The Help Assignment

8/10/2019 The Help Assignment

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Does 'The Help' whitewash racial issues thatpersist today?

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help:

On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provideshistorical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel versionof The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie willensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as aprogressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Helpdistorts, ignores, and trivializes theexperiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representationsof black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalitieslimited black women's employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women inthe South labored as domestic servants in white homes. The Helpsrepresentation of thesewomen is a disappointing resurrection of Mammya mythical stereotype of black women whowere 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 Americato 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 troublingbecause it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope toclean the White House rather than reside in it.Both versions of The Helpalso misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in theSouth, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, over-exaggerated blackdialect.In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, Youis smat, you is kind, you is important. In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the Law, anirreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawnstrength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and thevalidation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the blackcommunity described in The Helpwhere most of the black male characters are depicted asdrunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the

historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well asphysical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discoveredletter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domesticworkers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the otherhand, makes light of black womens fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comicrelief.

Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists inMississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based fieldsecretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers assassination sends Jacksonsblack community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusiona far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight.Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed,


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society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the WhiteCitizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, thisstatement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context forthis popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South. In the end, The Helpis not a story aboutthe millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support

their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, whouses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of BlackWomen Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black womenslives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University. DainaRamey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH andAssociate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a LifetimeMember of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.

Word Count: 766

Suggested Reading:

Fiction:Like one of the Family: Conversations from A DomesticsLife, Alice ChildressThe Book of the Night Womenby Marlon JamesBlanche on the Lamby Barbara NeeleyThe Streetby Ann PetryA Million Nightingalesby Susan Straight

Non-Fiction:Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by ThavoliaGlymphTo Joy My Freedom: Southern Black WomensLives and Laborsby Tera HunterLabor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to thePresent by Jacqueline JonesLiving In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migrationby Elizabeth Clark-LewisComing of Age in Mississippiby Anne Moody

Any questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to:[email protected]

On Feb. 10, 2009, exactly three weeks after the inauguration of President Barack Obama,Kathryn Stockett's The Help was published in the United States. A tale of an ambitious youngwhite woman in Jackson, Miss., circa 1962, who wants to write about the experiences of theAfrican-American maids in her racially polarized community, the book had been initially rejectedby dozens of literary agents on its road to publication.

The New York Times review was mixed, but correctly predicted that it was going to be "wildlypopular." A more favorable review inPublisher's Weekly took note of the book's excellent timing:On the heels of the first black president being swept into the White House on a wave of populistenthusiasm, here was an "optimistic, uplifting debut novel" that re-examined the wounds of theCivil Rights era.

For her part, the Jackson-born Stockett says she never set out to tap into a cultural zeitgeist ormake any grand proclamations about race relations. She just wanted to write a compelling story,partly inspired by the maids who helped raise her in the late 1970s and '80s.

The subject of race, Stockett told me when we talked last month, just isn't something you openly

talk about if you're from Jackson -- even if you have written a novel about race.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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But this much is certain: The Help struck a chord, and then it turned into a phenomenon. By thesummer of 2009, it had lodged itself high on the New York Times bestseller list. By the end of2010, it had sold more than 3 million hardcover copies. It's presently ranked No. 1 on the tradepaperback and e-book charts. And the novel is about to enjoy yet another commercial boost,courtesy of a faithful, sure-handed film version, directed by Stockett's childhood friend, TateTaylor, which opens nationwide on Wednesday.

An endearing Cinderella story, no doubt. And make no mistake, The Help is nothing if not aneffective piece of contemporary fiction -- a brisk melodrama that makes you laugh, makes you cryand, ultimately, awards its noble black characters triumph.

But despite all of this, some nagging, uncomfortable questions linger:

Does The Help peddle in the worst sort of stereotypes, about the Great White Hope who mustprovide moral and spiritual guidance to otherwise helpless black people?

Does the novel use the very real, very ugly history of Mississippi in the 1960s -- including themurder of civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, which provides the backdrop for a critical stretch ofthe book -- as fodder for what is ultimately a feel-good fairy tale?

