As part of my half-hearted approach to rein in my, shall we say, expressiveness in language (i.e., I cuss a lot), for the remainder of the summer I am going to smile at those who vex me and say, "Care for a slice of pie?"
If you saw (or perhaps read)
The Help within the last little while, you should understand my meaning. Let's see how long I stick to this resolution.
* * *
Recently, I went with my friend
The Music Lover to see
The Help, the movie based on the novel by
Kathryn Stockett. The premise is this: It's 1963 in
Jackson, Mississippi; the doesn't-quite-fit-in-but-well-born Eugenia (or "Skeeter," as she is more commonly known--and only in
the South would Skeeter be an acceptable nickname in polite society) returns from Ole Miss, determined to be a writer. When she is assigned a cleaning advice column, a topic she knows nothing about, she turns to a friend's maid (aka The Help), Aibileen, for expert knowledge. Within a short while, Skeeter begins to pay attention to more than how to get stains out of the rug: She begins to appreciate Aibileen's life's work and starts noting how the allegedly more refined talk to Aibileen and the other maids, how they talk about them, how they talk
down to them, and how they treat them. She befriends Aibileen and another maid, Minny, and together they, along with many other African-American maids in the town, (spoiler alert!) write a book providing testimony to their work, lives, and the dying days of American Apartheid.
OK, so no one calls it American Apartheid in the movie, but, really, how was it any different? Lots of laws, lots of regulations, lots of rigid social customs, all to justify fear, hatred, cruelty, and a separate-but-completely-unequal social order. Somedays you just gotta realize how crazy this country's relationship with race really is.
Now, truth be told, I was unsure about going to see
The Help. I was curious about it, yes; it looked amusing in the previews;
Bryce Dallas Howard looked as though she had totally nailed the classic Queen Wasp (or WASP)/"Poison Magnolia" character of Hilly; and the reviews were generally good.
But, lordy, Hollywood so rarely gets the South right on film or TV, or only gets one aspect of it and beats you to death with it (or, if you prefer, turns a fire hose on it, sics dogs on it . . .) over and over and over. Been there, done that, have tried to turn out the lights on that fateful night in Georgia myself. The last "Southern" movie I enjoyed was, I believe,
Junebug, which was extraordinarily good. The last "Southern" movie I saw was
Sweet Home Alabama. I'm still waiting for an apology from
Reese Witherspoon. Little short of her early, permanent retirement from cinema will suffice.
I haven't read the book yet; it's on my list, I swear! Hollywood screws up films about books just as much as it does about the South, so there was more trepidation for my mind.
My list of reasons for not going goes on.
The Help portrayed in the trailers looked like a period piece chick flick, sort of a
Sex and the South scenario, all white, all girly, all ready to cotillion and meet Mister Rhett. I suspected the white Southern accents (just say no, y'all) would be horrible, and that whole effect is not unlike a chicken's feet raked across a chalkboard for this
North Carolina refugee. Alternately, I figured the white Southerners would all be ignorant racists, the African-American Southerners all noble and long-suffering. Or, alternately again, the white people would end up feeling good about themselves, the black people showing them their better selves. That whole
magical/numinous Negro thing going on that
Spike Lee and others have pointed out and talked about.
In short, the whole mess looked too
Oprah-approved for my tastes.
But all of this fussbudgetry over why I might not like the movie just avoids the issue: Not wanting to confront
my problem with race. As a Southerner of a certain age and political bent, that's bound to be a topic I'm not going to be comfortable with and may, in fact, feel tremendous guilt and grief over. And as an American of any age, I'll do my best to avoid dealing with reality, racial or otherwise, for as long and as well as I can.
But I have to start somewhere . . .
