When thinking about race in contemporary media, I decided to
look a the film “The Help.” The
movie is told from the perspective of a white upper middle class woman who
decides that she wants to write a book from the help’s point of view. While this could seem like a film that
blurs racial lines, I think that it also helps to separate them and focuses on
a white heroine that saves the help through her book. One of the primary criticisms was the central white
heroine. This “white savior
complex” is seen in many films dealing with race, especially in films dealing
with Native American stories. A
reviewer for the Washington post commented, “precisely at the time that “The Help”
transpires, African Americans across Mississippi were registering to vote and
agitating for political change. In other words, they were helping themselves.” Another reviewer writes, “Implicit in
The Help and a number of other popular works that deal with the civil rights
era is the notion that a white character is somehow crucial or even necessary
to tell this particular tale of black liberation.” While the movie attempts to focus on coming to terms with
the past, it also equates the white families problems as equal to those of the
black maids. Even though the film
attempts to deal with race, it does not recognize many of the larger issues
that were going on in the 60’s. Furthermore,
there is only one type of black character really represented in the film, the “mamie”
character (although this could be said of many of the characters. Even the white southern women seem to
stick to stereotypes).
I also think that it relates to the idea of memory and past history
that Courtney writes about.
Although this may seem like a stretch, I think that it relates to the
idea of memory and erased history.
Courtney talks a lot about how the production code attempted to erase
history of miscegenation by not representing it on screen. Here, the characters write and share
the memories so that they cannot be forgotten.
3 comments:
The Help provides a really interesting example of race in films today, especially because it is set in the past, which serves to distance viewers from the social tensions of the story. Viewers, including myself, leave the theatre reflecting on the strides that have been made since that point in history and often feel grateful that they no longer live in a society like the one portrayed in the film. However, this feeling serves to cover up the problems that still exist and are themselves present in the film. I think this has the potential to discourage individuals from taking further actions to correct racial imbalances for they think that we have already arrived at the end in terms of equality.
I also found "The Help"--specifically the movie--to be one that danced around the issue of race in the South rather than actually discuss it. I agree that the film often equated the problems that the white women faced as equal to those that the black women in the film faced, but it also did more than that--it minimized an entire racist society as a negative characteristic for a few of the film's characters. Never once was the audience asked to believe that Jackson, Mississippi was so violently racist that the black individuals in the film were fearful for their lives. Any sort of fear was a reaction towards particular white individuals, rather than a systematic fear of the entire society. Another example of the "racial dance" the film plays is in a particular scene that differs vastly from the book it was adapted from. The scene revolves around the mother of the white female lead firing the family maid after said maid's daughter acts inappropriately while visiting her mother. In the novel, the maid's daughter's "inappropriate" behavior is socializing with the Southern white women, which she was able to do so due to her incredibly fair skin--she was essentially passing. In the film, the maid is fired because her daughter (who was casted as a visibly black woman) enters through the front door, and the employer is pressured in fire her by some racist woman in the room. The change of this scene is one of the many that altered the racial context of the film, and in turn, effectively erases the true racist history of the South during the mid-20th century as portrayed on film.
The movie The Help goes a long way towards altering and softening history. My initial problem with the movie was that it did not give historical context to the actions and events that were happening in the United States, or even just the south. By shutting off the characters and the plot from contemporary events serves to make their story representational of the whole. It makes this story of a white woman helping the maids help themselves greater than just a story, it makes it seem like history. As we talked about with the art exhibit, it is just another way of subtly taking history and rewriting it, except rather than empowering these black women, it disenfranchises them/
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