(I know Jill posted on the movie. I read the book and I have thoughts, which I was finally able to edit today.)
I haven’t seen the movie The Help, but I did read the book. I wasn’t impressed.
First, I am sick to the teeth of feel-good, revisionist fiction. I am really fed up with the Nice White Lady trope. And I am stunned that people read shit like this and think it shows any sort of political awareness by the author.
The main character Skeeter is a big old rebel because she want to a four-year-university! Without seeking an MRS degree! So there! HA! (And yes, I know that was kind of a big deal back then, trust me, but she had that option. The Black women she “helps” never did.)
The actual plot—that Skeeter writes a book about Black maids and what they see and hear at work—is also teeth gnashingly infuriating. Not that such a book is written—hell, no (though really, a White woman speaking for Black women is gross. It just is). It’s that the Black women in the story are passive, they are so fearful they need to be coaxed by the Nice White Lady. Apparently, there was no civil rights movement afoot in the South. Oh, they recognize MLK and his work, there is mention of actions in seemingly distant places, but the Black women and men of this town don’t seem to be involved. They are passive, they are helpless, they do nothing, and are so very grateful to the Nice White Lady once she shows them the One True Way.
It’s frustrating because in these narratives—written by privileged Whites—Black people are always passive. Things are done to them or for them, but they are never the agents of their own liberation. (And sorry, but no, telling the Nice White Lady about your shitty boss isn’t being an agent of your own liberation—not when Black women were actually organizing against Jim Crow, segregation, lynchings and violence, and the intimidation of Black voters.)
Jo Ann Robinson had been organizing against segregation and for the bus boycotts for years. And she did this not on her own, but as part of the Women’s Political Council. They were the first group to call for a bus boycott in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
And she is not the only one.
Ella Baker. Fannie Lou Hamer. Septima Poinsette Clark. Vivian Malone Jones. Dorothy Height. They worked their asses off, they took punches (Fannie Lou Hamer was damn near beaten to death), they dodged bullets, some lost their homes and livelihoods, they endured harassment and threats, and they were out there facing the brutality of White people who did not want to share the power.
And the thing is, these women are not outliers. They are not unusual. Women were active in the struggle—even the nice Black maid who was always so sweet to you growing up, who was always so quiet and polite to your parents, was likely working her ass off on her off hours, knocking on doors, preparing for meetings (or cleaning up after them), strategizing about what to do next, giving aid to other activists who needed it. Even small actions could be perilous, but know this: a lot of people were taking them. This movement was not built on the actions of a few leaders or some Nice White People. They weren’t waiting for the Nice White Lady to come and free them, they were doing that themselves thankyouverymuch.
And it’s why it infuriates me when Whites, or wealthy people, or men, or whoever, want to barge in and lay down the law and tell a community What They Need or What is Best for You.
This could have been a good, meaty book if Skeeter had done this thinking she was great and smacked right up against civil rights organizing in her own town. It could have been a much more compelling story if it showed that the Nice White Lady realized she wasn’t that nice or good for doing this and showed some actual growth on her part (as opposed to the bohemian makeover and move to New York because she’s a spunky independent girl). It could have been much better if the maids were shown more accurately, as actually active in their own lives, as agents of their own freedom, with no need for a Nice White Lady to show them how to do it.
But it was not that book. It was a book that exocitized the Black women (they speak in dialect in the book and their accents are literally spelled out—the dialogue of the White southerners—who ALSO SPEAK IN A DIALECT BY THE WAY—is not given the same treatment). They are pure, Bible-reading demure Madonnas or they are short-tempered “sassy” and mouthy (dear God can we kill that particular word, please? I hate the word sassy. It is right up there with spunky as a patronizing “compliment”), but they are ultimately there to serve as tools for a story about the fake growth of the White main character.
This is just a gross combination of theft and denial—stealing someone’s history and denying it even existed.