This 1970 Stevie Wonder performance -- on Johnny Cash's show, no less -- is a fitting theme song (and one big "woo-sah") for "MHP" this morning as we prepare to examine "The Help." The fictional, controversial, and problematic hit film could win several (or zero) Oscars tomorrow night, including Best Picture. Melissa will break it down with Micki McElya, UConn assistant professor and author of "Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America"; Barbara Young, a national organizer with the National Domestic Workers Alliance; and Elon James White, host of "Blacking It Up" and founder of ThisWeekInBlackness.com.
Who else do we have in store?
- Irshad Manji, director of New York University's Moral Courage Project and author of "Allah, Liberty and Love: The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom."
- Nona Willis Aronowitz, associate editor of GOOD Magazine and co-author of "Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism."
- Matt Welch, editor-in-chief at Reason Magazine.
Straighten up and fly right -- it's almost showtime, #nerdland. Don't forget to interact with us on Twitter and Facebook during the show.
Leave a Comment:
I'm watching your segment on The Help. I've seen you criticize the movie before and I still don't agree with you. The Help is not the movie YOU wanted made. YOU wanted a movie that was about the true struggle. YOU wanted a movie that was 'grittier'. I get all that, but that is not the movie that was made. It doesn't make The Help any less of a good movie. I know that in my house after we read the book and watched the movie, both my kids were on the internet looking at that period of history. The Help was a jumping off point to find out what was really going on in the 1960's. They were reading the actual Jim Crow laws and we were TALKING about it. You give absolutely no credit to the intelligence of people watching the movie. Instead you are so sure that The Help 'whitewashed' history. I find that as offensive as you find the movie.
Thank you, Melissa! I live in Jackson, MS. I have been wanting somebody to point out the real story about "The Help." My major problem with this film is that it portrays this "Jim Crow slavery" as if it took place in the past. I see "the help" acted out every day! I see black women in white uniforms getting off the bus and walking up the street to large white people's houses to work for slave wages. Thank you for bringing this critique to the film and to the way we still live today! (Your and your panel's explanation IS the movie that SHOULD have been made! … "The REAL Help" story!)
Wouldn't this be more of a complaint about the lack of a "living wage" mandate in MS than about equal rights? People of every ethnicity work for slave wages in this country, not simply black women.
Try to keep in mind that this film is primarily a story. It is fiction and meant to be enjoyed commercially. In order for any story to be successful, the characters (at least some of them) must be people the audience can identify with. For many whites in this country, the young writer at the center of this story is the one person that can be identified with.
Without her, the film is simply too uncomfortable to watch for many whites, because we can't identify with the attitudes of the other whites represented in the film, nor can we truly identify with the black women (largely because modern cultural bias tells us we have no right to do so). The majority of white people need permission to look behind the veil into black culture, and that young girl provides the needed window for that to happen.
In any case, it cannot be denied that the film has played a positive role in keeping the issue of race as a part of the national conversation, even if it didn't meet your expectations. There are a lot of white people in this country who, through no fault of their own, have very little experience with black culture or with the struggle for equality. This film, with it's plucky white female central character, is a gateway for them into that discussion that gives them permission to think about it without feeling guilty for something they had no influence or control over.
Certainly it's not enough, but no film could ever be enough anyway. It's a start, and that is a good thing.
I'm a historian who has researched/written extensively about Southern elite women of mid-century, and I live in Memphis, TN. When the book was first published there was a "whisper" network in Memphis about the book--as in no one would admit to having read the book but quietly recommended it to others. I was at once angry about the memoir getting attention when Women's Historians have been trying this story into the mainstream as well documented/balanced history that treats black women as owners of their story; as well as being totally astonished that Southern suburban women were fearful of admitting that they bought and READ the book. Once it became a mainstream NYTimes bestseller then and only then did it become acceptable to discuss in the open. Clearly we have not come very far from the 50s and 60s. I begrudgingly agree that fiction can sometime lift a story better than non-fiction, but it must honest. The Help lacks in honesty.