So when I got this response:

Face book debate

Okay. Ummm where do I start. How about instead of the “unofficial” employment rate for African Americans at 39 percent, a quick look at the current official rate is in order.

Keep in mind the source though, since the government isn’t well thought of these days. I guess for his next feat Obama may need to walk on water for some people. I’m also inclined to think the rate given in that post may refer to the stats for that commentor’s state, but since no citation or reference was given, its hard to know where it was taken from. One of the unfortunate problems with social media is how many people just give an opinion as if its gospel without any links or statistics to back it up. That might work if it were all about shooting the bull, but its high time we all learn to research, analyze and cite.

Anyway, here’s the current stats (as of the date of this post) from big brother:

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.7 percent) and blacks (13.6 percent) declined in January. The unemployment rates for adult women (7.7 percent), teenagers (23.2 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and Hispanics (10.5 percent) were little changed. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.7 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

And the stats for the month before that in December:
Both the number of unemployed persons (13.1 million) and the unemployment rate (8.5 percent) continued to trend down in December. The unemployment rate has declined by 0.6 percentage point since August. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men decreased to 8.0 percent in December. The jobless rates for adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers (23.1 percent), whites (7.5 percent), blacks (15.8 percent), and Hispanics (11.0 percent) showed little change. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.8 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

The next part of the comment states ”No roles we cry out, Mammie roles we cry out. All this whining is missing the point.”

Let me take the first part. “No roles we cry out.”

It’s also important to define “no roles” because while Hollywood wasn’t too keen on casting black people back in the day, that doesn’t mean there weren’t any roles, you know, for black people:

Al Jolson, a beloved American entertainer in blackface singing about his "Mammy"

Yes we complain. Because if we didn’t, I guess we’d simply have to depend on the kindness of strangers.  And we can see how far that’s gotten us:

Protest against stereotyping African Americans

And while I’m at it, let me state that most African Americans don’t have the luxury of “whining.” When we complain its because the body count has piled up (racial profiling, lynching, etc) or images that are touted which some non-minorities believe are “accurate” or “funny” depictions while we complain that they’re really not.

"Prince Chawmin" cartoon character meant to depict black male and the game of "shooting dice"

Something for the "children". An animated black woman, one of many comedic depictions of the black race in cartoon form.

 

 

 

 

For more information on how African Americans were and are depicted in print and in film, see  this post:

 

 

 

So yes, African Americans do complain. Because for far too long we were forced to remain silent over our depictions, our employment and in some cases our own bodies. Only brave souls spoke out during segregation, like Ida B Wells, who refused to give up her seat on a train and stood her ground even when thrown off. Ida filed a lawsuit that went for naught. But the point is SHE COMPLAINED. And she did this during segregation.

For her courage, for her vision, and her feminist before it was even cool to be one legacy, she’s an important part of black history.

More examples are Rosa Parks, Recy Taylor, Fannie Lou Hamer, Anne Moody and Joan Trumpaur Mulholland. And the list goes on. Even those who worked in Hollywood during segregation spoke out. Like Paul Robeson, whose eloquent voice didn’t lend itself to sing “Ol Man River, Dat Ol Man River.” Paul was able to lessen much of the thick dialect of a tune written by white writers who felt, like Stockett, that they were capturing African American vernacular, this time in song. Many people don’t realize that the original lyrics included “Niggers work all day on the Mississippi.” which were only changed because . . .

You guessed it, African Americans complained.

More recently, when this ad caused an uproar on the internet, instead of sitting back and staying silent, even though there may have been some who wondered what all the fuss was about, especially since the ad was reportedly the brainchild of an African American, guess what?

African Americans complained. And it got pulled:

Controversial "Re-Civilize Yourself" Ad

Only the powers that be in Hollywood haven’t been listening. Here are some memorable examples of how Hollywood put black people to work, then and now:

Delilah (played by Louise Beavers) begging to stay in Imitation of Life, the 1934 film version

Theresa Harris on the cover of Jet Magazine, 1952

From the Disney animated film Mothergoose from Hollywood, a caricature of Stepin Fetchit

Aibileen and Minny having a ball in the kitchen, as the whitewashing of segregation via films returns

Much like the show Mayberry was set in the south during the 60s, and the town had virtually little if no interaction with any black residents, the show Friends and Seinfeld got similar complaints, and not just about the lack of black faces.

If I recall correctly (if not, please leave a comment with a correction) Friends ended up signing Aisha Tyler in a role where she was Ross’ love interest (I think at first she was with Joey).

I’ve got more information on what happens when black people complain. But I think these two photos say it all:

The littlest victim of Segregation

A Sea of Humanity. The March on Washington, DC 1963. Black people complained, and people listened.

Hollywood gives it up for Mammy Love

This site was created to present another side amid the coronation for the next great southern writer. A dissenting viewpoint.  I didn’t know back in 2010 I’d find so much baggage with this book, both behind the scenes and within the pages. And the movie makes similar errors, though not on as grand of a scale as the book.

To that end, here’s a recent movie review of The Help, by the writer Toure for TIME magazine:

Is The Help the Most Loathsome Movie in America?

” . . . I don’t see any of The Help‘s journey as pleasurable for anyone: black women are oppressed and fight back in a passive-aggressive way. (Black men are all but invisible in this world.) Whites are mostly evil, or else sheep: soulless and brainless. It’s a Lifetime-y simplistic movie, a Disneyfication of segregation, with a gross and unintentionally comical stereotype parade marching through it. There’s the ditzy blonde who can’t manage to do anything but get dressed. There’s the callous ice queen who thinks blacks have special diseases that can be transmitted by sharing a toilet. There’s the undeterrable do-gooder. And then there are the blacks who are the latest iteration of that Hollywood staple: the magical negro. They are blacks who arrive in the lives of whites with more knowledge and soul and go on to teach whites about life, thus making white lives better.”

” . . . In The Help, Octavia Spencer’s Minnie actually says to a white woman, “Frying chicken just makes you feel better about life.” I must be doing it wrong. Once the ditzy blonde learns to use Crisco properly, she does indeed feel better about life. Even though she has just learned that she’s probably infertile. Minnie helps turn her boss lady into a regular Martha Stewart, and what does she get out of it? The promise of lifetime employment as the family maid. Thank yuh, ma’am. Davis’ Aibileen tells the white kids she’s raising, “You is important,” while being constantly reminded that she is not.”

