The controversy about "The Help"

Today the movie "The Help" opens in theaters. I read the book but haven't seen the movie. I suspect I will at some point. But as is my usual habit - I'll probably wait for it to be available via netflix.

In case you don't know about the story, here's a summary.

Miss Eugenia Phelan ("Skeeter" to her friends) is a young woman of privilege who enjoys her fellow Junior Leaguers but sometimes finds their ways at odds with her own principles. She plays the part of her station in 1960s Mississippi but can't help feeling dissatisfied with keeping house and acting as recording secretary at league meetings, and yearns for something more.

Minny, Miss Celia, Aibileen, and Yule May are maids employed by Skeeter's friends. Each woman cooks, cleans, and cares for her boss's children, suffering slights and insults silently and sharing household secrets only among themselves. In the wake of the Junior League push to create separate bathrooms for the domestic help within private homes, Skeeter contacts a New York book editor with an idea. Soon she's conducting clandestine meetings with "the help" to capture their stories for publication. It is a daring and foolhardy plan, one certain to endanger not only the positions but the lives of the very women whose stories she transcribes -- as well as her own.

The movie is sparking some discussion - as did the book. Here's an interesting take on it from ColorLines. The author quotes several reviews of the movie. This one by Martha Southgate summarizes the point well.

There have been thousands of words written about Stockett's skills, her portrayal of the black women versus the white women, her right to tell this story at all. I won't rehash those arguments, except to say that I found the novel fast-paced but highly problematic. Even more troubling, though, is how the structure of narratives like The Help underscores the failure of pop culture to acknowledge a central truth: Within the civil rights movement, white people were the help.

That's the crux of the issue...why do we (as in White people) always need a White hero/heroine? Its an important question.

On the other hand, I have many white friends (mostly women) who read the book and loved it. In talking to them, I think they learned some things about the lives of black women during the pre-civil rights era. And that's a good thing.

My reaction was to think about my formative years when both of my grandmothers in Texas had full-time black maids. I mostly think about how kind they were and how little I knew about them as human beings. In that way, this story is also my story - except that I wind up on the side of the villains. Its important for us - as white people - to look that one in the eye. There's nothing I can do to go back and change my ignorance as a child. But I can recognize that my otherwise sweet grandmother, whose maid was Willie Mae, is the same one who used to tell me that "when a chigger becomes a chiggero, a n****r will become a negro." That's an example of the kind of thing I was fed as a child and formed the basis for how I understood the world - and Willie Mae's place in it.

My journey is to call up the effects of those kinds of things in my consciousness and try to replace them with with new more healing narratives. I suspect that will take a lifetime and stories like "The Help" followed by conversations about it are one way of doing that.

As an aside, a few years ago I read a book that I think tackles the same subject - only MUCH better. But it never got the attention "The Help" did. Its titled The View From Delphi by Jonathan Odell. Check out some of the stuff from his website...fascinating man!!!!!