The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011)

[ando]

As a drama and social commentary I thought this film was... Good. On a purely visual level, however, I found it unsurprisingly garish and manipulative. All movies are manipulative to a degree but this one went directly for the expected "shocks" and revelations that have been entertaining folks since Shakespeare's Titus served Tamora the heads of her two sons in a pie (there's a similar "comeuppance" scene in The Help). Orson Welles' words about Shakespeare being a superb screenwriter never rang more true. Now how all this compares to the novel I couldn't say.

But the actors give fine performances. African Americans clap and sit a bit longer during the credits (how often do we get to hear any black "voice" in a cineplex?) but it's the soap opera salaciousness that makes it all work - ripe for a television spin off which is undoubtedly on the way.

[jojo]

This sure is making money and buzz. But many critics have pointed out that it takes a very "Hollywood" kind of take on race relations of that era, which I take to mean that it's not very bold.

[knives]

It's sweet old fashioned Driving Miss Daisy racism.

[matrixschmatrix]

Does anyone know if Rosenbaum has written about this? His takedown of Mississippi Burning is one of the best indictments of this sort of Hollywood approach to race I've read, and it seems like he would be a valuable source here.

[domino harvey]

African Americans clap and sit a bit longer during the credits (how often do we get to hear any black "voice" in a cineplex?)

Uh, actually... It may be a stereotype, but it's true: you haven't lived until you've seen a mainstream or black-skewing film enjoyed by a predominately black, vocal audience. Put it on your bucket list

[knives]

Which sort of makes this type of placating racist approach to racism all the worse. They're (as are many other minority groups)so disenfranchised that any attention is enough. Most don't care about the quality in this specific case, because they are so starved of what everyone else is getting, a mirror in their escapism. One would just wish Hollywood would provide a better one.

[Brian C]

Which sort of makes this type of placating racist approach to racism all the worse. They're (as are many other minority groups)so disenfranchised that any attention is enough. Most don't care about the quality in this specific case, because they are so starved of what everyone else is getting, a mirror in their escapism. One would just wish Hollywood would provide a better one.

I'm honestly not looking to pick a fight here, but this sounds as ivory-tower condescending to me as you're accusing the movie of being. I mean, I haven't seen The Help yet (although I figure I ought to and probably will next week), but I don't think black folks need any special reasons to like a movie that is clearly designed to be crowd-pleasing. White people like crowd-pleasing stuff that I think is crap all the time, it's not because they've decided to ignore quality because their kind is finally getting a bone thrown to them. It's just that their tastes are different than mine.

Maybe I'm misreading what you're saying, but the suggestion that black people need an excuse to enjoy the movie - or that they're not really enjoying it but pretending to for political reasons - just rubs me the wrong way.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, I think the argument there is that black audiences are so starved for anything resembling themselves on screen that they like even stuff that is wishy-washy and white-centric about the black experience during the Civil Rights era. I think Tyler Perry movies would be more like the crowd-pleasing but stupid kind of thing you describe- which is, as you say, a pretty close analog of the kind of thing a lot of white people like.

[Brian C]

But I'm not just talking about overtly stupid stuff - I'm also talking about prestige crap like The Reader or Oprah-centric inspirational stuff like Eat Pray Love (which, in fairness, I didn't see) or even stuff like The DaVinci Code or most of the Harry Potter movies.

Now, of course I have no problem believing that minority audiences feel left out ... but I think it's unfair to both those audiences and the movie to attribute some secret motives for why they're pretending to enjoy it. Seems more likely to me that they actually just like the damn thing.

[knives]

I tried to make sure that it was clear that I wasn't only referring to black people and I've been guilty of the very same thing on numerous occasions (that is the only way I can explain enjoying Holy Rollers or The Hebrew Hammer). I also wasn't intending to say that the enjoyment is faked. It's definitely legit, but as with my own case people are more willing to forgive flaws if the film offers something that they really don't get regularly from film. Also my statement wasn't about any sort of depth. Short of John Cope I don't think anyone here likes fun stuff more regularly than I do. I'm just trying to say that the fun stuff offered isn't as good as the fun stuff can be but people, in this case black, will put up with anything that gives them what they in terms of escapism. I'm just arguing for better escapism that doesn't in a round about way insult it's viewers. That's a universal idea not limited to even my two examples so far. Like white people deserve better than Transformers (yes I realize white people aren't the only ones that eat that particular piece of garbage). In the case of something like The Help or I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry it's made worse than something like Transformers because of the prejudice to it's supposed audience and subject matter.

edit: What he said. Tyler Perry is horrible, but no more so than Transformers (unless you ask Spike Lee). So while he may be making 'worse' films than The Help is I'm less offended by them. I don't expect every movie to be Do the Right Thing, but New Jack City as the standard wouldn't be too bad.