Link: http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/02/is-the-help-the-most-loathsome-movie-in-america/

Haha. He references two of my favorite lines from the film (I’m being sarcastic here)

And in the interest of opposing views, uh, here’s Jim Izrael’s:

” . . . I don’t know what some black folks want from a film — the Hollywood machine is an ugly marriage of art and business, propaganda and entertainment. People going to the cineplex in search of edification or some ethereal, cathartic moment of spiritual actualization should be in school or church — because they expect more than they reasonably should from a movie.

. . . Some may be discouraged to see a black woman get an Oscar nod for playing a house cleaner — never mind that women in their 40s of every stripe are having a hard time everywhere in Hollywood. Viola Davis is a gifted actor — smokin’ hot! — but not buxom, biracial or conventionally beautiful. She already has a truckload of Tony and other theater awards, just got a SAG award, and works steadily. Her nomination pushes an opening door even further, soliciting an appreciation for the beauty of dark skin, full eyes and lips, and a new beauty aesthetic for Hollywood to consider. . . “

Link: http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-30/opinion/opinion_izrael-davis_1_black-woman-black-women-white-audiences?_s=PM:OPINION

I guess Jim didn’t see how the powers that be marketed The Help. The only actors in the book or who the PR Department called “pretty” “handsome” or “a dreamboat” and ”cute” were white. A little further down in the post I mention the differences made in Emma Stone and Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer (in the marketing of the film). The “appreciation” Jim Izrael so longing speaks of has been mighty slow in coming, and The Help hasn’t changed that. Especially since the original descriptions of the characters in the novel were less than flattering (I guess Jim didn’t read the book) and even Viola Davis admitted to not reading Stockett’s descriptions of the black characters.  For as she says, authors rarely get it right (items in bold are my doing):

“If you didn’t object to the dialect, were there aspects of the book that did bother you?

Davis: The one thing I don’t embrace in any book about black women is I don’t embrace how the looks are described. I always erase that. I don’t care if it’s the greatest writer in the world. I know these black women. The first woman of beauty in my life was my Aunt Joyce, and she was over 300 pounds, and we thought she was Halle Berry to us.

Every time she came to visit, she would have these earrings, and these clothes and the beauty of her skin. We would all sit around her touching her hands and her face and her skin and she was beautiful. I didn’t see the bigness. I just have a different idea of how we look, the hues of our skin, how we exude sensuality and sexuality and how our hair looks. So I always just interpret that for myself. It’s like Chris Walken cuts out all the exclamation points, and the periods. I cut out all the descriptions.”

Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/31/entertainment/la-ca-the-help-excerpts-20110731

“Crying like a dog,” Davis listened as Tyson, who costars in “The Help,” told her it was OK to embrace her success. Says Davis, “Cicely told me, ‘I know the road.’ And what she meant by that was she is a dark-skinned black actress. She has the full lips, the dark skin, that look that doesn’t meet any conventional standards of beauty…. She understands the obstacles that were placed in front of me, and she knows that I was able to achieve what I achieved only through hard work. A lot of times people have to give you permission to enjoy your life.”

Link: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-en-viola-davis-20111110,0,2609985.story

Click image for larger view:

Hilly's billed as "pretty and well groomed" while Minny defaults into the stereotypical "sassy" black woman who can cook. So what else is new?

"A Handsome Good Ole Boy" You've got to be kidding

That "Southern Gentleman" and "Dreamboat" Johnny Foote

Not one black person is called attractive in the book (Yule May Crooklyn Crookle is given a compliment of sorts, that her figure is better than Hilly’s. And yes, some readers caught Stockett’s corny inside joke on Yule May’s last name, which foreshadows what she’ll do in the novel. No wonder it was changed for the film) so its kinda hard to have ”appreciation for the beauty of dark skin, full eyes and lips and a new beauty aesthetic for Hollywood to consider.” With descriptions like these:

“He black. Blacker than me” (Aibileen comparing her skin color to a roach, Pg 189)

And how I told him don’t drink coffee or he gone turn colored. He say he still ain’t drunk a cup of coffee and he twenty-one years old. It’s always nice to see the kids grown up fine.  (Aibileen giving advice to grow on for one of her white children she raises Pg 91)

And how about this for “appreciation”:

“Sometimes two girls from next door would come over to play with me, named Mary Nell and Mary Roan. They were so black I couldn’t tell them apart, so I just called them both just Mary.” (Skeeter, Pg 62)

I’m sorry to say, there’s much, much more.

Here’s when the reader is first introduced to Minny:

. . .Minny short and big, got shiny black curls. She setting with her legs splayed, her thick arms crossed . . . Minny could probably lift up this bus up over her head if she wanted to. (Aibileen describing Minny as a big woman sitting on a bus with her legs wide open, Pg 13)

Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis reported stated the novel was “beautiful” even after reading it several times.

During the press junket for the film, here’s an audio quote from Viola Davis: “I’m essentially playing a Mammy.”

Viola’s statement starts at about 8 minutes into the 10 minute audio clip

“I’m playing a maid, a black actress playing a maid in 2011 in Hollywood, is a lot of pressure. You don’t play a maid. That is something  you don’t do. When you play a maid where a white woman has written a story and a white man is directing it, so there is no way that it’s gonna be. . . I’m essentially playing a Mammy. So I felt a lot of pressure. Absolutely. And then and of course pressure from the readers who all wanted Oprah to play the role. And saw her as being seventy years old and about two hundred and  fifty pounds or you know,  yeah, I felt a lot of pressure. But it’s like Tate says, if you work from that point of pressure and fear, your work is gonna crack. At some point you just have to leave it alone. And know that we have our own standard of excellence . . .”

Link: Atlanta Mom’s on The Move  

Viola’s quote starts at about 8 minutes into the 10 minute audio clip

And here’s what Octavia Spencer stated back in Feb 2009, as part of her “agreement” with Kathryn Stockett. See more on the pact between these two in the links below this image.

Octavia Spencer speaks up for The Help

If you want to know how The Help came to be, without the hearts and flowers PR spin,and  in the words of those who were part of  an “agreement” of sorts, then see these posts:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/so-about-the-help-and-this-agreement-among-friends/

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/how-the-help-was-pimped/

On to the next part of the comment “All this whining is missing the point. This was someone’s story.”