And perhaps the most gnawing issue of all: Is the book's success truly an example of a "post-race" society -- the brave new Utopia promised by the election of Obama -- or an illustration of amore troubling reality? Have white Americans become all too content to talk about race in thepast tense -- as a knotty problem that finally got solved, as opposed to one that now mightactually be more complicated than ever.

A Southern story

The Help begins in August 1962, shortly after Eugenia Phelan, aka Skeeter (played by EmmaStone in the film version), has graduated from Ole Miss and returned to her childhood home inJackson. Skeeter pines for a career in publishing, possibly even as a writer -- only she doesn't

have a subject worth writing about. A light bulb goes off after she visits her friend Hilly (BryceDallas Howard), who rails against households that allow the black help to use the same bathroomfacilities used by the white members of the family.

What if, Skeeter wonders, she could interview the black maids about their experiences andpublish a book?

No one talks about race, she argues, pitching the idea to an editor at Harper and Row in NewYork. "No one talks about anything down here," she says.

I first read The Help in early November 2009, after a number of female friends had recommendedit. I raced through it in a few days, entertained and a little squeamish. I never got past Stockett's

use of language in the novel, which is narrated in alternating chapters by Skeeter and two of theAfrican-American maids she comes to interview, saintly and shy Aibileen (Viola Davis) andindependent-minded Minny (Octavia Spencer).

Just consider these sentences from one of the Aibileen chapters, written in a voice that occupiesan awkward middle ground, somewhere between Alice Walker's carefully wrought diction in TheColor Purpleand anAmos 'n' Andyskit.

"You'd never know it living here, but Jackson, Mississippi be filled with two hundred thousandpeoples. I see them numbers in the paper and I got to wonder, where do them peoples live."

I was troubled, too, by the fact that The Help is ultimately Skeeter's story -- a tale of a whitewoman who triumphs on the shoulders of black characters. Working in secret, Skeeter persuades

Aibileen to get other maids to talk about their lives. Even when Aibileen or Minny is narrating thestory, it's Skeeter whose actions dictate the narrative. Will she be able to secure enough interview


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subjects? Will she finish her book before the deadline imposed by an editor in New York? (In oneunfortunate subplot, thankfully pared back in the film, we also wonder if she will ever find a goodman.)

For decades, we've seen books, plays and movies about Southern race relations that invariablyplace white people at the center, and usually as the savoir: To Kill a Mockingbird, Driving Miss

Daisy, Mississippi Burning, evenA Time To Kill. The Helpfalls right in line. It's a story that allowswhite readers to feel good about the way black and white characters band together in the face ofracism, even as it also reaffirms a "whites lead, blacks follow" social structure.

As it turned out, a few days after I finished reading The Help, I went to a screening of The BlindSide, surely the most egregious recent example of the Great White Hope movie. It stars SandraBullock as a brassy white Memphis woman named Leigh Anne Tuohy who takes under her wingan African-American teenager and pushes him to gridiron glory. (The movie is based on the truestory of once-homeless football player Michael Oher, played by Quinton Aaron.)

And then I watched, with dismay but not necessarily surprise, as The Blind Side turned into itsown phenomenon. Here was a movie that trafficked in nothing but stereotypes and yet allows its

white viewers to feel enlightened and progressive. We tsk-tsk Leigh Anne's racist, ladies-who-lunch friends. But the one person in the film who questions her motivations -- an NCAAinvestigator who wonders if Leigh Anne might be using Oher to prop up her alma mater Ole Miss'football team -- is transformed into the villain of the piece.

And just as The Help takes Aibileen and Minny's stories and gives ownership of them toSkeeter,The Blind Side takes Michael Oher's story and makes a white Hollywood superstar theleading lady. Was this truly what the Obama presidency wrought: an invitation to indulge intriumph-over-adversity underdog tales? Meanwhile, the few recent works that bring a measure ofnuance to the discussion about race -- such as Bruce Norris's Pulitzer-winning play ClybournePark, set alternately in 1959 and 2009, about a once-white, then-black, and now-gentrifyingChicago neighborhood -- barely register on mainstream radar screens. And then there's SpikeLee, whose 1989 film Do the Right Thing remains the most lacerating portrait of American racial

tension ever made. He hasn't directed a feature since 2008's Miracle at St. Anna, because -- herecently told Charlie Rose -- he can't get financing for any of his projects in development, amongthem a biopic about Jackie Robinson.

