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The Help
The white girl who cares about
critique
rédigé par Katarina Hedrén
publié le 26/10/2011
Katarina Hedrén
Katarina Hedrén
Emma Stone and Viola Davis (The Help)
Emma Stone and Viola Davis (The Help)
Emma Stone (The Help)
Emma Stone (The Help)
Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer (The Help)
Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer (The Help)
French poster
French poster

The Help (La Couleur des sentiments) by Tate Taylor, 2011.
South Africa release date: Friday 07 october 2011
South Africa Distributor: Ster-Kinekor
French release date: 26 october 2011

"You is kind. You is smart. You is important" is the mantra that Abileen Clark (Viola Davis), a domestic worker in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960ies, uses to comfort and empower her employer's daughter. Neglected by a mother who finds her too chubby and cumbersome, and a constantly absent father, Abileen is the only caring adult in the girl's life, the one who's there for her through real and metaphorical storms.

Based on the bestseller by the same name written by Kathryn Stocket in 2009, the movie version of The Help, directed by Tate Taylor, tells the story of the young aspiring writer Eugenia (nicknamed Skeeter and played by Emma Stone). Skeeter is different from Elizabeth (Ahna O'Reilly), Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her other friends who spend their time playing bridge, organising charity events and being snooty.
Instead of trying to find a husband, Skeeter's focusing on her career. She also believes that black domestic workers shouldn't be treated as subhumans; a radical view stemming from her loving relationship with her old nanny Constantine (Cicely Tyson), who raised Skeeter before disappearing without a trace.





After landing a job answering housekeeping questions for a newspaper column, Skeeter, who knows nothing about housework, asks Elizabeth to let her domestic worker Abileen help her out. After a short time in Abileen's company, Skeeter realises that life as a black domestic worker isn't all rosy, and the idea is born to collect the stories of all the invisible hardworking black women surrounding her and her friends and write a book. Initially reluctant Abileen eventually succumbs and convinces her friend Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), an outspoken lady who has just been fired by Hilly to participate and help Skeeter realize her dream.
As the film progresses the audience is treated to various examples of racist stuck up behaviour and bad parenting on behalf of the employers, and of loyalty and silent resistance on behalf of the domestic workers. "This isn't about me. It doesn't matter what I feel", Skeeter promises early in the film which turns out to be mainly about her, Elizabeth, Hilly and the ostracized housewife Celia (Jessica Chastain).

As New York Press' reviewer Armond White points out the main aim of this film is to entertain, which might explain the lack of engagement with the subject matter at a level that considers the changes that have influenced discussions about race, gender and power in America since the sixties. An approach that makes for a dated film that requires the audience to ignore the most important change; that black American women no longer rely on white spokespersons to voice their concerns.
Abileen's, Minny's and Constantin's primary function in this film, which does little to challenge traditional racial power dynamics, and which translates black agency into steeling and black pride into frying chicken, is simply to help us distinguish good whites from bad, coward and victim whites. I might have been too distracted by the shallow treatment of the complex subject matter and the blatant stereotyping (including Minny delivering one Chappellesque line about chicken after the other, among them "Frying chicken just makes me feel better about life. I just love me some fried chicken") to notice all the fun, but regardless the film would definitely have gained from more nuance and less slapstick.

The ethos of the film is the same as Skeeter's, which was quite radical in the 1960ies but less so in 2011. An ethos that doesn't regard black women constantly playing second fiddle to their white counterparts as the problem, only that most of the white women, having forgotten how much they loved their black nannies as children, have become cold women who let the black help raise their children but not use their bathrooms. For someone who agrees with the ethos it makes sense that Skeeter is the one who contributes with ambition and skills, and her informants (even if they, like Abileen, also are aspiring writers) just with sensational stories about their powerlessness to be turned into literature by Skeeter. To assume, as Skeeter does when finding out what happened to her nanny, that the old woman, who at least until the day she disappeared had a brave and caring daughter by her side (LaChanze), wouldn't survive another minute without Skeeter isn't at all outrageous given the logical framework of the film, and similarly there's nothing strange about Skeeter's narcissistic reluctance to leave the thirty something informants in the racist town (where they've lived all their lives) for an attractive job in New York. A concern that reminds me of a that of the man who approached me and my two girlfriends in a bar once, asking us what we were doing there all alone.

Different approaches in different times; that's how to make any story relevant at any time. Nothing illustrates this better than the example of The Stepford Wives, the 1974 novel by Ira Levin that was adapted to the big screen in 1975 and 2004, and to TV in 1980, 1987 and 1996. Also dealing with oppressive and reactionary ideals, each version of the original story reflects the time in which it was made, with hypnosis being the tool of domination in the 1980 version, role reversal in 1996, and a woman being the master brain running the show in the 2004 version in which the women have become sex- and cash machines. In response to Taylor's dealing with The Help, nothing feels more natural than to conclude in the same non-innovative and slightly offensive manner that characterizes his take on the story:

You is patronising. You is irrelevant. You is out of touch.

Katarina Hedrén

First published on Katarina's blog : http://wordsofkatarina.blogspot.com

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