Yes it was. The Help contained pieces of this woman’s life:

The real deal Aibileen, a distraught Ableen Cooper after her lawsuit tossed out

Read Abilene Cooper’s sad tale here

And Stockett admits using this woman, Mrs. Demetrie McLorn for the inspiration of several black maids in the novel:

Stockett on CBS, a photo of Demetrie is in the background

The Help was also mixed with a whole lotta literary tropes like the docile, blindly loyal manservant Tom  in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, later in Imitation of Life with the sweetly affable Delilah, played by Louise Beavers (1934 movie version) and later on Juanita Moore (Delilah is renamed Annie and Moore receives and Oscar nomination in 1960). In the novel Stockett throws in just about every stereotype known the fiction. Lulabelle is the tragic mulatto (renamed Rachel and re-cast as brown in complexion in the film). Leroy is the black brute caricature, better known these days as the “thug.” Celia is the buxom blonde with the heart of gold (best played by Marilyn Monroe in the film Bus Stop). Skeeter is the coming of age hero/heroine, Hilly is Cruella De Ville lite, so over the top that you’d think she invented segregation, as The Help movie tries to be more of a Dramedy.

Minny is simply an updated Mammy. A similar character is also in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Aunt Chloe where the character is called the best cook in the county (its been awhile since I read UTC, I need to recheck). And then in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. There have been male versions, like Andy of Amos ’n’ Andy.

The creators of the radio show portraying Amos and Andy

African Americans take over the roles of Amos ’n’ Andy:

Amos n Andy TV show

But you can  believe neither Abilene Cooper or Demetrie McLorn thought of their skin color as even remotely being comparable to a roach (Aibileen, Pg 91) or brought up another woman’s vagina as  a “cootchie spoilt as a rotten oyster.” (Aibileen and Minny talk cootchies and Aibileen’s ability to call down a venereal disease on Cocoa, via prayer and “black magic” Pg 23-24)  That’s Kathryn Stockett in blackface.

Yes, it was someone’s story. But it it’s important to point out the author was born in 1969. Let me state that again. Kathryn Stockett was born in 1969. Here’s her personal knowledge of segregation, since the author admits her grandparents practiced it while the author spent much of her formative years in their home:

But my brother and sister and I weren’t allowed to bother Demetrie during her own lunch break. . . Grandmother wanted Demetrie to rest so she could finish her work, not to mention, white people didn’t sit at the same table at the table while a colored person was eating. (Too Litte Too Late, Pg 448)

(Let me interject here. Who still talks like this? Who still says “colored?”)

That was just a normal part of life, the rules between blacks and whites (I’ve got to interject again. Stockett’s talking about the 70s and 80s here not the 40s or 50s, keep that in mind) as a little remember pitying them. I am so embarrassed to admit that now. (Pg 448)

I didn’t pity Demetrie though. There were several years when I thought she was immensely lucky to have us. A secure job in a nice house, cleaning up after white Christian people. But also because Demetrie had no children of her own, we felt like we were filling a void in her life. . . (Pg 448)

Well, that was what Stockett said in 2009. Now here’s what she stated more recently about her work: “I just made this shit up!”

And how about the author describing a scene in her Oscar nominated film where Minny is in an alternate universe, as she’s able to get away with feeding a white woman some of her poop in a pie: “It’s fucking hysterical!”

Octavia: Oh my god! [Laughs] People always ask me if we were laughing hysterically through that scene, but I always say no, because it was never a funny thing for Minny. She always knew the danger. We never played the comedy of it; the comedy is knowing when it’s revealed.

Stockett: Tate was such a prankster! He still is. The horrible things he did to the people he even loved, or in high school, to me—he told me at one point I had to stop telling people what he used to do. [Laughs] For me, it was, “What was the worst thing you could do to Hilly Holbrook?” And it was her having the image in her own mind that she had eaten Negro shit. It’s kind of corny, the whole concept, but what saved that scene was Sissy Spacek.

Chris Columbus: “Run, Hilly Minny, run!” was a completely improvised line. People were falling down behind the monitor because we had no idea how Sissy was going to react. But the way that scene is shot, it’s a textbook scene of how to direct a comedic moment.

Octavia: And I did the “eat my shit” line about five or six times. That was the fun part!

Stockett: It’s fucking hysterical!

Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/12/the-help-an-oral-history-with-viola-davis-octavia-spencer.html

To say Stockett has no clue would be an understatement. There’s a Mad TV skit called “Nice White Lady.” I’m going to link to it at the bottom of this post for anyone who hasn’t seen it.

If you don’t know already, then let me repeat. Kathryn Stockett claimed in not one, not two, but THREE known audio interviews that Medgar Evers was bludgeoned to death. And this mistake actually made it into the novel on Pg 277:

Error on Evers in the Paperback version of The Help

For more on this error, see this post: The Medgar Evers Error in The Help

Back to the original comment again:

“It gave black actresses work, nominations, awards and honestly, greater acceptance in Hollywood . . . “ 

The Help did put black actresses to work. And also a bunch of white actresses who got to dress in designer clothes and get their hair done, and also have better lighting in their scenes:

Skeeter and the gals all gussied up, even while playing cards. Their outfits were on sale at HSN, while the maids pots and pans were the hot item in a tasteless tie in the movie studio cooked up.

All the "blacker the better" maids in one room, as the film attempts to duplicate Stockett's words with heavy handed film shots

And yes, Spencer and Davis received prestigious nominations. As far as greater acceptance? Meh. That’s stretching it. The same thing was said when Halle Berry won the first ever Academy Award for Best Actress over ten years ago. And while Jennifer Hudson and M’onique also won best supporting actress Oscars, the doors are still painfully shut as far as additional roles and work for black actors, both male and female (except for Will Smith and Denzel Washington)

But it looks as if the one who really benefitted, or got more “work” was Emma Stone. Stone was everywhere, and it seemed on just about every magazine. Early on Stone was touted as the star of the film when it opened worldwide. And more recently the actress even inked a lucrative cosmetics deal.

Emma gets Glamour cover May 2011

Emma on Elle Mag

Emma Stone on Vanity Fair

EW promotes The Help with an insert of Emma Stone sans Davis and Spencer

 

 

 

 

Viola Davis on Essence Mag cover

I’d mentioned months ago how Stone graced the covers of several magazines while Davis and Spencer were left at the starting line. No cosmetic offers (hint, hint Covergirl) Even now. Here’s Vanity Fair’s recent cover, doing what Vanity Fair does best by putting the minorities in the fold out section:

Human Zoo inhabitants. A popular attraction back in the day, before people complained

Oops! Wrong picture. Still, I guess it’s another example of  “job creation.”

Here are some of the new roles Spencer and Davis have  lined up:

“Spencer, who is up for the best supporting actress Oscar, has signed on for the  sci-fi film “Snow Piercer.”

