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The help film analyse
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While the Deep South can be known for ground breaking racial issues, the plots in certain movies might have even bigger, more relevant social issues. “You is smart, you is kind, you is important.” This quote is directly from director Tate Taylor’s movie The Help, personalized from the novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett. The Help follows one Caucasian, wealthy young woman Skeeter (portrayed by Emma Stone) and the connections and relationships she shares with several African American domestic workers or “babysitters” (portrayed by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer). Brave, tenacious Skeeter is different so she is slaving away on a book that will blow the lid off the suffering endured by black maids. Skeeter interviews the maids about their experiences of working as ‘the help’ in the racially charged 1960s of Jackson, Mississippi. Set against the backdrop of the civil-rights movement, the film aims to inform those within the audience who have previously given little or no thought to the hardships faced by the racially subjugated African-American population of the South during this time. The film has been specifically marketed as a progressive tale of achievement over racial injustice, although I believe it more prominently embodies the racial ‘white savior’ genre that Hollywood vigorously reinforces with such movies like Grand Torino, The Blind Side, Blood Diamond, Avatar, Freedom Writers and even the hit musical Hairspray. These films portray how a white person becomes an important part into the lives of a minority, who is usually living in poverty, or depressed times. More than likely, the white character is portrayed as having a better life than the minority character. Many critics have placed The Help in the category... ... middle of paper ... ...outh has unfolded and developed into a country that is beautifully equal. In an article by Liepollo Pheko that was just published this month in 2012, it compares how “South Africans” view the movie as well. There tends to be that familiarity and remembrance in some of the issues the film raises, however inadequately it may engage with them.” In one incisive comment on social conditions, a white protagonist states, “We are separate but equal”, an ideology familiar to most South Africans and repugnant to the enlightened amongst us.” In the end from an academic perspective and just a regular viewer’s perspective, the help was a basic time line of how the south in Missippi was. As a whole on the other hand the south has grown but tends to forget why it is important to have movies like these so we can watch and remember how different life was back then in the south.
It shows that there is no difference between white and colored people, but it’s so hard for people to get past the physical features to realize that we are all equal. Ethel was right when she said two colored men would help two white women, and those white men knew she was right. Those men knew Ethel had a point and now they had no choice but to help her and her friend. When Ethel was in the hospital, she had two doctors who mistreated her leg injury. Her wound was severely infected because the two doctors never helped her, and her leg could have been amputated.
This film represents our indigenous culture and regardless of what happens we can find good in a situation. Together the black and white community can come together and achieve more than they could ever do by themselves.
The Help is a novel written in 2009 about African-American maids working in Southern homes in the 1960’s and a young white woman pursuing to write a book about the maid’s lives. Stockett was born in 1969 in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked in magazine publishing in New York before attempting to publish The Help, which was rejected by 60 different literary agents. Stockett’s personal background played a major part in her ability to tell this story so well. She grew up with African-American maids working in her household and grew up shortly after the decade in which this novel takes place. The society that she grew up in and her experience working in a magazine helped her to write from the personal viewpoint of African-American help and a woman striving to become a journalist in America during the 1960’s. In The Help, Stockett uses specific setting, point of view, and allusions to tell the incredible story of three young women of different ages, backgrounds, and race that join together in a work that readers will never forget.
...they deserved something positive in return. These people in Rosewood suffered because of the color of their skin and not anything else. I have realized that I am lucky to have the choices I have in my education, and athletics, and I am grateful to be able to play basketball for my school—as back in the times that they lived, they were simply lucky to be alive and did not have any choice in sports to play or fun to have. They simply worked for white people, and tried to stay away from death. They were not given the chances that I have today. This movie gave me a new, grateful and thankful view on the society I live in today.
In an era of the Jim Crow laws, life as an African-American woman was difficult. The Help (2011), a film written and directed by Tate Taylor, brings back some of this history. This film takes place in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi in the time of the civil rights movement, and when racial tension was at a rise. During this time, prejudice was at occurrence. For women who lived in Mississippi during the 1960s, employment opportunities was limited due to permissible segregation and economic inequalities. This film displays some experiences of African-American domestic workers of this period. Interaction with a black person from a white person on a level other than work was frowned upon. Many laws of inequality was forced upon African-Americans.
My film choice shows that color and lighting sets the mood for social status as well as segregation in its rarest form. The Help takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in the 60’s and shows us the reality of segregation from both sides and how persistence pays off. Skeeter’s persistence in becoming an accomplished writer and the courage of the housekeepers to overcome their fears of the white society, all come to the forefront in this film.
