The Help...Invoking Inspiration or Rage

The Help is a 2011 film written by Tate Taylor and adapted from Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 book. The movie tells the story of two African-American maids working in the 1960s for white families as told by a white journalist. The film included award winning stars such as Cicely Tyson, Octavia Spencer, and Viola Davis and received overwhelming praises from Oprah. Even with such an extraordinary cast the movie divided black activists who have been torn as to whether the movie should be celebrated for including many African-American stars in leading roles or condemned for perpetuating black stereotypes. I have decided to weigh in on the debate using SCWAMP as my guideline. SCWAMP is a tool created by Rebecca Ann Lind of University of Illinois to analyze how dominant U.S ideologies are reinforced in film. SCWAMP stands for Straight/Christian/White/Able-bodied/Property-Holder.

I realized almost immediately that there would be no coverage of the LGBT-Friends community in this movie. After all, this was a movie set to portray life in 1960s and open relationships that were not completely heterosexual were few and far between. Instead of  addressing the fact that homosexuality  did, in fact, exist during that era,  The Help the writer’s decided to disregard the possibility of homosexuality in the town all together. The women in the town were either married or looking for a husband. I had also already assumed that there would be predominantly Christian influences in the movie because of its’ setting in southern town of Jackson, Mississippi. The movie offers uplifting messages from the pulpit of the Christian church of Minnie and makes references to God in loving thy enemy and God’s provision for the Israelites to be freed from slavery. There are no references to any other movie in the film

African Americans have been victims of white privilege in both film and reality for as long as we have been in America. The Help was no different I knew it should be expected because of the decade in which the movie was supposed to take place. My issue with the film lies in the subtle messages of inferiority in the film. One that especially stands out is the part of the film where, Minny, played by Octavia Spencer, gives a previous employer a chocolate pie with feces as the main ingredient. That, though disgusting, is not  what frustrated me the  most  about this film as  disgruntled employees  of all races have been known to  do some  pretty  grimy things. What angers me about this scene is what comes afterwards. A white woman with what appears to be a herpes sore on her lip after eating the pie. Others may not have caught it but I did. If one reads the novel they would find that Hilly suffers from cold sores because of stress. But there is power in exclusion. Why include the cold sore after the pie scene and not the scene that explains that Hilly suffered from this beforehand? In this light is something else to perpetuate the stereotype that black women are lesser than white women. That we are unclean and oversexed. In Anne Friedberg’s “ A Denial of Difference: Theories of Cinematic Identification,” she notes  that “Even when representations of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve-to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze.” This view is evident in the use of the herpes sore, a sexually transmitted virus, and not common bacteria. This fully clarified to me that the media, even in movies that are  designed to show black women in stronger roles and overcoming adversity, undercut them with subtleties that let  us know  that it will never be  possible.

The writers in this  film treated disabilities in the same fashion that they treated homosexuality-as if it didn’t exist. The only difference between this film and others is that because it  was a period film and therefore wrought with racism, only white men were  considered able-bodied, disability  present  or not.

In The Help there is male dominance but not to the extent that there have been in other movies. Because of the era, however, the black woman is dominated twice over; by her race and her gender. During the sixties the role of a maid or caretaker is the only job that a black woman could as she was seen as unfit to do anything else. The white women in the film were charged with keeping up the home. The young white journalist, Skeeter, is pressured by her mom to look for a husband. The black maids are more afraid of the husbands of the families, who have the ability to fire them, than they are the wives, who spend most of the day with these maids.

When Rebecca Ann Lind describes Property-holder, she includes the holders of intellectual property as well as physical property. In The Help the intellectual property is held by the young white journalist who has come to “rescue” the African-American maids. She is depicted at more intelligent and witty than her black counter parts throughout the film. The journalist, played by Emma Stone, is shown as the only one who has anything to lose from document her interviews with the maids and is putting herself on the line for the maids. The African-American women are depicted as weak because they could not unite within themselves but had to have the help of someone more intelligent.

I found it difficult to find the inspiration of the movie or of one positive note. I too found myself angry by the assumptions that black women had to be rescued and were considered less than. I also found the fact that the roles that black women are most likely to receive rewards in depict them in such degrading lights infuriating. It is my belief that The Help perpetuates most of the ideologies present in today’s media. Go Figure.

Dreamworks Studios. (2010, May 12). The Help. Retrieved September 8, 2014, from Dreamworks Studios: www.dreamworks.com

Hooks, B. (1992). The Oppositional Gaze. In B. Hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (pp. 115-131). Boston: South End Press.

Lind, R. A. (2013). Considering Diversity Across Content, Audiences, and Production. In R. A. Lind, Race/Gender/Class/Media 3.0 (pp. 198-203). New Jersey: Pearson.

Raskroff, S. (2012, January 19). Everyday Sociology Blog. Retrieved September 8, 2014, from Everyday Sociology Blog: www.everydaysociologyblog.com