Directed by Joon-ho Bong, “Snow Piercer” tells the story of a future  in  which an Ice Age kills off everyone except those aboard a train that  crosses  the globe thanks to its perpetual-motion engine.

When a revolt against the class system of the train emerges, Spencer’s  character joins in to save her son. Tilda Swinton, Chris Evans, John Hurt and Korean actor Kang-ho Song have also  signed on to the project.

“Meanwhile, Spencer’s co-star Viola Davis, who’s nominated for a best actress  Oscar, has two new projects on her plate. Variety reports that Davis will appear  in the highly anticipated adaptations of the books “Ender’s Game” and “Beautiful  Creatures.”

“Ender’s” centers on talented strategist Ender Wiggins (played by Asa   Butterfield), who’s recruited to a military school to train to take  down an  alien race. Davis will portray a military psychologist who  watches over the  emotional well-being of the trainees in the futuristic  film, which is being  directed by Gavin Hood.

In “Beautiful Creatures,” directed by Richard LaGravenese, two teens work  to understand a curse that has been haunting  the young woman’s family for  generations. Davis will play a librarian  who was also the friend of the young  man’s deceased mother.

Read more: http://www.kmbc.com/entertainment/30374899/detail.html#ixzz1lf92qanN

To quote SAG and Golden Globe winner Octavia Spencer “You do a role like The Help to get to this.”

Link:

Viola Davis and her husband have formed their own production company and have already acquired the rights for an initial project.

For more on what went wrong with the novel The Help, see this post:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/ten-issues-that-tarnish-the-help/

**Update **- I’m not sure what’s happening here, but it’s sure not “appreciation” or “greater acceptance.” I’ll come back and work this into the post. I think Clutch Magazine has an article a bit more complimentary on Spencer’s discussion of her weight.

Here’s an interesting take on the whole Octavia Spencer vs. The  Media vs. Her weight. :

Is It Just Us, Or Is Octavia Spencer Oversharing?

” . . . Octavia Spencer is a force to be reckoned with these days. She’s won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her role in The Help, not to mention dominated the red carpets of both events in pitch-perfect Tadashi Shoji gowns. I think it’s refreshing to see someone in Hollywood who’s not a size-zero top the best-dressed lists, and I know plenty of other people agree. So can she please stop talking about her weight?

http://www.allure.com/beauty-trends/blogs/daily-beauty-reporter/2012/02/octavia-spencer-oversharing.html

This post is still in development . . .

The Help earns top honor At SAG Awards 

Look for The Help musical, now that the movie and book returns the nostagia of Southern Traditions

To quote Charlie Sheen: "Winning"

It’s important that this whole absurd scenario play itself out. The spotlight must shine on Stockett’s work in order for eyes to be opened.

So while Hollywood may now believe it can point to The Help as their token attempt at atonement, those who reward Stockett’s work without knowing or even caring about the behind the scenes errors, or how the book and movie does more harm than good to the memory of those hard working, fearless African American maids, have in-turn condoned two polarizing stereotypes.

What Hollywood is rewarding is the idea of the black mammy. Not the admirable maid.

That two talented African American thespians played their stereotypes well isn’t the point.  And I’m editing this post to add that at least one of them publicly stated she knew she was playing a Mammy. Here’s a previous post of mine with an audio link to Viola Davis admitting it:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/contributing-to-our-own-stereotype/

To quote Davis from that You Tube audio piece: “I’m essentially playing a Mammy.” And that’s not the only time Davis mentions the role of Aibileen is a Mammy. See the post for an additional quote from Esssence magazine as Davis explains her rationale for taking the role.

Octavia Spencer signed on at the beginning, for as Kathryn Stockett admitted in a very early interview in December of 2009 “That was just the agreement”

Dapito: And is there a movie version coming out of The Help? Did I hear that right?

Stockett: The movie rights have been sold to a fellow Mississippian Tate Taylor (inaudible) Green and I’m just so lucky that the book is in the hands of people, not only Mississippians but friends of mine from Jackson. They’re two filmmakers based in Los Angeles.

Dapito: Oh I can’t wait. Do you think they will cast Octavia and some of the other narrators?

Stockett: I think Octavia will be the part of Minny because ah . . (pause and laughter) you know, that was just the agreement. It wasn’t that hard of, it you know, there was no pulling hair on that one. She’s such a natural.”

Link: An Interview with Kathryn Stockett, Author of ‘The Help’ Narrated by Diana Dapito

The beloved black mammy is a trope as tired and overused as the “hot blooded latino”  the “blonde bimbo” as well as the “bratty teen.”

Yet Hollywood’s message seems to be that they aren’t in on the joke. Did they miss the memo that Mammies went out with segregation, and the point isn’t to have black actors resurrect these roles to induce mirth or misery?

What better litmus test than to ask whether these characters can be identified with?

The answer is usually to pawn them off by saying they must represent “grandparents” or “mothers” or someone older.

Yet there are real life testimonials from around the internet of those who survived segregation and who don’t recognize Stockett’s characters, which were created simply for humor. In short, Stockett approached the time period as one that should induce laughter.

Even more surprising is how Aibileen and Minny, and even Constantine have some African Americans claiming that’s how it was for their forefathers and mothers.

I doubt if their grandparents were able to tell someone white to “Eat my shit!” while admitting they’d just fed them a pie laced with feces and lived to tell about it. Even today walking away intact would be far-fetched.

Those of us who remember the time period know that what Stockett created, and what Hollywood now celebrates are simply the loyal Mammies of old dressed up for a new generation.

So tonight, raise a toast to having both Delilah from Imitation of Life (Aibileen) and Mammy from Gone With The Wind (Minny) in the same movie. Oh, and add in Ethel Waters, (Constantine) because that’s the other character trope Stockett used. Realizing that putting in the overused caricature of the tragic mulatto would have been way too much, Lulabelle changed colors and was re-cast as a brown African American, not the “pale as snow” tragic mulatto in the book (in yet another literary trope crammed into the novel) and renamed Rachel.

Delilah from Imitation of Life, played by Louise Beavers grinning in the kitchen

If this is the first post you’re reading on this site, I encourage you to take a look at other blog posts on here which go more in depth on where and how Stockett erred and insulted, and others profited from a book that contained offensive depictions and dialogue of the black community dressed up as amusing anecdotes.

Link: https://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/ten-issues-that-tarnish-the-help/

And let me repeat so that this is made clear. While the author did a reasonable job of showing the harshness of time period, that is not the issue.

What is at issue are two well know caricatures of black women, specifically those considered domestics, that were resurrected by the book and the movie, even though these depictions have been a source of mockery and misuse for years by some in the very culture that now applauds them.

