It’s 4:15 a.m. as I write this. Once again my OCD-ish cat has kept me awake. While I’m tossing and turning and he’s banging repeatedly on what he’s decided is his official nighttime banging door, I’m trying to put my finger on why I didn’t like The Help, despite stellar acting by Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Emma Stone and Jessica Chastain, and impressive cameos by two of my all time favorite actresses, Sissy Spacek and Cicely Tyson.
I should like this movie, right? It’s kind of a chick-flick, as in Mean Girls meets Driving Miss Daisy. What’s not to like?
Hmmm, good question. Let’s start with this. I suspect I’m not stretching the truth when I say the issues surrounding race in Jackson, Mississippi, back in the early ‘Sixties, were far more complicated than a twenty-something villainess straight out of Comicsville, (Miss Milly, Bryce Dallas Howard) imposing her will on the entire town, (as if), forcing meek white homeowners to build separate bathrooms for the help and urging her clique to hide beneath bridge tables when white trash,Celia Foote,(Jessica Chastain, the only genuinely nice white woman in the film), comes knocking at the door.
Reminded me of high school high-jinks. Good times… gotta love those old high school high-jinks. Except the events in Jackson, Mississippi, weren’t high school shenanigans. They were deadly serious.
Don’t get me wrong. People can write whatever they want. I’m not saying Ms. Stockett was obligated to get my prior approval before writing The Help. Hey, nearly everybody I know has read The Help and loves it. It’s not that I need the ugly truth and nothing but the ugly truth, it’s just that I’m not entirely certain I want this particular episode in history morphed into a pair of fuzzy pink bunny slippers.
Countless stories came out of the Nazi Holocaust, stories of both triumph and tragedy, riveting tales of heroism and sacrifice by Jews and nonJews. Not every Jew’s story ended at the gates of Auschwitz or the gas chambers in Birkenau. But I don’t think I’d be all that stoked to watch a movie portraying Heinrich Himmler or Dr. Josef Mengele as the cartoon villain, Snidely Whiplash. I’m just saying that wouldn’t be my cup of tea unless I knew it to be pure satire from the get-go. And perhaps that’s exactly what’s troubling me. I don’t believe everything has to be deadly serious all the time. But this movie begs to be taken seriously.
In The Help, Skeeter Phelan — Emma Stone, our protagonist, may be a sensitive young woman, but she doesn’t really change or grow — except she manages to stick it to Miss Milly on the sly, mostly via the maid, Minnie, because Skeeter never once confronts Miss Milly openly.
Skeeter does not pass through the fire like the maids do — the women whose stories she records. Skeeter never publicly bucks the status quo, she’s not ostracized from her own society, she doesn’t suffer because of what she’s done. She’s not the one who takes it on the chin, who loses the job she so desperately needs because she told tales out of school. She doesn’t go to prison. Her life is not in danger because of the book. Oh, she might not be asked back as chairwoman of the Junior League newsletter next year, but who cares? She’s got a career in New York to look forward to.
Skeeter is the one character who realizes her dream.
Oh… the lost boyfriend? Wasn’t much there to lose in the first place.
As the credits rolled by, I pondered the following…
1. Why throw in the Bob Dylan song, Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right? Yes, I know the song is mentioned in the book, and I know he wrote the song back in the early ‘Sixties, but it was an awkward fit for the movie, the particular scene, and Jackson, Mississippi. In fact, it was a non sequitur that added nothing to my understanding or enjoyment of the film. On the contrary, I found it irritating and ingratiating.
2. Could a book like The Help have been sold in Jackson, Mississippi, at that time? A Mammies and Maids tell-all book about their white employers? I have some serious doubts. I get the feeling that while a book like that might have been a laugh a minute in New York City, it wouldn’t have gone over all that well in Jackson in the ‘Sixties. Not to mention the fact that tell-all books were not in vogue during that period of time.
3. A female Jewish publisher? Talking about a slush pile? Stereotype much? (I’m not convinced the term slush pile was generally understood back in ’63-’64, if it was even used.)
4. Speaking of stereotypes — I noticed a preponderance of one-dimensional characters. That the characters were fleshed out at all is a tribute to the acting chops of the professionals involved, especially Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer.
5. The contrived scene of Constantine’s (Cicely Tyson) aged hands caressing the pencil lines where she’d measured Skeeter’s growth, as if Constantine had no children of her own, implying these black maids loved their white charges as much or more than they did their own children. While my husband sat there sniffling, I snorted.
“You’re hard-hearted,” he said.
“No, I’m not,” I said. “Maybe sometimes they did love their charges, but I refuse to be manipulated like that.”
I was secretly listening to Scarlet O’Hara’s voice… “Oh fiddle-dee-dee!” I admit it, I’m a fan of Gone with the Wind. At least Scarlet gets her ass whupped a few times.
6. Leroy. ‘Nuf said.
I’m in the minority, I guess. Didn’t take much away from the film but annoyance. Frankly, I’d rather watch Mean Girls. At least in the end, every mean girl gets what’s coming to her.
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Wish I could comment, but I’m one of the minority…I haven’t seen the movie or read the book.
Yup, that was pretty much my reaction, both to the book and to the movie. We read it for book club and I’d been looking forward to reading it after all the hype, but I found it to be flat and somewhat manipulative. I really disliked Skeeter by the end - here she was, asking these women to literally risk their lives to talk to her, yet it was almost a game to her. She had no real awareness of what she was asking them to do. I graded it a “C”. Of course, everyone else in my book club adored it.