Insider information

A few weeks ago, Taylor, the director, and actress Octavia Spencer came to North Texas topromote the movie version of The Help. Taylor had only one other feature to his credit, 2008'sbarely seen Pretty Ugly People, before his longtime friend Stockett granted him the rights to thenovel in July 2009. Spencer -- probably best known for a four-episode run as INS agentConstance Grady on Ugly Betty-- was one of the first people cast in the film (she has knownTaylor for years). Curious about their reactions to the book's portrayal of race, I met with them for

a 30-minute interview at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dallas.

As it turned out, Spencer had her own reservations upon first encountering the material.

"As an African-American woman, the skepticism came when I read the first sentence, and it waswritten with the dialect, and I thought, 'OK, here we go, Mammy from Gone With the Wind,'" shetold me. "I'm not a fan of Gone With the Wind."

But for Spencer, the characters deepened, and the ingenuity of the storytelling won out. By thethird chapter, she was hooked.

"She was writing about women from a certain socioeconomic level and education level. This isthe way these black women talked in this time period because they didn't have access toeducation. So it didn't bother me that a white woman was writing from that perspective. I think itwould have bothered me more had it not been a good story."


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Throughout our conversation, Spencer and Taylor addressed my questions in a frank,provocative manner. Both reject the idea that Stockett indulges the Great White Hope stereotype.In their interpretation, Skeeter is a selfish, career-minded woman -- nearly as exploitative of theblack characters as their heartless employers -- who needs to be set right by Aibileen and Minny.

Spencer and Taylor also stressed the value of a book that hinges upon African-American

women's stories -- and with getting those stories out in the world. Skeeter wants to heareverything Aibileen and Minny and the other maids have to tell them, not just the stories of cruelor selfish white employers, but also the ones about good and honorable bosses. In a popularculture where black women rarely take center stage, these women, Spencer argued, "have depth,they have stories and story lines."

To give credit where it's due, the film version does do many things right. The first-person voicehas mostly been excised, with only Aibileen remaining as narrator. (And, at that, there isn't muchnarration.) The funny, affecting and deeply dignified performances by Davis and Spencer resisteasy categorization: Aibileen is not just some silently suffering saint; Minny is much more than asassy troublemaker who provides comic relief.

And there's certainly something to be said for a work that doesn't wear its consciousness-raisingon its sleeve. Taylor told me that he was concerned about how African-Americans would respondto the film. Earlier this year, he screened a rough cut in Chicago for a black audience. They weremostly elated that the movie didn't lecture or speechify -- but actually sought to entertain, he said.

"The prevailing thing was 'This isn't a civil-rights movie. Thank God, this isn't a civil-rights movie.It's about real people,'" he said.

Natasha to Nicole: So have you thought about the issue of imaging,particularly how this story portrays African-American women and what itmeans to present it as a form of entertainment today?

And although I appreciate the reality that the movie can perpetuate black

stereotypes, I would argue that if we are going to talk about stereotypes, how about

the white ones?

The white men are represented as weak and passive, such as when Hillys husband

gets up and refuses to be part of the conversation when Hillys maid, Yule May, asks

for a loan. Skeeters love interest leaves because he cant support her position on

race. Skeeters father doesnt stand up to his wifes way of dealing with Skeeters

questions about Constantine.

Southern women are represented as conniving, petty and manipulative, southern

white men passive and more than happy to let their women deal with the help.

Perhaps this is a completely accurate descriptor of white Mississippi in the sixties.

But I cant help but wonder if the same argument about black stereotypes also exists

for white.


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As for this type of movie as entertainment, I believe we have to look at the larger

perspective of media and its use in shaping culture. Was Schindlers List

entertainment? Passion of the Christ? Black Hawk Down? Avatar? I think all good

movies are designed to not only captivate our imagination but also get us thinking.And for that reason, I think The Help accomplished that.