And that same community never once thought to question:

Why is Aibileen alone in the film as well as the novel? Why does she default into the stereotype of the black woman as single parent, even though this was a time period where African American women and men faced segregation together, and not apart?

Aibileen writing out her thoughts and living the life of an asexual hermit. My bad. That's SAG award winning, asexual beloved Mammy hermit.

Why was Minny picked to play the chicken loving buffoon? Segregated Hollywood is full of the same examples of blacks being used in a similar capacity.

Celia gives Minny a hug, which is supposed to make moviegoers chuckle and go "Awww, don't worry, we'll give you a Golden Globe and SAG for this."

Why did the novel and movie demean the black male, while rehabilitating the white southern male?

"A Handsome Good Ole Boy" You've got to be kidding. This is how the movie was marketed overseas. It's the "Twilight" effect

The movie wound up cutting out mention of Aibileen’s philandering husband and Constantine’s absentee lover. But that’s because Kathryn Stockett’s treatment of of the black male in her novel was so offensive, that these characters couldn’t be mentioned in the film. And the studio knew this.

Clyde, Aibileen’s spouse has a degrading storyline where he runs off with another woman (Cocoa) who comes down with a venereal disease (spoilt cootchie scene, Pg 23-24). Aibileen and Minny are written as being so backwards that they think Aibileen has somehow accomplished the feat of calling down a venereal disease via the power of prayer.

Stockett, who admits in the back of her novel that her grandparents brought her up in a home which practiced segregation to the letter (Stockett was born in 1969. The Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964) and managed to get those who proclaim themselves to be liberals (but not able to realize that much of the novel and now the movie is cringe worthy and patronizing) to show just how being “liberal”  for some can mean being hopelessly clueless and proud of it.

Case in point. Would a movie on Jewish domestics under a Nazi household have a funny, fat Jewish maid who made jokes which used cultural references that demeaned?

Yet The Help  (film) is being lauded, when it contains Minny reciting stereotypical dialogue like this:

“Frying chicken make you tend to feel better about life.” and “Minny don’t burn no chicken.”

But SAG can’t, and shouldn’t shoulder all the blame.

Something tells me those voting thought they were doing a good thing. And that with so few movies showing African American women on screen, even a stereotype was better than nothing.

A respected organization like The NAACP could (and should) have at least entered into a dialogue (or at least had someone read the novel) once educators like Melissa Harris Perry, Martha Southgate and The National Association of Black Women Historians publicly spoke out, instead of  rubber stamping the film for its own awards.

The NAACP risks validating a screenwriter (The NAACP Image awards has nominated Tate Taylor as best director and screenwriter for The Help) who came up with the stereotypical chicken dialogue for Minny. And Taylor has  more than his share of WTF quotes referencing African Americans and our history. Read all about Tate Taylor’s “That’s worse than seeing a lynching” quote here

And how dismissive Taylor is of black educators entrusted with retaining our history in this interview quote

So is Minny’s obsessive love of chicken a not so subtle wink to films like The Birth of a Nation:

Birth of a Nation, where a black legislator is eating a piece of fried chicken

Or ads produced during segregation which used African Americans for mockery, and featured (you guessed it) chicken:

It's Chicken Time! The stereotype of blacks loving chicken is resurrected in The Help

Another Tate Taylor production, the film that gave him the “credibility” to write the screenplay for The Help

Tate Taylor's Chicken Party, starring Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney and of all things, "fried chicken"

More recently both Taylor and Stockett have made additional verbal gaffes. Here Taylor insensitively crows over having the Medgar Evers assassination inserted into the fictional maid 4 mammies story, The Help:

 Taylor: What I really, really loved about the Medgar Evers storyline and backdrop was that he was in their neighborhood. While they were doing this clandestine project, this Civil Rights leader who’s their neighbor gets murdered, and their characters are wondering, “What’s going to happen to us?”

Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/12/the-help-an-oral-history-with-viola-davis-octavia-spencer.html

What he “really, really loved about the Medgar Evers storyline” WTF?

Does he not realize this was a real person, a husband, a father, a civil rights icon, and not just a plot device?  Evers was assassinated due to bigotry and ignorance.

Stockett’s characters are just that. CHARACTERS. And ones who embody  the ever present Mammy Myth in America.

And here’s Stockett and producer Chris Columbus in the same interview, note what they state about the poop pie. It’s all so funny to them, when real African Americans were murdered, assaulted and raped for far less:

Octavia: Oh my god! [Laughs] People always ask me if we were laughing hysterically through that scene, but I always say no, because it was never a funny thing for Minny. She always knew the danger. We never played the comedy of it; the comedy is knowing when it’s revealed.

Stockett: Tate was such a prankster! He still is. The horrible things he did to the people he even loved, or in high school, to me—he told me at one point I had to stop telling people what he used to do. [Laughs] For me, it was, “What was the worst thing you could do to Hilly Holbrook?” And it was her having the image in her own mind that she had eaten Negro shit. It’s kind of corny, the whole concept, but what saved that scene was Sissy Spacek.

Chris Columbus: “Run, Hilly Minny, run!” was a completely improvised line. People were falling down behind the monitor because we had no idea how Sissy was going to react. But the way that scene is shot, it’s a textbook scene of how to direct a comedic moment.

Octavia: And I did the “eat my shit” line about five or six times. That was the fun part!

Stockett: It’s fucking hysterical!

Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/12/the-help-an-oral-history-with-viola-davis-octavia-spencer.html

And this is what Hollywood and publishing chose to celebrate. Individuals with frat boy mentalities who wouldn’t dare demean or use their own cultures in the way they maligned African Americans, because to quote Stockett, “it’s fucking hysterical!”

The Lynching of Laura Nelson

The littlest victim of Segregation

I AM A MAN. The march meant to have America recognize that fact

One more thing. While Hollywood currently lauds Stockett’s motley crew, there’s a real maid named Abilene Cooper who works for the author’s brother and alleges Stockett used pieces of her life and her name for The Help. It’s not a pretty story, and Cooper’s account has a ring of truth to it, especially since Stockett admitted watching Octavia Spencer and incorporating her mannerisms into the character of loud mouthed Minny, as well as deceased family maid Mrs. Demetrie McLorn for the character of Constantine, and Aibileen Clark. Cooper’s lawsuit was tossed, not on the merits of the case, but because the statute of limitations had run out.

