The Help Movie Blurb by Shale August 11, 2011 This movie opened early in the week and I went to a late matinee today. Really wanted to see this flick, to see how they handled a comedy-drama in the middle of the segregated South in 1960, the beginning of the civil rights struggles. It was handled well; they did not euphemize the ugliness of the time and place. I also wanted to see this flick because my family is from Mississippi and I was there in the period and saw the institutional racism. It was embarrassing to see the bigotry of most of the white ppl portrayed and it made me glad that my family was not the well-off Southerners that had hired help but were what was called "poor white trash." The black folks' homes in this movie looked the same as those of my family. Anyhow, we open with Eugenia or "Skeeter" (Emma Stone) just graduated from Ol' Miss and pursuing a career in journalism. She gets on as a columnist with a Jackson daily, writing about household tips (of which she knows nothing) and asks for help from a friend's maid, Aibileen (Viola Davis). Skeeter was raised in this culture but does not fit in with the shallow elitism around her, especially with Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) the most hateful bigot in town. She sees the inequity and abuse of black ppl and empathizes with their plight. Like so many others, she was raised by a black nanny as a child, imprinting on this caregiver but not allowed to respect her in the sick apartheid of the time. This was the main point of the movie, that black women were raising white children while their own children were raised by others. Skeeter wants to write about this and gets Aibileen to open up about her experience as the help. Reluctantly the more outspoken maid, Minny (Octavia Spencer) joins her and there is interest from Harpers in New York. Minny & Aibileen tell their tales to Skeeter Of course all the help are afraid of reprisal if their identities should ever be known so there are no others to complete the book but when Medgar Evers is murdered and there is a sense that enuf is enuf, they come forward. The book is written and published anonymously, but some in the town know who the worst bigot is and learn the most degrading thing about her. I did enjoy this movie, not just because I was in the time and place. I think younger ppl would benefit from it, not only from a fine dramatic story but also to get a feel for the history. On a Personal Note: I have written some of my experiences during segregation days in an essay called The White Side of Racism. It is posted on the Smithsonian's Virtual Museum of African American History & Culture. http://nmaahc.si.edu/memory/view/155 Here are some excerpts about Mississippi: "... My dad was from Mississippi and each summer we would take the City of New Orleans train down to visit my grandparents in rural Lincoln County outside of Brookhaven. (The Help) As a child I remember my grandmother getting help with the housework from a 'nigra' woman, and paid her a paltry amount of money and used clothing. One summer my aunt was moving to Brookhaven and a huge semi moving van drove up to my grandmother's place. We were putting my aunt's stuff in a little house out back of the main house. Now in the rural South the midday dinner is the important meal of the day and Southern hospitality meant anyone visiting shared this big meal. So the white truck driver sat at our table in the kitchen, while my aunt fixed plates for his two black helpers who ate on the porch. It was the system and everyone seemed satisfied with it - but it did not go unnoticed as strange." ... "I remember in my late teens reading a book by Carl Rowan (could've been Go South to Sorrow - 1957) in which he mentioned Lamar Smith a black activist who was organizing voters and who was murdered in Brookhaven in August 1955. Wow, sleepy little Brookhaven made national news! I wrote my grandmother and asked her if she knew about it and her reply told me a lot about racism in the South; "We don't talk much about that here."
i skimmed the first post cuz im afraid it'll spoil the movie for me, but im hesitant about seeing it anyway. see i've read the book and i thought it was fantastic, i couldnt put it down (and im a very picky reader). so yea, im afraid the movie adaptation will disappoint me. anyone read the book before and still enjoyed the movie?
I don't read books, I just watch movies so I have no problem of comparing one to the other. That said, I think you should watch the movie. What will you lose but a couple hours and a few Euros or Francs? Then if you can't discern that they are two different mediums, which might differ in presentation or if the director's interpretation was not the same as yours, then you can come back here and trash the movie like some of the other book purists do. Then they won't see the movie and all will be right. But, my opinion as expressed in the first post was that the movie was really good.
Thanks. Will see it. People on my gramma's side had human machinery in Missouri until after 1865. When I brought a little black friend home in the first grade,I was met with "be nice to 'em ,but don't bring 'em home and don't run with 'em." That was said to me 79 years after the civil war ended.