...back. The white males probably weren’t expecting the reaction back from the black cop and since he reacted he sent people after him threaten him to leave but he didn’t. he stood up for himself and stood his ground by not acting off of the threat he received. This movie gives us an insight into the perceived relationship that exist between the different races in that era The sincere fiction in this film was show the whites seen the non white officer by him thinking because he’s a cop he can interrogate a white male. Even though he wore the police uniform he still wasn’t looked at as an equal or a man of power, he still was looked at as a black. We as a society tend to dismiss films as mere forms of entertainment. Both movies gives us different perspectives on the hegemonic ideology and society’s grasp of the roles of whites and blacks and what both represent to us.
The Help is a perfect example of a book that has a lot of strong characters who are being held down by segregation. Specifically this book is talking about the unfair discrimination against colored people in the U.S. in the early nineteen sixties. Many people, mostly those being discriminated against, were angry about the injustices that they had endured and had a breaking point at some part of their lives. This was the point when those people decided that somehow they would change the wrong doings that affected people like them and make others see things their way, “it weren’t too long before I seen something in me had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside a me. And I just didn’t feel so accepting anymore” (Stockett 2). It was a tough time fo...
...n American communities. Regardless, African American performances have always had the ability to express elements of the African American community on the big screen. For decades these skills were hidden by racist producers and directors. American society was not ready to see the genius, sophisticated skill, and powerful themes that come from African American culture. These films not only help to show the life's of African Americans, but that of all American society, future films will help audiences measure how far America has come in regards to racial tolerance and how far yet, they must go.
Before we get into the movie specifically, we should first talk about representation and how race is represented in the media in general. Representation is defined as the assigning of meaning through language and in culture. (CITE) Representation isn't reality, but rather a mere construction of reality and the meaning behind it. (CITE) Through representation we are able to shape how people are seen by others. Race is an aspect of people which is often represented in the media in different ways. Race itself is not a category of nature, but rather...
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
Feminist theory is a term that embraces a wide variety of approaches to the questions of a women’s place and power in culture and society. Two of the important practices in feminist critique are raising awareness of the ways in which women are oppressed, demonized, or marginalized, and discovering motifs of female awakenings. The Help is a story about how black females “helped” white women become “progressive” in the 1960’s. In my opinion, “The Help” I must admit that it exposes some of our deepest racial, gender, and class wounds as individuals and social groups, and that the story behind the story is a call to respect our wounds and mutual wounding so that healing may have a chance to begin and bring social injustice to an end. The relationship between Blacks and whites in this novel generally take on the tone of a kindly, God-fearing Jesus Christ-loving Black person, placidly letting blacks and whites work out their awkwardness regarding race and injustice. Eventually both the black and white women realize how similar they are after all, and come to the conclusion that racism is an action of the individual person, a conclusion mutually exclusive of racism as an institutionalized system that stands to demonize and oppress people based on the color of their skin and the location of their ancestry.
In the story “The Help” written by Kathryn Stockett, we are taken back in time to Jackson, Mississippi in August of 1962, where we meet three women by the name of Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are black women who work for white families as the help. Skeeter is a young white woman in her early twenties who befriends the other two and gets them to tell their stories of what it is like to be the help. They reluctantly hesitate, but eventually give in knowing that the stories they are telling are more important than the negative impact it could have on their lives. While reading “ The Help” you cannot help but notice the symbolism that drips from almost every page.
I have always believed that all races have their good and bad. Their is never going to be the perfect race. This movie definitely set a powerful message that life is not perfect for any race and that even though people are from different cultures, they are all interconnected somehow. The filmmakers did a great job at showing us that individuals should not be based on first impressions such as skin color or the social status.
...help. The Blindside had similar characteristics of white privilege, the Sandra Bullock character appeared to be headstrong, passionate, capable, and effective while Michael Oher was perceived as emotionally stunted, and unable of helping himself. The White Savior syndrome as we have seen has the tendency to render people of colour lacking the capacity to seek change, and erasing their historical agency (Cammarota, 2011). Any progress or success is from the aid of a white individual, which suggests that escaping poverty, or ignorance, is thanks to the intelligence of the White Savior. Freire calls this “false Generosity” (1998) a white person may provide help to a person of colour yet help comes in the form of saving, the emphasis on saving instead of transforming fails to acknowledge the oppressive structure and in turn maintains white supremacy. (Cammarota, 2011).