Wow, Jen. To be honest, I’m surprised I’m not alone in my opinion of this particular story. I read portions of the book and it does seem as if the movie tries to be reasonably faithful to the book.
Well, Amber - if you do watch the movie, it will be nearly 2 hours and 40-some minutes out of your life that can be better spent doing other things.
It sounds like someone tried to “Hollywood” a complex issue into a “heart-warming film”…..except, this was a book. So, the book did the same thing? Weird. And not interested.
I’ll stick with high octane adventure movies that have nothing to prove except how loud they can be.
My tastes are not the norm… I was wowed by Tree Of Life and Hugo and I know neither movie will win what it deserves.
XXOO Kat
Kat - I’m glad to hear someone else liked Tree of Life!
Penny - I think the movie and the book are pretty close. I guess the movie was directed by the author’s friend.
I only saw the movie. Loved it. Complete hyperbole to make a point to us today for whom recollecting that kind of racism is either hard to come by or impossible b/c some had not yet been born.
I think that a book like that could have sold - as Peyton Place did. Helen Gurley Brown used the term slush pile, I believe, in Sex and the Single Girl.
Stylized, yes, but I have seen a person come in and take over an organization and the people in it.
It would be highly unlikely that any one would love their charges as much as that; but Viola didn’t love her “last little girl” that way so maybe they were showing the many different ways people felt.
in 2.5 hours it’s got to be hard to faithfully relay a book, a time and an issue to people who probably didn’t read the book (or even A book). A masterpiece of film is rare because it is so hard.
I am a softy though. S
Hi Steph! Although the term ‘slush pile’ was around since the early 1900′s, referring to things other than publishing or the written word, it first entered the common vernacular re the world of publishing in 1967 via the New York Times. I did some research.
I’m glad you’re a softy! I’m a hard ass when I feel like I’m being overtly manipulated. I’ll put up with some subtle manipulation. However, I refuse to watch any movie, television show or commercial with animals unless it’s humorous. I cannot watch anything about an animal that ends tragically or shows animals being mistreated - even if there’s a happy ending. I won’t even read books about animals. In that sense, I’m a total woos.
I’ll compare it to this - the movie Dead Man Walking with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. I sobbed so loud I was asked to leave the theater.
Amber - you’re not alone. I haven’t seen the movie or read the book.
Thanks for the honesty, Julia. There are so many other stories to read or movies to watch that I haven’t gotten around to The Help. I’ll be honest, if everyone in the universe loves a book, I tend to stay away from it because experience has taught me that I won’t like it. It’s not true all the time, but there you have it!
Thanks, I wonder when HGB wrote Sex & the Single Girl.
Don’t bring me into this, I was sniffling because I have allergies.
Steph, I believe it was published in ’62. Slush pile, or something like it, was used to refer to garbage or throw-away items or sort of shady-type borderline legal thing since the early 1900′s, except it wasn’t in common use in the sense we use it today until the late ‘Sixties. It is, however, entirely possible that the term slush pile was used among publishers to refer to manuscripts they weren’t reading.
Dear Husband.
I tend to be kind of contrary too, Casey. Usually the more popular something is, the more suspicious I am.
I was born in 1949 so in the heart of the sixties I was a teenager. I’ve not seen the film OR read the book. Wasn’t interested in rehashing something I lived through. I lived in northern Indiana in seventh grade and had a wonderful friend-Bobbie-who was black and literally lived BETWEEN the rail road tracks…about twenty tracks crossed at one spot in town and her family’s “house” was down there between them. They were poor, but I wasn’t terribly conscious of that at the time.
My father was a minister in that town and the church board informed him he would be fired if I didn’t discontinue my friendship with that darkie. Yep. That’s exactly what they said. We ended up moving to another town.
For a period of time after my mother died and before my father remarried, we had a maid, Ora, who came in during the day. She cooked, cleaned, and did childcare for us kids when we weren’t in school. When my father remarried, of course we didn’t need a maid anymore. Looking back, it must of have been difficult for Ora to suddenly find herself jobless. All I knew was she was gone and she’d been my anchor after I lost my mother.
In Chicago, in high school, I had a marvelous friend named Clayton. There were a series of rapes in our area. One afternoon I was walking home very late and Clayton insisted on walking with me. He was verrrry dark. I was white bread. When we reached my apartment building my dad drove him to the train because he was afraid Clayton would be attacked if he walked that far…it was the beginning of desegregation and Clayton actually lived about three hours away on the south side of Chicago.
All of this was in the NORTH. I’m sorry, but few books capture the essence of what was happening at that time. To Kill a Mockingbird is one. I can’t think of any others. If anyone wanted to watch a movie…maybe Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, or some of the other excellent movies from that period.
It’s complicated. Still.
I’ve not seen the movie or read the book….
I’ve read portions of the book, Savannah.
I agree, Anny. It was in both the North and South. The situation was and is very complicated. Like I said, I don’t need to see the worst that happened, but neither am I interested in fuzzy pink bunny slippers. Yeah… In the Heat of the Night, that was a good movie.
You know I read the blog, but not the title (I think my opthamology visit is long over due).
Can’t comment, haven’t seen it, but Ishbel says the book is marvellous and I always respond, “The book is always WAY BETTER than the movie”
Now, do I get paid in cash or hugs for nicking my name, either one will do, but as you are no doubt a cash strapped author, I suppose I will have to settle for a hug when we eventually meet….
You’re on, Tom. Hugs coming your way!