[matrixschmatrix]

To me, the issue is less that black people like The Help- because honestly, whatever, I haven't seen it and I can't properly judge it- and more that there's an expectation that white people won't show up at even a big glossy prestige movie unless they're having their hands held by a white tour guide. That's not specific to movies about black people- God knows there aren't many movies about the Native American experience that don't have a white main character- but it does feel a bit like people are being fed shit and forced to like it when the A White Person Explores... is the only kind of movie they get to see with them in it, apart from the actual content or execution of the film.

I mean, of all the movies you mention- Eat, Pray, Love, Harry Potter, The Reader, the Da Vinci Code, etc- is there one of them that isn't about a white person having white people problems? Why shouldn't black (and Latino, Asian, Native American, etc.) audiences have movies where they aren't tokenized or filtered through white perception? Say what you like about Tyler Perry, but at least his movies aren't secretly about and for white people.

[knives]

Yeah, I should say that I'm not talking about the audience so much as the film's treatment of the audience.

[Foam]

All I really got out of this was an appreciation of Jessica Chastain's range as an actress (compare her role here to her role in The Tree of Life).

At first I was defensive about this film because I think it's fairly entertaining and not baldly offensive, but the more I think about it the less I like it. The biggest problem I had was that it pretends to be more than the A White Person Explores... piece that it is. The way this film depicts black suffering is clearly the product of a myopic white imagination. If the film admitted to this it would be perversely interesting in that limited way. Instead, it deceptively lets a black character frame and narrate the story, as if it's primarily her story being told, rather than a white woman's.

[Brian C]

To me, the issue is less that black people like The Help- because honestly, whatever, I haven't seen it and I can't properly judge it- and more that there's an expectation that white people won't show up at even a big glossy prestige movie unless they're having their hands held by a white tour guide. That's not specific to movies about black people- God knows there aren't many movies about the Native American experience that don't have a white main character- but it does feel a bit like people are being fed shit and forced to like it when the A White Person Explores... is the only kind of movie they get to see with them in it, apart from the actual content or execution of the film.

I mean, of all the movies you mention- Eat, Pray, Love, Harry Potter, The Reader, the Da Vinci Code, etc- is there one of them that isn't about a white person having white people problems? Why shouldn't black (and Latino, Asian, Native American, etc.) audiences have movies where they aren't tokenized or filtered through white perception? Say what you like about Tyler Perry, but at least his movies aren't secretly about and for white people.

That's all fine - I don't disagree with this as a general matter.

Still, I wonder if this isn't a bad movie to make that particular complaint against. Like I said, I haven't seen it, but it seems, like the book, to be generating legitimate audience goodwill that cuts across this particular racial divide. This doesn't seem like an Last Samurai or Amistad that shoves its white virtue down the world's collective throats, but rather a movie that cleverly figured out a way to extend its crowd-pleasing across demographic lines. That doesn't seem like all that bad a thing to me.

And with that, I should probably refrain from more comment until I've seen it.

[knives]

Like I said earlier is that it's main problem (sister adores these sorts of movies, but doesn't like going alone to the theater plus I like popcorn) is basically the same as Driving Miss Daisy. The film keeps a distance from it's supposed main characters by experiencing everything through the white person. None of the black characters really develop beyond either their relationship to whites or their being oppressed. That said this is easily the best usage of this tactic I've seen, but that doesn't prevent the tactic from being inherently bad.

[cdnchris]

I think the film is guilty of what you're saying but I felt the maids (or at least the two primary ones played by Davis and Spencer, who were both really good I might add) were well developed characters and not just limited to how they were oppressed or how they related to whites. They had their own issues outide of these things and I found their characters interesting.

I think what killed me most, though, was that the only oppression really shown was the most extreme, and really only in one character. The Howard character (and I'm not saying people like this didn't exist) was really the only one who went out of her way to make the maids' lives hell. All of the other white characters were almost presented as victims who felt they had no choice but to bow down to her evil ways or face her wrath (which I guess was a big deal.) I never got the idea of the bigotry in the other white characters, other than maybe a few throwaway ones here and there. I assume the filmmakers thought it best to focus the audience's anger towards one sole character instead of a wide range. But Howard at least chewed it up.

