. Even those, like my mom, who went into it with a critical eye had to admit that the movie at least got people (read: middle aged, middle class, white women) talking about a place and time that they feel is far far away. And okay, yeah, sure, as an American historian I'm all about people talking about history that isn't Hitler or the Civil War. I'm all about people asking me if the movie was accurate. I'm all about people wanting to know more about the Civil Rights Movement. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that  The Help had any of the Civil Rights Movement in it. Let me be clear, I think that we need to hear more stories about those African Americans who didn't march or picket but resisted in other ways. Many middle class blacks, for example, contributed legal aide and much needed funds to the movement. Some people simply opened their homes to SNCC members no questions asked. More than a few dinners were probably spat in. Everyday, as portrayed in the movie, African Americans found small ways to resist the racist system that made sure they would always be subservient and politically, economically, and socially marginalized. To summarize quickly, white people had all of the power and black people survived. 

Jackson, Mississippi, was (and is, for that matter) a hot bed of racial violence. Most of the actions portrayed in the movie, the writing of a tell all book, the toilets on the lawn prank, and let's not forget the pie, would have resulted in horrible violence. Not just for the African American characters either. More than one white person who tried to fight white supremacy was murdered, ostracized, lost their home or business...as did their entire family. The KKK and the White Citizens Council were no joke. Sure some of them had big hair and wore brightly colored floral prints and played bridge and relished their power over their domestic staff. But they weren't harmless "mean girls." Their husbands and male kin weren't bumbling shuffling meek henpecked fools who just did what the Mrs. wanted. Nope. Actually they killed a lot of people  in the name of "white female purity" and white supremacy: black men and women, Jewish Americans, and even white men and white women. In fact, murder was usually the go-to plan for any black person who stepped "out of line," or was even rumored to have stepped out of line (Emmett Till was murdered because someone thought he may have spoken to or whistled at a white women). This article, written for the Jackson Free Press, by a middle aged white southern woman pretty much sums up the movie's appeal and succinctly describes what is wrong with movies like The Help.

Donna Ladd writes:

The films aren't a problem because, as too many whites complain, "they make the South look bad" or "dredge up the past." Face it, white southerners made the South look bad: Our forebears were horrifying when they joined together to defend their white-supremacist way of life by any means necessary.
The movies are a problem because they dredge up a white version of a much more complicated past (and present) rich with courageous black heroes finding the faith and courage to reclaim a family structure destroyed by slavery, and ultimately changing this nation. But Hollywood seems to believe it takes a white hero saving poor blacks to sell the story. An occasional film like that would be fine--it did happen, too--but it is an injustice when only a victim narrative breaks through.

So, finally, here's one of my many bones to pick with the movie: Given what we know about the violence of the period, why is it that the only violence portrayed in the movie happens either well off camera (Medgar Evers murder) or is propagated by black men against black women (Minnie's abusive husband)? 

Thoughts? 

-V