No Help

This is just my opinion, and I don't mean no harm (to borrow a phrase from my grandma), but I am trying to understand why some smart black folks got all bent out of shape over the movie The Help.

Disclosures: I have not read the book, nor have I seen the movie.  In all likelihood, I probably will not read the book before I see the movie (and knowing me, I may not make it to see the movie until it comes out on cable).  Nevertheless, I detect a lot of knee-jerk hateration going on here, and that has me scratching my head. 

I read an open letter last week written by the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians.  Two years ago when I was still teaching African American history, I may have looked into joining this austere group, despite the fact that I was just a lawyer teaching history as an adjunct at an online university.  If I were to go back into the classroom, there is a chance that I would still want to affiliate with these women because, well that is what one does--join academic/professional organizations in order to meet other academics and/or professionals.  I can only imagine that the letter now making the internet rounds was written after an especially intense meeting of these academic professionals.

Here is a link to their historically-grounded letter of protest.  And here is my response:
Le siiiiiiiiiggggggghhhhhhh.................................


Again, this is just my opinion, but there is nothing about The Help that ever hinted that it was anything other than a book written from the perspective of a formerly clueless Southern white woman.  As plenty of our elders will tell you, these anthropological aha moments are common, kind of like the Euro-tourist invasions of Harlem on any given Sunday morning. 

So with all due respect to the National Director of the ABWH, why come out against this movie when there have been plenty of other stereotyped depictions of black women on film?  Why the outrage now?

I remember very well the controversy that accompanied Driving Miss Daisy, and I am sure that is the very reason why Morgan Freeman has and never will do a Spike Lee movie.  I do not recall if similar annoyances were expressed when Whoopi Goldberg starred in The Long Walk Home, or if John Singleton received enough criticism for the incredible artistic license he took in Rosewood.  Maybe there was controversy attached to those films, but we did not have Facebook or Twitter back then to assist with sharing the outrage.  And last I checked, I have yet to see a similar open letter addressed to Tyler Perry for any of the Mamm...I mean Madea movies.   

I get it, though.  I understand why the critical acclaim and excitement over The Help gets under your skin.  Because lost in all of this hooplah is an honest-to-God examination of the lives of millions of anonymous black women (such as my grandmothers and great aunts) who worked as domestics. 

But the book was not really about them.  It was written to educate white women about the attitudes of their Southern grandmothers and great-aunts.  And when it got adapted as a film, I suspect that it was intended primarily as a vehicle for its white stars (Emma Stone and Bryce Dallas Howard), since theirs are the names that we all know.  This story is not about the Civil Rights Movement, the women's movement or the anti-war movement, all of which were taking place or were about to take place during the 60s.  The Help is the story of how one white woman took off her blinders.  So maybe we should consider that in its historical context.

The challenge for us today is not to take offense that black actresses were needed to portray black maids for a white woman's coming of age story set in the 60s.  Viola Davis portrayed a maid in Doubt too.  The challenge should be to support and nourish the work of young black, Latino and Asian writers and actors so that these stories can be told from our perspective as well.  No, those films probably will not attract A-list white actresses or garner special promotions on the Home Shopping Network...but so what? 

I am not trying to justify stereotypes, but I think that we need liberate ourselves from being offended by every less than ultra-triumphant portrayal of blackness.  Perhaps my enlightened sisters of the ABWH need to remember that this same debate has been ongoing in the black community since the Harlem Renaissance.  On the one hand, the intellectuals argued for more 'uplifting' black images while the artists themselves preferred gritty, unrefined depictions of black life because they felt those were more authentic.  Maybe it is time we accepted the fact that nearly one hundred years later, all of these images--from the most painful to the most uplifting--are authentic.

It is unfortunate that great talents like Viola Davis and Cecily Tyson only seem to get work nowadays as supporting actors, and perhaps just a tad bit ironic that in this instance, that was as maids.  Hollywood can and must do better, and groups like the ABWH need to keep the pressure on the industry to develop more opportunities for actors of color.  But that same pressure needs to be applied to the black writers, directors and producers to do better as well.  And instead of waging a public relations campaign at a movie that merely examines an old theme (because we've seen it before as a rom-com in Maid in Manhattan and as a thriller in Dirty Pretty Things), let's channel the outrage at the conditions faced by those who serve us and endeavor to change how they are treated--I bet they could use the help.