The Help certainly made me think. It made me think about my responsibility as a

woman, a white woman, a white woman living in the south, to be part of breaking

down stereotypes such as those portrayed in the movie. After the movie, my friends

and I had a conversation about our own relationships. We all agreed that we wished

our lives were enriched by friendships with women of other races, but didnt exactly

know how to pursue them. Which raised an interesting question: (Stay

tuneddiscussionto be continued on Thursday.)

Reflection:In his book, Culture Making, Andy Crouch defines culture and the only

adequate response to it. Culture is simply what we make of this worldour

perceptions, stereotypes, images, the reality that we create, etc. The only way to

change culture is to create more of it (pg 67). Therefore, we owe it to ourselves and

each other to share more honest depictions of Gods image bearers.

As a woman, what (if anything) do you feel is your responsibility to breakdown racial

stereotypes? How can we change the American culture, where racial divisions are

still prevalent?


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How The Help Depicts Race Relations

In Dangerous White Stereotypes(Op-Ed, Aug. 29), Patricia A. Turner argues that the whitecharacters in the film The Help who supported racist practices were portrayed as bad

people, which implied that good people were not racists. But in reality that wasnt the

case, she says; many of the supporters of racist practice were white middle-class people,

people whose company you would enjoy.

Trying to understand racism by classifying people as good or bad is one of the oldest traps

that conversations about race fall into. Being called a racist is a powerful attack that most

Americans recoil from. And it stops further conversation that might help to resolve past

wrongs.

Shouldnt we use a film like The Help to talk about how racism can engulf an entire culture

and ruin lives in the process?

Defining the problem as one of good and bad people only serves to create fissures that get in

the way of talking about how racist practices harm us all. This is what The Help helps us to

see. It is a far stronger statement against racism than many critics have acknowledged.

DAN ROMERBryn Mawr, Pa., Aug. 30, 2011

The writer is a social psychologist who has studied racist practices and beliefs.

To the Editor:

Prof. Patricia A. Turner makes an excellent point when she criticizes The Help for implying

that good white people of the 1960s were by definition non-racist. But it does something even

more insidious. It invites white audiences, as do most Hollywood movies about race, to

identify with an enlightened white character in this case, the stand-in for the author of the

book, Kathryn Stockett.

In so doing, it validates our fantasy that we would have seen the truth and we would have

risked our comfort for the sake of justice. It assures us that we would have been, and by

extension we are now, on the side of right.

Funny how racism persists despite us white people being so darn virtuous!

MARY BROWN

New York, Aug. 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/dangerous-white-stereotypes.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/dangerous-white-stereotypes.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/dangerous-white-stereotypes.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/dangerous-white-stereotypes.html


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The writer is a director and producer of documentary films.

To the Editor:

The median age of Americans is 37.2 years. So many viewers were not even born during the

time depicted in The Help; hence, they have no idea what life was like in the Jim Crow-era

South.

No one can argue that there wasnt an oppressive political power imbalance, but not all

whites were versions of Simon Legree (the cruel slave dealer in Uncle Toms Cabin) and

not all blacks were the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks.

In the black community weve had similar arguments before about Roots and The Color

Purple that often ended in the following stalemate: The younger generation will not concede

anything to the older because it doesntknow what happened, and the older generation will

not concede to the younger because it doesknow what happened.

DAVID L. EVANS

Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 29, 2011

To the Editor:

Patricia A. Turners excellent essay confirms much of what I saw as a white girl growing up inAtlanta in the 1950s and 60s. I, too, recall many estimable white people who harbored racist

sentiments. I also know that there were at least two who vehemently opposed the racism that

infected our world: my mother and father.

I remember boarding an Atlanta bus with my mother and finding no empty seats in the

whites only section. This must have been before 1959, when Atlanta was forced to

desegregate its buses. As dictated by local law, the most forward-sitting black person was

required to vacate his seat so that my mother and I could sit. This would have meant

dislodging an elderly black man with a cane.

My mother decided she wanted no part in supporting segregation. As he started to stand,

she asked him please not to move, and sat me beside him.

Only as an adult did I understand how much courage it took for my mother to engage in this

small act of civil disobedience.

