Critical review of the movie “The Help”
Synopsis of the movie
The Help is a 2011 motion picture directed by Taylor Tate and based on Kathryn Stockett’s bestseller under the same title. The movie’s setting is Jackson, Mississippi which was one of the most violent and dangerous towns for African Americans and consequently vehemently resisted the civil rights movement. The movie is based on the untold lives of African American women in their service to their Caucasian counterparts. The movie’s main characters are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan and Aibileen Clark. Skeeter is an idealistic young lady who has just returned to her home from college having graduated with a diploma in order to start her career as a writer.
Aibileen on the other hand is an African American house help who works at the home of Hilly Holbrook, a white suburban lady with two children and a childhood friend of Skeeter. Hilly is part of a group of white suburban women whose mainly stay at home, organize parties and hold charity events beside their husbands. All of the women in Hilly’s circle have a firm belief that the house help should raise the children, cook all the meals, clean and perform every other domestic chore assigned to them while maintaining a humble demeanor. This school of thought is championed zealously by Charlotte Phelan, also one of Skeeter’s childhood friends who’s “Southern” in all aspects.
However Ms Celia Foote, who’s deemed an outcast by Hilly’s circle due to her class despite being white, deviates from this school with the assistance of her house help Minny Jackson. Consequently Minny and Aibileen help Skeeter collect personal stories documenting the plight of house helps in Jackson and ultimately these experiences are published in a book titled The Help.
One of the most evident themes in the movie The Help is the plight of women generally in the civil movement era. As a matter of fact, the male characters in the film play a very minimal role in the development of the plot which wrongfully depicts that the women hold the most power. Contrary to this, women are depicted as being marginalized and dependent beings that are not only victims of violence in their marriages but also depicted as the lesser parties. The role of women in the society is trivialized to household chores and assistance of their husbands in traditionally male delegated responsibilities. However, the role of the women though similar as a group varies on racial basis. Whilst the white women have more dignified responsibilities such as organizing charities beside their husbands their black counterparts also share the burden of providing for their households.
Minny and Aibileen drop out of school at a tender age to assist their respective mothers in this noble duty of income subsidy whilst Charlotte and cronies are at the forefront of organizing charity events on behalf of their husbands. Both Caucasians and African American women share the responsibility of child rearing and domestic chores. The difference arises in the fact that while the white suburban women delegate their maternal and domestic responsibilities to their house helps; the African American women have to shoulder both their burden and that of their employers.
As a result of their marginalization women in the movie play a very minimal and widely segregated role in the issues of the day which in this case is civil rights activism. In fact both races accept their plight as minorities and segregate themselves from their male counterparts in a bid to have an impact on the issues of the day. As such both the maids and their employer end up playing minute roles in the revolutionary civil rights activism but with long lasting and far reaching impacts. Charlotte and most of her suburban friends are pro-racism and have strong antagonistic sentiments towards the African Americans. They demonstrate by mistreating their house helps and shunning whites who are of a lower class such as Celia. However the most important role that Charlotte and her comrades played in the civil rights activism movement came about when they strongly advocated for building separate lavatories outside the house for their African American employees on the basis that the former were disease ridden. It was in fact this move that was the birth of most of the relationships that were for the civil rights movement. Some of these relationships include those of Skeeter and Aibileen, Minny and Celia, Celia and her husband, and Skeeter and her mother amongst others.
Skeeter, Celia and the house helps also played their role in the civil rights movement. This group of people was antiracism and all the related social inequalities. Due to their marginalized role as women, all Skeeter and the house helps could do was document the experiences of the African American women under most of the suburban white women. The documented stories of the house helps’ experiences were finally published by a New York editor keen on capitalizing from the civil rights movement. This publication not only served to liberate the house helps from the weight of racism and its related inequalities but also informed the rest of the country of the plight of African American women in a manner that could not be curtailed by the opponents of the movement and that allowed its proponents to freely talk about it.
Celia also played a crucial role in the movement; unlike most of her other suburban housewives, she treated her house help Minny with respect and dignity and in turn learnt a great deal of knowledge about domestic responsibilities and ultimately she improved on her character. Ultimately Celia and her husband showered Minny their help with gratitude giving the former the strength to finally leave her abusive husband.
In addition to being marginalized, women in The Help are also depicted as being very dependent beings. All the suburban women Celia and Skeeter included are dependent on their husbands of their income. None of these white women work and most of them are housewives. In fact the sum total of a white woman’s aspirations in life is to go to school, graduate, and come back home to live with her parents till she finally gets married. Upon marriage, a white woman’s responsibilities are limited to domestic chores and charity works. In addition to this, the suburban women have been brought up to heavily rely on their house helps for the fulfillment of all of their domestic duties as housewives including child rearing.
The African American women on the other hand depend on their husbands to make all the most important decisions in their lives despite bringing in most of the income. For instance, both Aibileen and Minny’s daughter are forced to drop out of school by their respective fathers while young to help their mothers in generating income. Minny is forced by her husband to get another job after she’s fired by Charlotte to the extent of being physically abused for failure. Finally, the house helps also singularly depend on their white employers for their economic sustenance. Their dependency on their employers and jobs has become part and parcel of their lives and they cannot even dare imagine a different life outside these circumstances. This is demonstrated when Aibileen is finally fired and seems lost for a moment before picking herself up and actively pursuing writing as a career in retirement.
In conclusion, the marginalization of women and the domesticated role of women are two of the prominent themes in the movie, the Help. In spite of the racial segregation during the era that the movie is set in, women are depicted as being in charge of the home and child rearing with the exception of Skeeter who is a writer. The black women have to contend with the extra duties of being providers for their homes in addition to being mistreated and segregated by the white women they work for. The film provides a historical journey into the plight of the African American and women in particular and their struggle for equality.
Works Cited
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Lawler, Peter. Race, Class and Gender in the Help. 16 August 2011. 17 July 2013 <http://bigthink.com/rightly-understood/race-class-and-gender-in-the-help-the-film>.
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