“The Help” and the Struggle for Community in America

John Hallwas

            One of the most talked-about movies in recent years is Tate Taylor’s “The Help,” which is based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Flawed but effective, it is a thought-provoking look at southern racism in the 1960s that sheds important light on the struggle for community in America.

            Reviewers across the country have praised the superb acting of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, playing black maids in racist Jackson, Mississippi, who get the courage to tell their long experience of struggle against chronic disrespect.  

            Also widely praised is Emma Stone, playing Skeeter Phelan, a young white college graduate who came out of that racist community but empathizes with the black maids (she was guided and nurtured by one). She is committed to launching her writing career by revealing their story in a book, and its appearance does have some positive impact---especially on the blacks. That Skeeter’s book is finally “Anonymous” shows that she views herself just as a collaborator.

            The film is unfortunately a bit simplistic, strives too hard for a happy ending, and relies on stereotypes (all the blacks are downtrodden but goodhearted folks who love fried chicken, for example), but Taylor’s cinematic version of “The Help” is also a compelling story with much to offer American viewers.

            One strong point, surely, is that the movie takes us into the troubled private lives of Aibilene Clark and Minny Jackson (played by Davis and Spencer), if only indirectly. The former lost her son to racial bigotry when he was injured and was not taken to the whites-only hospital. For years, she has had to repress her outrage and keep functioning, just to earn a living. Telling her story, through the words of Skeeter’s book, strengthens her spiritually and, by the film’s close, places her destiny more firmly in her own hands. The comparatively outspoken Minny has been trapped in an abusive marital relationship, which she gains the strength to bring to an end partly because she also summons the courage to speak about her life in Skeeter’s book.

          As those developments suggest, a secondary theme, very apparent to a nonfiction writer and teacher like me, is that confronting difficult aspects of one’s personal past through writing (or disclosure through oral history) can have a profoundly liberating impact on individuals. I can cite many examples of that from my own experience with students and others.

        “The Help” also clearly shows how the human impulse to love and appreciate others gets buried under racial bigotry that flatly refuses to acknowledge the complex humanity of those in the denigrated social group. The black maids in the film are key figures in the emotional lives of white Mississippi youngsters, who then grow up to be self-important bigots who can’t identify with blacks generally. (Hence, the blacks can transcend racial difference; the whites cannot.)

        Another fine performance in the film is Bryce Dallas Howard’s  portrayal of Hilly Holbrook, a shallow young socialite who advocates legislation that would require every white family to have a separate bathroom for any blacks who work in that household---because she just knows that “blacks carry diseases” that would be transmitted by toilet seats. Through Howard’s sensitive performance, we realize that Hilly’s deeper, compelling reasons have to do with self-esteem issues. Like many people, she feels driven to celebrate herself by putting down others.

        It’s in the portrayal of Hilly (and the other shallow, self-important, social-climbing whites whom she speaks for) that “The Help” strikes its most universal chord. She is an insensitive jerk precisely because, despite her ignorance of the black experience, she simply feels that she is indisputably right about them and knows that they need to be kept at a distance, controlled, and used. And believing that has become part of her identity. She wouldn’t dream of empathizing with blacks---or any “others.”

         America has millions of people like Hilly, and their narrowness and insensitivity are not just expressed through racial bigotry but through religious bigotry, social class bigotry, and a growing political bigotry that refuses to even acknowledge the patriotism and commitment of those with other views.

         The American community is held together by shared understandings, obligations, and appreciations, which cut across lines of race, religion, social class, and party affiliation, and must be articulated through common purposes and political compromises that show deep empathy for all. Otherwise, we end up with a non-community, controlled and defeated by the powerful and self-important, who no longer relate to other kinds of Americans. And that is precisely what we see in “The Help.”