Allyson Hobbs Sociology 102 6/30/2017 Movie Review- The Help The movie I chose to review was The Help. The Help takes place in the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. The movie focuses on the lives of two African-American maids, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson. Aibileen worked for a family who had a young girl that she helped to raise. The other maid, Minny, got fired from the first house we saw her working in because she used the homeowners’ bathroom without their permission. She ends up finding work with Celia Foote, who is not very popular among the other women in the town. After Minny found out Celia was having complications with her pregnancy, the two became very close. Celia even spent a whole night cooking a meal for Minny. Another important …show more content…
Schaefer says gatekeeping is “the process by which a relatively small number of people in the media industry control what material eventually reaches the audience.” One place where gatekeeping plays a big role in The Help is in the newspaper office. It is easy to tell that the people in charge of the local newspaper are only interested in writing what they know a majority of people want to read about. For this reason, it would have been very difficult for Skeeter to publish some of her material about the help in the newspaper. By going through the publishers in New York, Skeeter was able to avoid some of the gates she would have had to go through with the newspaper to get her material to the public. This eventually was very important to getting a controversial idea out to where anyone could read …show more content…
The Junior League is an example of social networking, or “a series of relationships that links a person directly to others, and through them indirectly to more people.” (Schaefer) By being in this group, the women have many opportunities to make connections with each other. They were also able to connect with a lot of other people because of this group. If one of these ladies needed to find a new maid, they were able to talk to the other women in the group to see who was available for hiring. These women also had good connections with each other when it came to looking for potential husbands. It was normal for these women to set Skeeter up on a date with someone she had never met before. These women tried to set Skeeter up with men based on their status. A person’s status can be used “to refer to any of the full range of socially defined positions in a large group or society.” (Schaefer) If a man was not of a high enough status, the parents and friends of the woman would have been as supportive of the relationship. The importance of statuses in The Help is also shown by how the homeowners treat their maids. Because of their differences in status, many of the homeowners believe it was okay to treat the maids the way they did. The way some of the maids are treated would be viewed as unacceptable by most people
The movie, Loving, directed by Jeff Nichols is based on a true story about Richard, and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple fighting for their rights to stay married, and be able to raise their family in the state of Virginia where in the 1950’s it was illegal to be married to a race other than your own. Richard Loving grew up in a small town called Caroline County in the state of Virginia, where he met Mildred and knew that he would do anything to be able to call Mildred his wife. Richard proposed to Mildred on an estate of land he bought for them to raise a family on one day. Mildred agrees to marry him, but unfortunately, they are aware that in the state of Virginia it is illegal for them to get married because of their anti-miscegenation law. They agree that they will go to Washington, D.C., where they will be able to become legally married. In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving became legally married in Washington, D.C. When they return home to the State of Virginia they are harassed by the Caroline County police and thrown into jail because they got married outside of the state that they reside in, which is illegal in Virginia. Richard is set out on bail, but Mildred is forced to stay in jail for several more days. Richard and Mildred’s case was presented before a judge to decide the ramifications of their actions.
The film Friday Night Lights, directed by Peter Berg explains a story about a small town in Odessa, Texas that is obsessed to their high school football team (Permian Panthers) to the point where it’s strange. Boobie Miles (Derek Luke) is an cocky, star tailback who tore his ACL in the first game of the season and everyone in the town just became hopeless cause their star isn’t playing for a long time. The townspeople have to now rely on the new coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton), to motivate the other team members to be able to respect, step up their game, and improve quickly. During this process, racism has made it harder to have a success and be happy and the team has to overcome them as a family.
The movie, The Outsiders, starts with the Curtis parents on their weekly, Saturday evening drive to the baking store to buy some ingredients for their boys’ favorite Sunday morning, breakfast treat: chocolate cake. The Curtis boys love their chocolate cake for Sunday breakfast not only because they love it, but also because they appreciate how hard their parents have to work to save the monies necessary for the morsels that put smiles on their faces!
Jezebel is a dramatic, romantic film set in 1852 in New Orleans, Louisiana and based on the play, Jezebel, by Owen Davis Sr. who collaborated with the other writers - Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel, John Huston, Robert Buckner, and Louis F. Edelman to create this award-winning movie. Jezebel was filmed in 1938 with William Wyler as the director and producer, along with Warner Bros (“Jezebel” IMDb and “Jezebel” Wikipedia). This movie depicts themes of pushing against societal rules, out of rebellion or progressive thinking, and the consequences these actions bring. The yellow fever epidemic was also a running theme throughout the film. During the 1930s, art forms depicted life very plainly because of the Great Depression in the United States. Therefore, the movie’s interpretation of the historical affairs that occurred in this period is mainly accurate with emphasis on New Orleans’ genteel societal rules of the 1850s and on the epidemic of yellow fever.
I am reviewing The Help by Kathryn Stockett.The Help is a powerful,truth-filled story set in the early 1960s in Jackson,Mississippi.It is a novel about black African American maids working in white households and being treated unfairly.