The real deal Aibileen, a distraught Ableen Cooper after her lawsuit tossed out

Read more of Cooper’s account here

Next up: Real maids vs The Great Pretenders

But this:

Salt and Pepper's here. The comedic duo of Celia and Minny, making segregation fun for all

“Growing up in Mississippi, almost every family I knew had a black woman working in their house–cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the white children. That was life in Mississippi. I was young and assumed that’s how most of America lived.

 . . . I knew a lot of Southerners in the city, and every now and then we’d talk about what we missed from the South. Inevitably, somebody would start talking about the maid they grew up with, some little thing that made us all remember–Alice’s good hamburgers or riding in the back seat to take Willy May home. Everybody had a story to tell.”

Link: http://kathrynstockett.com/stockett-qanda.htm

 

 

 

Mrs. McLorn was already deceased when the author graduated from college and realized Demetrie was more than just a good cook and someone fun to talk to. Unfortunately, real life maid Mrs. Demetrie McLorn died when Stockett was sixteen. Yet even in death, the author continues to address Mrs. McLorn by her first name. And this is just one small example of how the remnants of a system that elevated one race while oppressing another remain to this very day.

 

 

A Negro Nurse
More Slavery at the South
From The Independent, 72 (Jan. 25, 1912): 196-200. New York: Published for the proprietors, 1912.

 

“. . . Another thing–it’s a small indignity, it may be, but an indignity just the same. No white person, not even the little children just learning to talk, no white person at the South ever thinks of addressing any negro man or woman as Mr., or Mrs., or Miss. The women are called, “Cook,” or “Nurse,” or “Mammy,” or “Mary Jane,” or “Lou,” or “Dilcey,” as the case might be, and the men are called “Bob,” or “Boy,” or “Old Man,” or “Uncle Bill,” or “Pate.” In many cases our white employers refer to us, and in our presence, too, as their “niggers.” No matter what they call us–no matter what we teach our children to call us–we must tamely submit, and answer when we are called; we must enter no protest; if we did object, we should be driven out without the least ceremony, and, in applying for work at other places, we should find it very hard to procure another situation. . .

In the distant future, it may be, centuries and centuries hence, a monument of brass or stone will be erected to the Old Black Mammies of the South, but what we need is present help, present sympathy, better wages, better hours, more protections, and a chance to breathe for once while alive as free women. If none others will help us, it would seem that the Southern white women themselves might do so in their own defense, because we are rearing their children–we feed them, we bathe them, we teach them to speak the English language, and in numberless instances we sleep with them–and it is inevitable that the lives of their children will in some measure be pure or impure according as they are affected by contact with their colored nurses.”

        © This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

Link: http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/negnurse/negnurse.html

 

For more excerpts from this first person account and others, please see this post: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/they-love-us-sez-who/

 

 

 

 

Whether an African American worked for an employer who distained our race or not, symbols of oppression greeted blacks from dusk until dawn. We had to fight to get white Americans to see that the demeaning jokes, sit-coms, advertising, novels, and products were not well meaning, were not funny, and most of all, not true. For example, this ad was considered funny and not at all racially offensive:

Van Heusen Ad

 

 

More recently, this ad caused controversy:

Controversial "Re-Civilize Yourself" Ad

 

 

However, there’s much more to the story:

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2011/08/source-says-black-man-is-behind-niveas-controverial-ad-apology-released/

 

 

The example above is but one reason why African Americans shouldn’t assume the level of knowledge or understanding on what constitutes an offensive depiction is solely limited to whites.

Especially not after black actresses in The Help uttered dialogue like “You is kind, you is smart, you is im-po-ent” and “Frying chicken tend to make you feel better about life” and sought to defend the book and their roles. Yet Viola Davis admitted to ignoring how Stockett described the maids, for this reason (items in bold are my doing):

 

“If you didn’t object to the dialect, were there aspects of the book that did bother you?

Davis: The one thing I don’t embrace in any book about black women is I don’t embrace how the looks are described. I always erase that. I don’t care if it’s the greatest writer in the world. I know these black women. The first woman of beauty in my life was my Aunt Joyce, and she was over 300 pounds, and we thought she was Halle Berry to us.

Every time she came to visit, she would have these earrings, and these clothes and the beauty of her skin. We would all sit around her touching her hands and her face and her skin and she was beautiful. I didn’t see the bigness. I just have a different idea of how we look, the hues of our skin, how we exude sensuality and sexuality and how our hair looks. So I always just interpret that for myself. It’s like Chris Walken cuts out all the exclamation points, and the periods. I cut out all the descriptions.”

Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/31/entertainment/la-ca-the-help-excerpts-20110731

 

 

I can understand why Davis would want to ignore descriptions like these (items in bold are my doing):

Pascagoula is described as tiny as a child, not five feet tall, and black as night (Pg 59) - Skeeter

That night after supper, me and that cockroach stare each other down across the kitchen floor. He big, inch, inch an a half. He black. Blacker than me. Aibileen’s  battle of wills with a cockroach (Pg 189)

Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums (Pg 65) - Skeeter

The foreman drags a red cloth across his black forehead, his lips, his neck.  (Pg 239) Skeeter   

While visiting Constantine, this character talks about playing with two little girls  who were “so black I couldn’t tell them apart and called them both just Mary.” (Pg 62) – Skeeter

The women are tall, short, black like asphalt or caramel brown. If your skin is too white, I’m told,  you’ll never get hired The blacker the better. – (Pg 257) Skeeter

I clear my throat, produce a nervous smile. Minny doesn’t smile back. She is fat and short and strong. Her skin is blacker than Aibileen’s by ten shades, and shiny and taut, like a pair of new patent shoes. –  Skeeter’s first impression of Minny (Pg 164)

 

 

There are more descriptions  in the book which physically detail the maids (“parts of her hung over the chair” “Minny setting with her legs splayed”).

 

Viola Davis is also quoted as saying “Why do I have to play the Mammy?” in Essence Magazine, and goes further on to explain how she believes the role of Aibileen is multi-faceted:

“Of course I had trepidations. Why do I have to play the mammy? But what do you do as an actor if one  of the most multi-faceted and rich roles you’ve ever been given is a maid in 1962 Mississippi? Do you not  take the role because you feel in some ways it’s not a good message to send to Black people?”  – Viola Davis, in a quote from Essence Magazine

 

 

There’s also this audio quote on You Tube, at about 8 minutes into the 10 minute piece:

“I’m playing a maid, a black actress playing a maid in 2011 in Hollywood, is a lot of pressure. You don’t play a maid. That is something  you don’t do. When you play a maid where a white woman has written a story and a white man is directing it, so there is no way that it’s gonna be. . . I’m essentially playing a Mammy. So I felt a lot of pressure. Absolutely. And then and of course pressure from the readers who all wanted Oprah to play the role. And saw her as being seventy years old and about two hundred and  fifty pounds or you know,  yeah, I felt a lot of pressure. But it’s like Tate says, if you work from that point of pressure and fear, your work is gonna crack. At some point you just have to leave it alone. And know that we have our own standard of excellence . . .”