Its too bad that there werent more good white people who shared my parents convictions;it

might have hastened the end of American apartheid.


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MARIAN BASS

Truro, Mass., Aug. 29, 2011

To the Editor:

The situation portrayed in The Help didnt exist only below the Mason -Dixon Line. Growing

up in a 1960s liberal middle-class household on Long Island, my mother regularly referred to

the girl, our 52-year-old housekeeper and locked up the liquor when she came.

So, before we self-righteous Northerners point a finger at stereotyped Southern white trash,

we should first look in the mirror.

PETER J. PITTS

New York, Aug. 29, 2011

To the Editor:

As a Caucasian native of Jackson, Miss., where The Help is set, I devoured both the book

and the film.

I disagree with Patricia A. Turners claim that segregation was unquestioned by whites.

True, open opponents numbered few. But some whites kept their children in public schools

after desegregation, despite peer ostracism. Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy formedan interracial Committee of Concern to rebuild black churches that were burned.

Jackson today, while imperfect, is transformed. The states history museum is honest.

Brochures guide visitors to civil rights sites. And theres Jackson-Evers International Airport,

named for the civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

DWYN MOUNGER

Knoxville, Tenn., Aug. 29, 2011


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The Help (2011)

On June 12, 1963, one day after President Kennedys nationally televised civil-rights

address calling for an end to segregation and greater protection for voting rights, civil-

rights activist Medgar Evers, who had campaigned against segregation at the University

of Mississippi, was assassinated at his home in Jackson, Mississippi.

The Helpnotes these landmark events, though its more concerned with racism and

segregation on a domestic and parochial scale. Based on Kathryn Stocketts best-selling

2009 novel, The Helpis largely about the daily humiliations and injustices to which black

maids and nannies working in white homes were subject, and the invisibility of these

humiliations to white society until, in this fictional account, their stories are finally told,

first in secret and then in public.

Among the daily humiliations, the one that looms largest is the toilet stigma. Before his

Ole Miss campaign, Evers organized a boycott targeting service stations that denied

blacks the use of their toilets. Apparently the bathroom policy was not ubiquitous to all

service stations; one had the option of going on to the next station. If you are a maid,you cant just go on to the next house particularly if Hilly Holbrook has her way.

Its not sanitary, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) explains matter-of-factly to her coterie

while Abileen (Viola Davis) stands invisibly by. They have different diseases than we

do.

Hilly spends much of the film promoting an initiative to requiring every white home to

have separate bathrooms for the help. In practice, Hillys initiative will often mean a

stand-alone addition, unheated, with no direct access from the house, requiring a maid

or nanny to brave the elements every time she needs to use the toilet.

Hilly also spends much of the film trying to get an announcement about her bathroominitiative in the Junior League newsletter, edited by Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone).

Skeeter, a recent Ole Miss graduate and aspiring writer, spends much of the film

deliberately procrastinating on Hillys increasingly pointed reminders while surreptitiously

working on an initiative of her own.

Hired by the local paper to pinch-hit on a domestic advice column, the domestically

challenged Skeeter turns for the voice of experience to Abileen. Skeeters heart isnt in

the column, though and she quickly senses that Abileen, who prides herself on having

raised over a dozen white babies along with doing the cooking and cleaning, has more to

share with the world than cleaning tips. And so may her friends, like smart-mouthed

Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer).

An insightful and complex film could be made from this material a film that would be

praised by critics, and would play in limited release to modest audiences before fading

quietly from theaters. The Helptakes a tidier, more crowd-pleasing Hollywood approach.

There are winsome heroines warmly vindicated, a hissable villain whose multiple helpings

of comeuppance are shudderingly unsanitary, er, complete, and a mass of people largely

let off the hook. In the process, few if any unsettling questions are asked.

One human being stands above the types and stock characters: Daviss Aibilene. Davis is

always a formidable presence in any film, even in smaller supporting parts. Here, in a

key role, she doesnt just carry the film, she lifts it on her weary shoulders and infuses

her scenes and relationships with a poignancy transcending The Helps more formulaicbits.


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finds herself face to face with a roomful of maids and its their decision, not Skeeters,

on which the scene turns.

Documents

The Help Assignment