[knives]

That's probably why I found the film better than most. As much as their problems and relations stick to the whole racism thing at least the main two were developed into people (my post was actually originally longer before I felt I was throwing false accusations at the movie). The presence of personalities does a lot to make me appreciate it as none malicious, but that doesn't cure the basic problems of the story structure.

[matrixschmatrix]

I think the film is guilty of what you're saying but I felt the maids (or at least the two primary ones played by Davis and Spencer, who were both really good I might add) were well developed characters and not just limited to how they were oppressed or how they related to whites. They had their own issues outide of these things and I found their characters interesting.

I think what killed me most, though, was that the only oppression really shown was the most extreme, and really only in one character. The Howard character (and I'm not saying people like this didn't exist) was really the only one who went out of her way to make the maids' lives hell. All of the other white characters were almost presented as victims who felt they had no choice but to bow down to her evil ways or face her wrath (which I guess was a big deal.) I never got the idea of the bigotry in the other white characters, other than maybe a few throwaway ones here and there. I assume the filmmakers thought it best to focus the audience's anger towards one sole character instead of a wide range. But Howard at least chewed it up.

The other issue that tends to come up in these kinds of movies- and again, I have to concede that I haven't seen this one- is the way racism is othered, made safely distant from white audiences who don't have to confront the question of whether they themselves would actually have stood up to it in the past. The setup you're describing actually sounds like it does address that question, if only sidelong- on the one hand, it allows viewers to absolve most of the whites of complicity in a racist system, but on the other hand, it makes it clear that there was a great deal of victimization through inaction, and even those who did not feel disposed towards the system were often caught up in it.

I have to say, though, that the more I watch Hollywoodized movies about race, the more I think Do the Right Thing is one of the best movies ever to come out of America.

[knives]

I think by having the film set in the past though makes it othered automatically. Racism, at least in this explicit form, turns into something that happened in the past and that we shouldn't bother with now a days. The only way to not make racism othered in this way is by confronting it in the present day in some form. Again though to give the film the benefit of the doubt I do think it recognizes this and structurally tries to absolve itself even if it fails. I am definitely less upset at this film's success than say The Blindside which has to be in the running for most racist film of the last ten years.

[Gregory]

Like I said earlier is that it's main problem (sister adores these sorts of movies, but doesn't like going alone to the theater plus I like popcorn) is basically the same as Driving Miss Daisy. The film keeps a distance from it's supposed main characters by experiencing everything through the white person. None of the black characters really develop beyond either their relationship to whites or their being oppressed. That said this is easily the best usage of this tactic I've seen, but that doesn't prevent the tactic from being inherently bad.

That's how Hollywood has been for a long time, namely that it's often mandatory to take a story that would seem to essentially be about about black main characters and filter it through the experience of a central white protagonist with whom white viewers can identify. An example of something that's gone up against these enforced patterns is Danny Glover's Toussaint L'Ouverture film, which he's had to struggle for years to get made because producers and investors kept complaining about the lack of "white heroes" in the story.

[matrixschmatrix]

I think by having the film set in the past though makes it othered automatically.

Well, yes and no- I mean, obviously, people had different racial attitudes in the past, but the point that's difficult to get people to understand is the holders of those different attitudes were normal, everyday people, not necessarily virulent hate-driven bigots. It's easy to see that those attitudes are wrong now, but it's difficult to get people to see that the only way to have known that then would be to think about it- meaning that someone could easily watch a movie about the destructive power of intolerance, and viciously mock a transexual person on the way home.

Compare that with say, The Sopranos, where the depiction of racism is totally normalized in past and present- we the viewer may not empathize with the characters we're watching, but it's not because the show is pushing us to identify with someone who opposes them- instead, it generally uses every trick at its disposal to seduce you into identification, then punishes you for it. It's not a pleasant process, and it can seem sadistic, but it can actually push a viewer into reflection in a way no Uncle Tom's Cabin melodrama between the good white overlords and the bad ones could.

I think the melodramas have their place- after all, Uncle Tom's Cabin made an indisputable difference it the way people viewed slavery as an institution- but as historical fiction, it just feels self-congratulatory. Instead of challenging the audience to understand how people were, it picks the problems that are no longer visible and makes us feel good for having solved them. I understand why that's crowd-pleasing methodology, and at least The Help doesn't totally white-wash the past and pretend everything was just fine for black people in Mississippi in the '60s- and unlike Mississippi Burning, at least it sounds like this one has actual black characters and not just heroic white people fighting to free the child-like negroes. It's not the kind of movie I'm going to attack people for liking, by any means. But it's hard to get past the feeling that the narrative is fundamentally about and for white people.