Link: Atlanta Mom’s on The Move  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shc0mdT-0Cc

 

 

 

Statement made at about 8:00 minutes into the 10 minute interview

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s  a well known, beloved icon:

Everybody's favorite "Aunt", Aunt Jemima, still "large and in charge" even today

 

 

Even after decades of complaints, Aunt Jemima, sans stereotypical speech, still adorns supermarket shelves. She was called “Aunt” for a reason. Just like black men were called “Uncle.” (not to be confused with the even lower designation of “boy” or “girl” at any age). Again, it was to show blacks their place,  to not address an African Americans by the formal designation of Mr. or Mrs. or Miss during segregation.

I’ll be working on this post throughout the day. And I’m creating it especially for those who’ve seen the movie version of  The Help and still want to pretend it wasn’t that bad for African Americans or bigotry didn’t effect most, if not all African Americans. Because you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

People now realize bullying, in whatever form is wrong. Well segregation was legalized bullying. And rape. And assaults. And terrorizing men, women and children just for “fun.” And being denied essential services. Or being called any name other than your own. And studies claiming African Americans were mentally inferior and better suited for occupations that involved anything “physical”

During the height of segregation, long hours with little pay faced many African Americans.

Because there was a financial benefit to segregation. Sometimes blacks got paid very little and not comparable wages to their white counterparts, while doing more work and extended hours. And sometimes African Americans weren’t paid at all for services rendered. And there was nothing they could do about it.

The term “last hired. first fired” was still being evoked in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, contrary to pundits who like to brag how wonderful life was during his presidency. Maybe for some. But not for everyone.

There was also a mindset, even by those who claimed to be “progressive” that we were indeed “different” than whites, in many instances. One personal experience I had, was when an employer asked whether I actually needed my job.

Long story short, I was supposed to train the individual who would be my replacement. And yes, that person was white. I left, and was able to secure a better position.

What made the difference for me I believe, was my college diploma from a private institution that raised eyebrows when noted on my resume.

I got standard questions such as “I didn’t know black people could tan” (this was after I’d removed my watch and there was a marked difference in the skin color) to this golden oldie “I’m not prejudiced. I’ve been in some black people’s homes and they’re just as clean as whites.”

I think when I heard that one I went home and told my mom (I was in my early twenties then). Unfortunately, I got a tongue lashing for not educating the person who’d said it. I’d simply laughed it off because the person who’d said it was elderly, but my mother always felt those moments presented opportunities for education, or what we now call a “teachable moment.”

Also, for all those who wish to spout off nonsense such as anyone willing to tell the un-whitewashed truth about the times must be still angry, LMAO because it’s you who can’t handle the truth.

I suspect much of what I post here makes some people angry.

Stockett’s revisionist dramedy is exactly what you need. And want.

 

Back in the day the word was “uppity” for any black person doing what I’ve done on this blog. That’s cool with me. Because I’ve been called worse, and then some. But I give as good as I get, since my parents were determined that all their children understand that the days of thinking your skin made you “different” were in the past. And those who still harbored such notions were the ones with the problem, and not us.

My family is a rainbow. Some have straight hair, and some don’t. Some are a beautiful deep brown, and others are light.

To be continued . . .

I can’t help but wonder about this “agreement” between early supporters/friends of The Help.

Here, in Kathryn Stockett’s own words are mentions of the agreement that of late has paid off for the participants:

“One of my best friend’s growing up, Tate Taylor, wrote the screenplay, he and I had an agreement pretty early on that he was going to be the one to make the movie.”

Read the entire interview here:

http://www.bookrabbit.com/blog/interview-with-kathryn-stockett-and-win-a-copy-of-the-help/

The touch Skeeter dared not do

And there’s this from the author regarding Octavia Spencer’s part:

Dapito: And is there a movie version coming out of The Help? Did I hear that right?

Stockett: The movie rights have been sold to a fellow Mississippian Tate Taylor (inaudible) Green and I’m just so lucky that the book is in the hands of people, not only Mississippians but friends of mine from Jackson. They’re two filmmakers based in Los Angeles.

Dapito: Oh I can’t wait. Do you think they will cast Octavia and some of the other narrators?

Stockett: I think Octavia will be the part of Minny because ah . . (pause and laughter) you know, that was just the agreement. It wasn’t that hard of, it you know, there was no pulling hair on that one. She’s such a natural.”

Link: An Interview with Kathryn Stockett, Author of ‘The Help’ Narrated by Diana Dapito

Okay, nothing wrong with that. And really nothing to dwell on. But there’s also a couple of interesting admissions from director/screenwriter Tate Taylor:

Tate Taylor: The gift of the whole thing was that I got the rights from Kathryn before she had a publisher, and she didn’t even know the book would get published and if it did get published, if it would do anything, so the real gift and the miracle of this movie is that I got to go off and adapt my friend’s screenplay unencumbered, by myself, and just write it from the heart and write it as a Mississippian and write it as a guy that had the pleasure of having an African-American woman in his life, Carol Lee, the woman who co-raised me with my mother. So I just got to tell the truth and write from the heart. Once the script was done and the book came out, that script kind of served as the calling card.

Link: Exclusive Interview: Filmmaker Tate Taylor on The Help – ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=84880#ixzz1j5esR8MC

But if he got the rights BEFORE Stockett had a publisher, how would he know which way the book would be edited? Stockett signed with Amy Einhorn and her novel helped launch the imprint. Stockett also stated in another interview that Einhorn worked on page after page with her, to come up with the finished novel. Yet somehow Taylor was able to guess which way they’d go with the characters (like who’d be kept and who’s part would be beefed up, etc.)

There’s another editor mentioned in the back of the book, as well as a couple of copy editors who worked on the research.

Whether the original manuscript looks anything like the finished product is the question. It’s the rare first time novelist whose book doesn’t need changes or professional editing.