* * *
So let's begin by reviewing the film itself, which, much to my surprise, I quite enjoyed. There were some chick-flick moments, if by "chick flick" we are referring to more emotional moments, ones that don't involve explosions, space aliens, kicking the butts of bad guys, and characters with names like "Maverick," "Iceman," or "Goose." But this wouldn't qualify as a chick flick if by that term we mean the plucky white heroine perseveres to see all her dreams (i.e., romance, family,
and career, in probably that order) come true. Yes, the movie (spoiler alert!) ends on a positive note--but Skeeter's story is only part of the tale; there is significant focus on Aibileen and Minny's stories as well. In fact, I'd say that
Viola Davis's Aibileen is really the main protagonist of the tale, even if
Emma Stone's Skeeter gets top billing. Racism? Or just trying to sell the movie to a younger audience? Maybe some of both.
I think Viola Davis and
Octavia Spencer (Minny), along with Bryce Dallas Howard, walk away with the picture. Emma Stone holds her own, and to her credit, doesn't go all NuRebel Commando Woman on us, mouth blazing, pen-is-mightier-than-the-sword hysterical. But I don't know that she takes the part and runs with it either. Whether that's down to direction, writing, acting, or the role itself, I could not say. I'm not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, so, really, what do I know?
Don't be fooled by the trailers on TV: There's more depth to the movie than you might think. There are some very funny moments and some very poignant ones as well. I think some of the movie works, and some of it doesn't quite--and this may have as much to do with the source material as anything. Like I said, I haven't read it yet.
It was a little hard for me to imagine Minny saying and doing some of the things she did and living to tell about them in 1963 Mississippi, "insurance" against Hilly aside. It was also a challenge for me to imagine that (spoiler alert!) the published book itself would have been for sale in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963 as well, and that Skeeter wouldn't have been called all sorts of vulgar names and run out of town--or worse, much worse--for, as is pointed out, going against Mississippi law and illegally aiding "the Negro."
I also wasn't quite sold on Skeeter's transition from go-getter Ole Miss co-ed to Sensitive New Southerner. It's not that it didn't happen--I just didn't see the transition carried out on screen as clearly or as evocatively as I might have liked. That didn't have to be done with some grandiose reveal; it could have happened in little ways over time. I think that was the point, but on first viewing, I can't say it came across that way.
To the film's credit, I did feel Skeeter's outsider-ness, her yearning to achieve more than what was expected of her (marriage and children). I felt Aibileen's pain and Minny's frustration and resignation as well. Aibileen and Minny have to find their ways to resist their outsiderness--from their families, friends, and employers--plus the onslaught of denigration and hatred.
I found believable, too, the interlocking of lives, both black and white, despite racial segregation and the overt racism of the time. It was unavoidable all along and segregation only delayed the inevitable and kept everybody miserable, both black and white (although obviously not equally), and trapped in unsatisfying roles. I enjoyed the relationship between Minny and Celia and totally bought the (spoiler alert!) reasons for Celia's ostracism. The only thing nearly as bad as being African American in the Old (?) South was being White Trash. Or a Yankee.
I found the menacing Hilly all-too-reminiscent of people I knew then and who we encounter now on the national stage. She's one of those people who foist their beliefs, bigotry, and fears upon everyone else in the most ruthless yet glib manner, using the battering ram of their religion and their political beliefs to bust through any resistance, considering anyone who disagrees with them morally weak or a mortal enemy. Skeeter's, Elizabeth's, and Celia's reactions all seemed quite real to me, too--sometimes when faced with someone that mean-spirited or something that hateful, you're just stunned and don't know what to do. It takes courage, a courage many of us find difficult to rally, to resist passively let alone actively.
On the other hand, there were no colors--if you'll pardon the expression--to Hilly. You don't have a clue why she is the way she is, other than because she can be. She doesn't have a redeeming quality to her--or as my friend
The Gladman put it, "she was just a jar of mustache wax away from
Simon Legree territory." (Which is quite brilliant and tells me I need to up my writing game if this blog is to survive for long.) Maybe you can't redeem a racist or a Junior Leaguer, but the movie might have explained her a bit better, her motivations, her fears, her failings. Only briefly at the end (spoiler alert!) do you see her vulnerable, and then, it's not really clear why.