[ando]

African Americans clap and sit a bit longer during the credits (how often do we get to hear any black "voice" in a cineplex?)

Uh, actually... It may be a stereotype, but it's true: you haven't lived until you've seen a mainstream or black-skewing film enjoyed by a predominately black, vocal audience. Put it on your bucket list

Uh, actually... I don't have to leave my house for that.

[Lemmy Caution]

basically the same as Driving Miss Daisy. The film keeps a distance from it's supposed main characters by experiencing everything through the white person.

That's how Hollywood has been for a long time, namely that it's often mandatory to take a story that would seem to essentially be about about black main characters and filter it through the experience of a central white protagonist with whom white viewers can identify. An example of something that's gone up against these enforced patterns is Danny Glover's Toussaint L'Ouverture film, which he's had to struggle for years to get made because producers and investors kept complaining about the lack of "white heroes" in the story.

This is even more pronounced when dealing with films about Africa.
Cry Freedom is a prime offender, where the story of activist Steve Biko is really a film about a heroic white journalist trying to flee South Africa to tell the story of Steve Biko. Apparently, the thinking is that white Americans aren't interested in watching films about black Americans, so black Africans are super-marginal in their consciousness. This, of course, becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. It also comes off as offensive, but it seems that mainstream movie-making is all about minimizing risks to maximize profit ...

[Gregory]

This is even more pronounced when dealing with films about Africa.
Cry Freedom is a prime offender, where the story of activist Steve Biko is really a film about a heroic white journalist trying to flee South Africa to tell the story of Steve Biko.

And about Latin America, much of Asia, etc. I would argue. Telling a story about something going on in an "other" part of the world through the experience of an American journalist, traveler, etc. can be a good device but it's extremely overused, for exactly the reasons we've been discussing.

Apparently, the thinking is that white Americans aren't interested in watching films about black Americans, so black Africans are super-marginal in their consciousness. This, of course, becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. It also comes off as offensive, but it seems that mainstream movie-making is all about minimizing risks to maximize profit.

Right, and in aside from the American market, Danny Glover explained that virtually every prospective producer he met asked if Toussaint would be "a black film" (predominantly black cast, no white heroes) stating that it it were, it wouldn't do good business in Europe or Japan.

[colinr0380]

This is even more pronounced when dealing with films about Africa.

That was one of the fascinating (or at least novel) elements of Sissako's Bamako (which Glover executive produced) - a film about the impact of the international community on Africa, taking the form of a trial of the IMF and World Bank, held by Africans themselves.

Cry Freedom is a prime offender, where the story of activist Steve Biko is really a film about a heroic white journalist trying to flee South Africa to tell the story of Steve Biko. Apparently, the thinking is that white Americans aren't interested in watching films about black Americans, so black Africans are super-marginal in their consciousness. This, of course, becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. It also comes off as offensive, but it seems that mainstream movie-making is all about minimizing risks to maximize profit ...

But that particular trope is not just something that happened with an African-set film. Cry Freedom's audience mediating white journalist main character can also be seen to have parallels with many other films from the 1980s dealing with white observers of 'foreign' cultures: Under Fire (Nicaragua), The Year of Living Dangerously (Indonesia), The Killing Fields (Cambodia) - even Gandhi has a tangential white (and female, for extra bonus points!) reporter looking on during part of the film. A lot of this would seem to be based as much on the need to create characters who are present to witness every significant event of a historical narrative, though it does feel like a rather lazy way to perform that narrative task.

Although this familiar trope is beautifully twisted around in Oliver Stone's Salvador, since that is a film in which James Woods and Jim Belushi are amoral, reprehensible observers of war atrocities (while John Savage's obsessive photographer on the quest for a perfect picture gets gunned down, or other idealistic figures get destroyed), looking mainly to get drunk and smuggle a wife back across the border while the more professional, cynical, embedded media types flourish in the CIA compounds. They end up witnessing many of the worst atrocities of that period (notably the recreated public assassination of Archbishop Romero), but none of it seems to actually impact on them to enable them to act as effective 'audience surrogates', leading to a similar kind of historical event/day-to-day life split in events that I later felt from watching a film like Y Tu Mama Tambien.