The Help: Review
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
So…it’s been a rough year. I’m truly exhausted. My mother’s death was a blow that is difficult to explain to those who still have their mothers. Until you experience it, I don’t think you can imagine the pain of it. I know I didn’t. Imagining the conversations we would have had in the days leading to The Help’s premiere is even painful, because she would have indulged my assessment at one of our eating haunts along the I-55 corridor but definitely not at the Mayflower on Capitol Street. (I can see her now with her blackberry cobbler a la mode and empty packets of Splenda and Lactaid strewn across the table).
Then, in June, my extended family suffered a gruesome loss. The death of James Craig Anderson, my great-grandmother’s nephew, or my third cousin, who was run over by a group of white teens looking for a “nigger” to terrorize. They drove from Rankin County, coincidentally, a county my mother wouldn’t spend much time in past the airport and Dogwood Shopping Center (if I drove during daylight hours only) to the 98% black-populated Jackson. How do 18-year olds develop such hatred? I’ll tell you where…HOME. The District Attorney in Jackson, who happens to be African American, is asking for the death penalty since this is clearly a hate crime. My mother didn’t believe in the death penalty and neither do I. Some days I wish I did. As Albert Camus, puts it:
“For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
But there are monsters, Mr. Camus, that have created the atmosphere of vitriol so thick that black president or not, there are hate crimes all over the country. All hate crimes aren’t violent. Some attack the soul.
So what does this have to do with The Help? A great deal. Frankly, the death of James Craig evinces that the trip to 1960s Mississippi that Kathyrn Stockett wasn’t as light and funny as she would have us believe.
After months of hype, the film adaptation of The Help premiered to a strong showing at the box office. Since its premiere, The Help has made nearly $72 million. Remember this number; there will be a test. No wonder. The novel has been a bestseller for at least two years, and Kathryn Stockett has become, what I like to call, the mint julep of the summer. Everyone was either reading or had read The Help. It was so good, they (always the infamous “they”) said. Stockett was a home girl writing about blacks and whites in the early 1960s in Mississippi. Her whiteness was dismissed, because the story is compelling. But as a race-conscious African American woman who has often referred to herself as “The Black Scarlett O’Hara,” who loves to manipulate her southern drawl for those “country dumb” folks who are impressed that she has on shoes and can read full sentences, and who absolutely LOVES being southern, I was a little cautious of this new storyteller who dared to imagine what “the help” was thinking.
Rightfully so…
I decided that I had to read at least some of it before the film (I am using the word loosely here) opened. The premiere had been held a couple of weeks before, and from my couch in Illinois, I read of a first-class premiere in Madison, Mississippi. Wait. Oh. That’s. Right. Jackson doesn’t have a movie theater. Period. Irony abounds. The article in Jackson’s paper about The Help intrigued me. No, incensed. The article featured a quote from a woman who said that the book made her realize that when she was mourning her father, she was also mourning “her help.” Wow. The article didn’t interview any black women whose mothers and grandmothers served as the “help,” or domestic workers, whose mothers and grandmothers had to leave their children before dark to be there when little white babies woke for changing and feeding. Not. A. One. Just a few white women who felt comfortable reminiscing about “their help” and bridge parties of the Junior League. So, now I had to order it. Had to read it. It was incumbent upon me as a Jacksonian and a Mississippian but most importantly, as an African American.
I let the book sit there a day or two on the coffee table. I expected it to be a fast read anyway. But it wasn’t. I trudged through the first chapter. She begins the novel with Aibileen’s narrative but Ms. Stockett was clearly the voice I was hearing. Flat out, Stockett cannot write black speech. I doubt very seriously whether she ever had a real conversation with a black person. Her white protagonist, Skeeter, probably spent more time with blacks in the novel that Stockett has in real life. Now, of course, I will admit that I may have been guarded from the beginning. What does Stockett know about black speech patterns? But she brings you in from the beginning with Aibileen’s story. And it is compelling. But it’s a little hard to take when “Lawd” is reduced to “Law” (Had to read that a few times to figure out what Ms. Stockett was trying to say. She has since admitted that she “may have gotten the dialect a little wrong.” Ok. Alright.
At least I know why the book was rejected 60 times before publication. Those publishers may be lamenting the financial loss but should be proud that they have standards.
As I’m reading, I have to call Victoria. Victoria is a linguistic purist. I read her a couple of lines of Stockett’s “black dialect.” We do not laugh. She hits it directly on the head when she says that Stockett has given us, black people, the language of “ignorance.” Absolutely. All of the white characters speak standard English. Uhh, no. We talk about similar books by black authors that deserved much more praise. Bebe Moore Campbell’s Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine. Dionne McKinney-Whetstone’s Tumbling. We talk about books and films that they same people who laud The Help won’t go see. We discuss films like John Singleton’s Rosewood, Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls, Spielberg’s Amistad. Hell, when was the last time they showed Roots on television—on any channel. But these are not touchy-feely trips down memory lane, I guess.
So….when I get my aunts and cousin into a packed Chicago theatre, I take my seat. Cross my arms—in my mind—and wait. I’m going to give this a chance. They start stabbing me in the heart at the first frame.