Turning a multi-page book into a two-hour-or-less movie almost promises dissatisfaction. There is a jumble of events, characters, and ideas, not all of them fleshed out. Skeeter's romance with Stuart Whitworth, for example; what a perfectly good waste of all things male and holy in the form of
Chris Lowell. The other male characters fare no better, are ineffectual, and make the whole film slide dangerously close to a
David E. Kelley "women's drama" any given night on ABC during the last decade.
Maybe better editing or a different, longer medium would have helped. At times like these, I long for the days of the miniseries or, at the very least, the British model of TV production, where you have six or more hour-long episodes to tell the tale. Most books, in my insufferable opinion, would benefit from this approach, rather than the 120-minutes-or-less movie model.
Overall, though, I thought the movie good and the message strong. And that message is this (spoiler alert!): Holding onto your dignity in the most undignified of situations is about the best any of us can do. You may boss me around, beat me, scream at me, threaten me, menace me, hurt me, ignore me, reject me--but you don't damn well own me.
* * *
I could go on (and, oh look, I have!), but you get the idea. Not everyone agrees with me, as
this article from Salon conveys. Have I read it in whole or in part? No, not really--much like the posters who, like me, dismissed
The Help outright as being both racist
and a chick flick, without having seen anything more than the trailers.
I believe the author's premise to be correct: Hollywood (and America) whitewashes a lot of history and reality, especially America's highly uncomfortable racial history. Ironically, though, for every Hollywood whitewash, there must be at least more than a wringing handful of guilty white liberals who feel the need to point this out, in the spirit of true Calvinism and Capitalistic competition: You must feel bad about everything, but believe me, you'll never feel worse (and thus more self-satisfied) than me.
Is it me, or can't we Americans just enjoy anything anymore without parsin' and bitchin' it to death?
I'll read the article eventually. But not now. I enjoyed the movie and want to stay in that mood for a bit longer. It's not that it was all rosy and pretty; it portrayed a very harsh reality (although it did not exactly portray it harshly, it should be noted) that many of us would like to forget, myself included. I was only two years old when the action of the film takes place and only six or so when the Civil Rights Movement, the Summer of Love, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., Vietnam, and so much more collided and exploded spectacularly in 1968, a year of revolution.
And, yet, I can still remember some of that tension, the hatred, the fear, and the prejudice from the time. My sibs getting sent home from school because of race riots. The black kids on the bus uncomfortable and scared. Too many of the white kids, mean and antagonistic, for no good reason. The TV news, always shocking in its clear-eyed view of American humanity at its worst. The never-ending war. The racism, alternately casual and caustic. The endemic inequality, not just racial but economic, too. The bitter stinginess of people who hurt others and, indirectly, themselves without really understanding or caring why.
No one seemed very happy then. Not all that different from nowadays actually.
So my takeaway from
The Help might be a bit different than yours. Although I remember that era through the haze of childhood,
The Help resonated with me. It was personal, emotional, sometimes uncomfortable, and a little fantastic, too, attempting to satisfy some historical wish fulfillment. Would Skeeter, Aibileen, or Minny really have been able to do what they did and be rewarded for it? Or was the system so crushing that it would have ground them into a bitter dust? Would any of us have been as brave as Aibileen, Minny, Skeeter, Celia, or Skeeter's mother, fighting against injustice and the rigid, established order in our own way, little or large? Or would we have been Hilly? Or Elizabeth?
Maybe it's as my friend
The Gladman put it: He liked the film, but with reservations. Perhaps the movie is kind of a muddle of too many points, parts, plots, and personalities. Perhaps the movie is a little too uplifting for its own good, a Disney lesson in surviving racism. For all its wish fulfillment, it at times still relies on stereotypes--racist Hilly, sassy Minny. I just don't know.
But at this moment in time, I can say that I liked it all the same, that
The Help has much to commend it and little to quibble over. And, surprise surprise, the Southern accents didn't irritate me nearly as much as I feared they would.
Lordy, less complaining from me. There's your moment of uplift right there, y'all!
