Poignant and humorous, The Help is thoughtful entertainment. I liked the book, looked forward to the movie, and wasn't disappointed. If it's introduced some readers to the pain, fear, and common indignities suffered in the pre-Civil Rights Movement South, that's all to the good. Unfortunately, too many Americans know too little about history. And if there is one thing about history, it sure likes to repeat itself if we let it (e.g. "the Civil War wasn't about slavery" nonsense).
But while there are many who love the book, there are also a number of its detractors, especially from what the right would call the "liberal elite," (it hurts to write those words) such as Professor Melissa Harris-Perry, a wonderful MSNBC commentator.
I respect Ms. Harris-Perry enormously. She's very smart and very savvy, but I was disappointed in her rant about The Help with Lawrence O'Donnell on The Last Word the day the movie opened (8/10). She described the film as a "happy race" movie, that "wasn't" about black women. She called the maids "props" in the lives of the white women, and claimed that the story, "reduces racism to this sentimental notion." Sorry, what?
She basically considered it to be blonde mean girls with Southern accents behaving badly. She brought up lynchings, rapes, beatings, murders—all terrifying realities in the Jim Crow South that were not at the forefront of the film, though they were mentioned or eluded to. It's true, the movie wasn't Mississippi Burning. But it certainly wasn't Birth of a Nation. Harris-Perry overlooked the point about the soul-destroying pain of daily humiliation, of being made to feel invisible and second class every moment of your back-breaking life. Those wounds, while not visible, don't really heal. And those wounds are also carried through generations. I also think she denigrates the courage and strength of both the black maids willing to speak out despite their terror, and that of Skeeter, the young white woman determined to bring their story to light—a quest that puts her at odds with her society, her friends, and even her own family.
Harris-Perry's response reminds me of the whole brouhaha over the Academy Award-winning foreign film Life Is Beautiful. "How can you make a 'comedy' about the Holocaust?! There is no humor in the Holocaust—the film trivializes this profound tragedy," critics hurled. Just as every exploration of the Holocaust does not have to be Shoah, not every depiction of the Jim Crow South has to be Eyes on the Prize. I don't believe either The Help or Life Is Beautiful trivialize their subject matter; I think each helps humanize it and offers a sense of identification and empowerment. You hate the suffering of the main characters, you despise the inhumanity of their oppressors. You weep for the injustice of their lives.
I was also taken aback by another of the film's criticisms, this one voiced in the mostly positive review in the New York Times:
"What does remain, though, is the novel’s conceit that the white characters, with their troubled relationships and unloved children, carry burdens equal to those of the black characters."Huh? Showing that the white women didn't lead perfect lives only underscored the point that they were far from the superior beings they believed themselves to be. And delusional—they didn't consider themselves racist because they didn't carry a rope.
At a time when we seem to be refighting the Civil War with words rather than guns, it's worthwhile to be reminded that while we have made progress, we are not a post-racial society. It takes courage to achieve real change—the courage to speak out despite the cost and the courage to reach out, to listen, and to spread that knowledge. I think in it's own small way, that is what The Help attempts to do.