Even though, wealth is a major factor in an individual’s status, but it is not the only defining feature (p.117) since the accomplished women of Murdoch Mysteries express their status through their luxurious gowns, hats, gloves and other expensive accessories, but are still not fully respected as equals by all the men they encounter, such as the government official, Mr. Foster, or assistant prosecutor, Mr. Garland, or crown attorney (Henslin, 2014, p. 117). To determine social class, prestige and power must also be taken into account (Henslin, 2014, p. 117). An occupation with a greater degree of education, autonomy, reasoning and salary should give an individual like Dr. Ogden, Dr. Grace or Ms. Martin a great amount of respect or prestige (Henslin, 2014, p. 122), yet they still faced degrading speech that belittled women as a whole when they protested in the streets of Toronto. Basically, there is a status inconsistency or difference in ranking for the three factors, which the accomplished women of the series score very high in ranking for prestige and wealth, but are given a very low rank in terms of power (Henslin, 2014, p.123). According to C. Wright Mills, power is the ability to execute one’s own choices despite obstruction (Henslin, 2014, p. 121). Evidently, the power given to the women of the Suffrage Society, or the city of Toronto as a whole, is very minute since
The movie “Mean Girls” is based on a real story in high school social groups. Cady Heron was a new girl in high school. She has been homeschooled in Africa for her whole life, so she wanted to learn how people in school behave and socialize. It was difficult for Cady to adjust in the new school environment. Initially, Cady had difficulties finding a friend in the school. Her first day in school, she eats her meal in the restroom until she meets Janis and Damien. They encourage Cady to be a friend with one of the most popular group at school called the “Plastic”. Every girl in school envy them and with they would be a member of the group. Regina is the head of the group, and she does anything in her power to get what she wishes, and Gretchen and Karen are her followers. Most of the girls at school are obsessed with the idea of joining Regina’s group because they are royalty in the high school. Since Cady is a pretty girl, the Plastic group was threatened by her and wanted her to join them so that they can control her and the boys who pay attention to Cady. Cady joints them and they will succeed to changer her thoughts and actions. Consequently, she starts acting like them and hide her friendship with Janis and Damien who
Into the Wild, a 2007 nonfiction film based on New York Times bestseller book written
“Adults with any type of mental illness in the past year: 45.1 million” (APA). Mental disorders are not easy to visualize. Especially three of the most common disorders, Clinical Depression, Anxiety Disorder, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, the Oscar winning film, Inside Out, places an interesting perspective on mental disorders by occasionally panning back and forth from the main character’s head to the heads of the other cast. The main character, Riley, has five personified emotions in her head: Joy, Disgust, Fear, Anger, and Sadness. All five of these characters are given certain shapes and colors to go accordingly to what their emotion is. An example is that Anger is given
For this assignment, the movie “The Help” was chosen to review and analyze because it presents a story of fighting injustice through diverse ways. The three main characters of the movie are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson, two colored maids. Throughout the story, we follow these three women as they are brought together to record colored maids’ stories about their experiences working for the white families of Jackson. The movie explores the social inequalities such as racism and segregation between African Americans and whites during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.
The Soloist (Foster, Krasnoff & Wright, 2008), is based on a true story of Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Jr. who develops psychosis and becomes homeless. In the film, Nathaniel is considered a cello genius who is discovered on the streets by Steve Lopez, a journalist from the Los Angeles Times. Steve was searching for a city story and he decided to write a newspaper article about Nathaniel. Nathaniel always had a passion for music. He was a child prodigy and attended Juilliard School of Music. However, he faced many complications at Juilliard, particularly hearing voices speaking to him. Unable to handle the voices, Nathaniel dropped out and ended up living on the streets of Los Angeles. Steve and Nathaniel develops an unexpected friendship, in which Steve tries to help Nathaniel to live a normal life; having a home, treat his mental disorder, and to fulfil his dream of being a cellist again.
“The Help” is a white mock feel good movie, which seems to feature amnesia of racial conflicts in the South as its primary theme (Stockett, 2009). Author Natasha McLaughlin suggests that ‘The Help’ focuses upon the home and the relationship between African-American domestics and the laws of Jim Crow’s neglected ‘other half’: Jane Crow (McLaughlin, 2014). The American Civil Rights Movement mainly accommodates the public with a view concentrated upon a male dominant perspective but appreciations to Stockett and her moving interpretation of the relationship of Caucasian housewives and their African-American maids the public gets a rare white-washed version of events dealing with the civil rights movement going on within the interior of the households
The Help chronicles a recent college graduate named Skeeter, who secretly writes a book exposing the treatment of black maids by white affluent women. The story takes place in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, during the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. The death of Medgar Evers triggers racial tension and gives the maids of Jackson the courage to retell their personal stories of injustice endured over the years. The movie depicts the frustration of the maids with their female employers and what their lives were like cleaning, cooking, and raising their bosses’ children. The Help shines a light on the racial and social injustice of maids during the era of Jim Crow Laws, illustrating how white women of a privileged society discriminated not only against black women, but also against their own race. The movie examines a very basic principle: the ethical treatment of other human beings.
The first term, ascribed status plays a large role in the analysis. For example, it is the social status a person is assigned at birth or assumed involuntarily later in life. It is a position that is neither earned nor chosen, but assigned. This term depicts the two families immensely. The mother and father in both families came from poor backgrounds and lived through struggle their entire lives. This plays a large role in life because it already puts you behind people who come from successful backgrounds. It is not easy to work your way back out of poverty if you were born into it. Nobody asks to live that way, but some are just assigned to live that way, and cannot do anything about it to fix it.
Status creates an invisible yet undeniable barrier between people of all races, income brackets, and educational levels. Status, as defined by dictionary.com, is, “the position of an individual in relation to another or others, especially in regard to social or professional standing.” Today, media and social media play a huge role in perpetuating status and what characteristics place someone in a higher or lower “ranking” than others. Too often, people, especially teens and young adults, let the idea of status take charge in their lives. Sometimes their motives for going to school, dressing a certain way, or sharing certain things on social media, are driven by what they think is an ideal status.