A white female hand writes THE HELP at the top of the page. Well, that’s that. Viola Davis may get the Oscar nomination and hell, she may win, but the film centers on that white hand. And, of course, this is appropriate. The lives of blacks in Mississippi always seem to be at the mercy (?) of white hands—literally and figuratively. But it doesn’t make me feel better. In addition, if you look on www.IMDB.com, only two of the first ten listed actors are black. So much for equality.
This film is clearly about Emma Stone’s Skeeter becoming more than her childhood friends who are now mothers and society ladies of the Junior League. To her mother’s chagrin, Skeeter does not want a husband. She wants to be in publishing. She wants to be in New York—not Jackson, Mississippi. The very New York, Yankee editor tells her to find something compelling. Couple that with her efforts to find out where her “mammy” is, having somehow escaped the racism of Ole Miss and State of Mississippi at the time, she decides that she wants to “change things” for the women who work in the homes of white women. No, Skeeter, you don’t. You need a story. Let’s just be honest. Plus, she returns home from Ole Miss, degree in hand, and rushes home to find that her black maid, Constantine, is gone and no one will tell her why.
Viola Davis is an exceptional actor. Period. Her Oscar nomination for Doubt and the Tony win for Fences are just small tokens of her talent. I could watch her in anything. She’s strong. Even her weak characters are strong. BUT to see her bent before that white baby girl and say: “You is kind. You is smart. You is important” was so jarring. Not due to her job. That’s a reality. But her speech was just too much and after a while it became comical since her chubby charge, Mae Mobley, recited it as well. Why Ms. Stockett thinks that we don’t know how to conjugate the “be” verb is beyond me. I would have preferred that she just eliminate the “is” altogether.
Even in the book, Minnie’s character is hilarious, and Octavia Spencer is exceptional. And I don’t say that lightly. With the right roles and a stint or two on Broadway, she will become a force in both comedy and drama. Stockett, with a little help from Spencer, almost gets this right. But there are consequences for being a sassy domestic in Mississippi in 1963. Minnie’s character would have been killed in real life before she became seasoned enough to help with such a book.
Cicely Tyson plays Constantine superbly, and we all know that Ms. Tyson plays an old woman like no one else. She’s been playing old women since she was 20, so it’s not a stretch but she brings a new perspective to each old woman so her type really isn’t type. (My former student, Mia Ellis, is the same way. She reminds me of Cicely in that regard. I think Mia prefers old women; she shares their sage spirit. Mia doesn’t abide the silliness of youth whether in life or on stage.)
Aunjanue Ellis, a McComb, Mississippi, native, does very well as a mother trying to send her twins sons to Tougaloo. Her character needs an additional $75 for tuition or only one can go, so she asks her employer, the most racist Hilly Holbrook, if she can be advanced the funds and steals when her request is denied. No ma’am. Feeling a little way about that. And as wonderful as it always is to hear and see the name “Tougaloo” (Lackawanna Blues, Song of Solomon), I have a hard time reconciling that Tougaloo College in the George Owens era—or any era—would reject a student for $75. Mind you, Jerry Ward was at Tougaloo in 1962. And Norwieda Roberts. And Bennie Thompson. And the Tougaloo Nine. Hmmm….
There are also some grave missteps culturally as well.
During the course of the film, Medgar Evers is killed. If you blinked, you would have missed the sequence. BUT when JFK is shot on the grassy knoll, then white Jackson stops and looks mournful. Ok. Wait. Jackson was not somber when JFK was killed. The South rejoiced. Damn near in the streets. Not in the film. Mama said so. I believe her.
Now, y’all know I adore a good backstory. So...Ablene Cooper, who works for Stockett’s brother’s is suing the author. Why? Oh, just for using her name and likeness in the book without permission or compensation. Frankly, Stockett didn’t have that much inventiveness in the names: Aibileen and Ablene aren’t that far removed. You misspell either one and you’ve got the other. Cooper also objects—as I would—to the main black character looking at a cockroach as being “black. Blacker than me.” A damn cockroach. Oh, and Mrs. Cooper lost her son shortly before taking the job with the brother Stockett as well. Stockett claims she only met her once, so surely any similarities are coincidences. Yeah, right. Why send her a copy of the book? Do authors randomly send out copies of books to readers they don’t know. I need the number to that lottery.
Let me guess what happened, Ms Stockett. You thought Ms. Cooper would be flattered by your portrayal, by the “borrowing” of her story for your book. And when she wasn’t as pleased as you thought she should be, you got angry. She was ungrateful. No, you are being paternalistic. She’s suing you for $75K. Clearly, she doesn’t know what to ask for and you should be happy that she doesn’t. I would have asked for much, much more. Let me reiterate: MUCH, MUCH, MORE.
Now, dear readers, remember the test: How much has The Help (film) made since the premiere? Just write a check, Ms. Stockett. Skeeter wants to “change things.” Do you?
Justice Tommie Green says that the statute of limitations has run out on the filing deadline for Ms. Cooper. I anticipate that will be overturned.
Unfortunately, I must reveal the end of the book/film in order to fully explain my concerns. Aibilene is fired but decides to become a writer. Okay. Minnie leaves her abusive husband to live (with her children) at the home of her white, liberal employer. Constantine dies of a broken heart because Skeeter’s mother has fired her to save face with the DAR. And Yule Mae is in jail for the theft of Hilly Holbrook’s ring.
Warm and fuzzy yet?
Having said all this…go see The Help. You’ll enjoy it—for what it’s worth. I did.
