I fear that I may have to retitle the blog "The Help Experience" but that's okay. This kind of happens when Oscar contenders show up and get everyone talking. Soon there will be more of them and The Help won't hog so much attention.
If you haven't yet read my review, do that please (they don't write themselves!) but today I wanted to discuss Melissa Harris-Perry's righteous fury at the movie (There is a lot of this going around which Sasha Stone discussed recently though Perry was never mentioned).
For those of you who don't Perry she's a professor of political science at Tulane University, her new book "Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes and Black Women in America" just came out, and she's regularly on political programs as a talking head. She's also one of the smartest people alive. Every time she's on television I swoon. When her segments are over I often feel as if the fog has cleared from the subject under scrutiny, her commentary is so perceptive and accessible. Gender, race and politics of the South are kind of her thing so, naturally, she HATED The Help. But she was amusing about it so I thought I'd share her disgruntled tweets.
They're not as incisive and genius as her political commentary but 140 characters, y'know. Read on!
Here they are in order with a few interjections.
I'm one hour into #TheHelpMovie I'm not sure I can make it through to the end.....arrggghhhhhh & I read the book. I knew...but the images...
Hard to tell whether it's the representations of black women or of white women that's most horrible.
Thank God magical black women were available to teach white women raise their families & to write books!!
And thank God plucky white girls could give black women the courage to resist exploitation!
And man oh man was Jim Crow full of giggling good times in the kitchen!!
"oh I loves me some fried chicken" this line was just uttered in #TheHelpMovie #Seriously
Academy Award nominee Cicely Tyson teaches Emma Stone a thing or two!
While I get the frustration that "the magical negro" is stubbornly refusing to exit the movies -- the gays have their own problem with this as their chief role in entertainment is virtually the same: They exist to help the hetero lead become their best self or get their man or job or whatever. But I do think the "giggling good times in the kitchen" is an unfair point to harp on. The truth of human nature is that people have moments of joy and despair and everything in between no matter what kind of lives they have or social class they belong to and no matter what kind of shitty job they toil in. I find it absolutely 100% believeable that maids would enjoy each other's company in the kitchen when they had a moment to themselves. (If you've ever had a terribly unrewarding job, wasn't it your favorite co-worker that made it bearable?) But I get that her issue is with the balance in the movie -- as with the next tweet.
I just timed it. Miss Skeeter's date got same amount of screen time as Medgar Evers assassination. sigh.
First real moment. Violent arrest of black woman.
Oh yeah "cute" stunts like the pie incident would have provoked community wide violent reprisals. Not audience giggles.
Ok wow. They purged the "Imitation of Life" storyline from the film. Just wow...
#TheHelpMovie reduces systematic, violent racism, sexism & labor exploitation to a cat fight that can be won w/ cunning spunk.
She's right about the pie incident.
For those who've read the book what is she referring to when she mentions a deleted storyline in The Help: what Imitation plot thread got chopped? If you haven't seen Imitation of Life, which also centers around the arguably exploitative friendship of a white woman and a black woman, I highly recommend renting both the 1934 and 1959 versions and doing a double feature to see what changes and what doesn't with the passage of time. They're both good films with Oscar nominated contributions.
Hattie McDaniel as "Mammy" in the immortal GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)For those who are interested in the problematic topic of the "mammy figure" and black female labor in history and entertainment, Harris-Perry recommends the following books: "To Joy My Freedom Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War, "Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth Century America", and "Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South".
For those of you who have seen the film and for those of you who are avoiding it, does anything about The Help make you uncomfortable?
And who do we have to beg relentlessly until they cave and greenlight a biopic of Hattie McDaniel starring Monique? I can't let go of that dream due to the Oscars. That would be such a fascinating film in the right hands. McDaniel herself was criticized in her lifetime for the roles she was cast in. Her famous retort.
I'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be one for $7.
And while we're on the subject of Oscar, do you think any of these critiques will hurt it's golden ticket chances? Or is it too well liked for naysayers to do damage. It's audience rating, the CinemaScore, was a rare A+ this week.