Yet Tate Taylor, in not only the interview above, but in a second audio interview again states:

“The greatest gift that could have ever happened was I got the rights when Kathryn had nothing. She had been turned down by her 60^th person. So when I got the rights I thought I was adapting my friend’s un-publishable manuscript. So I went out and wrote it free of Hollywood or anybody saying this has to be in there, and this has to be in there and I just wrote it as a tribute of my friend’s book and making her happy and to Carol Lee and Demetrie and the women that I all knew. So no offense to the readers I just didn’t worry about it. Cause if I kept true to the book and told the truth that hopefully it would work out.” 

Link: Atlanta Moms on the Move http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shc0mdT-0Cc

Link: Atlanta Moms on the Move http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shc0mdT-0Cc

While Taylor talks about getting the rights very early on, enabling him to work on the screenplay after reading the manuscript before Stockett found an agent and a publisher, older interviews don’t have Stockett admitting that as fact.  Stockett’s name was not known until after her book was published, got some buzz and started climbing up the best seller lists. Here’s what the author said when asked about the screen rights (items in bold are my doing).

Your friend had very little directing experience. What convinced you to give him the film rights?

I had so many people telling me, look, you cannot option this to Tate. He doesn’t have enough film experience. Tate was asking me for the rights and I’m pushing back because of all these voices… I said no and everything went silent between me and Tate for two weeks. Tate called me and it was a last ditch effort. I told him who else was asking for the rights, other filmmakers who had a lot of punch behind their names. Tate said, ‘Look, this is how many books this person has optioned and they’re sitting on the shelves and don’t get made into movies…It will either not get made, or be really bad because they’re not from Mississippi.’ I realized oh my gosh, Tate’s got to make this movie.

Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/08/10/author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-real-story-behind-the-help/

Here’s another published interview with Katie Couric that’s more specific (items in bold are my doing):

Katie Couric: You and Tate Taylor, the director of the film, grew up together in Jackson. Would you have trusted any other director to turn your book into a movie?

Kathryn Stockett: Tate and I went to kindergarten together! In junior high, we were sneaking out in our parents’ cars and drinking. So when I got a publisher for The Help, Tate called me and said, “Can I have the film rights?” At first I said no. Every adviser in my life was saying, “Don’t do it. He’s untested.” But I’m so glad I did.

Link: http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/bigger-picture/article.aspx?cp-documentid=29865448

But here’s a more recent interview where Taylor contradicts Stockett:

“We have different versions of the story of how it came to happen (laughter). Tate said…the thing that really kind of broke me, and it wasn’t like a huge argument that we had about whether he would make the movie. . . .

Tate Taylor: If you think about it, you gave me the rights in June of 2008 and three years later (that was before the book was out) it was written, the book came out, and the movie’s finished. That’s quick. Maybe I was trying to scare you a little bit. But I’ve just been out here and you hear of these great projects…I think The Secret History,  that’s one they put expensive writers on and then people don’t like it and then they bring on another expensive writer and all these people get involved and gets whittled and ugh. I didn’t want that to happen.

Read the full interview here: http://screencrave.com/2011-08-11/interview-writerdirector-tate-taylor-and-author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-help/

Taylor’s PR interview confirms that Stockett’s novel has been rejected and that the author was so despondent, she gave it to him to read. In the same interview Taylor states he saw the potential visualized who could play what part:

KS: Mmmmm, I don’t. I read! So no. But while I was writing the manuscript and Tate was reading it he kept saying, “Oh good, in this scene we’ll do this…” And I kept going, “Tate it’s not a movie – it’s a book!” I didn’t even have an agent and Tate said, “well listen when you shoot this scene…” We’re just very different writers. But it was really exciting to hand this project over to Tate because I knew he’d get it. We grew up in the same circumstances. It’s amazing how parallel our lives were. Both of our mom’s were divorced.

Read the full interview here: http://screencrave.com/2011-08-11/interview-writerdirector-tate-taylor-and-author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-help/

There’s an old saying in black community Yaw know what time it is.

Wake up people. And forget the PR spin.

Remember, Stockett told Katie Couric, as well as a few other early interviewers that Taylor aquired the rights AFTER she landed a publisher. More recent interviews state otherwise. So did Taylor “help” tidy up the book to make it more presentable to an agent? It would be understandable for a friend to point out to another friend what might be wrong. Also keep in mind that Taylor claims to be the one who gave Stockett the go ahead to use Octavia Spencer as the prototype for Minny, the sassy, loud mouthed maid.

” . . . Minny was the easiest to write because she’s based on my friend Octavia. I didn’t know Octavia very well at the time I was writing, but I’d watched her mannerisms and listened to her stories at parties.” -quote by Kathryn Stockett

Link: http://www.kathrynstockett.com/stockett-qanda.htm

Here’s the interview where Stockett decides Spencer is her Minny, with Tate Taylor’s blessing:

TT:  . . . And then Katy said, “I want to come meet everybody!” And so she came to New Orleans in 2003 and she met Octavia. And Octavia was being Octavia and she goes, “You know that book I’m writing? Do you think Octavia would mind if I modeled a character after her?” And I go, “Just do it, just don’t tell her about it.”

KS: No, not modeled – we have to kind of step carefully on that one.

TT: Oh, true.

Link: http://screencrave.com/2011-08-11/interview-writerdirector-tate-taylor-and-author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-help/

 
I doubt if the exact details of the “agreement” will ever fully be revealed. But there are enough published reports to piece together a few scenarios.  Spencer read the being worked on or finished novel  (Spencer has stated in published interviews that she and Taylor were roommates during this period) and agreed to go on a book tour with Stockett. The author also spoke up on Spencer’s behalf, so that she was picked to do the audio version of Minny:

“ . . . It’s amazing,” she [Stockett] says, with special compliments to Octavia Spencer, the actress who voices the sections by Minny, a stubborn maid whose mouth gets her in trouble.

“Octavia is feisty,” Stockett says of her friend. “I begged them to give that role to Octavia and … it’s amazing.”

Spencer, an actress from Montgomery, Ala., and now in Los Angeles, says she has read the book three times and listened to it twice.

“I love this book. If I weren’t friends with Kathryn, I would still love this book.”

Read the entire interview here:

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/may/22/voices_past_remembered_new_book83144/

It would be only natural that Stockett want Octavia Spencer to voice the part of Minny, since early on the author admitted Spencer was the inspiration for the character. Spencer also popped up on the internet early on to defend the novel and was also quoted in various articles praising the book:

Click image to enlarge

Octavia Spencer speaks up for The Help

There’s also glowing praise Stockett gives Spencer when the actress calls her agent and agrees to go on tour with her. Stockett voiced the white characters and Spencer voiced the black characters.

When criticism from the African American community reached reviewers who’d originally declared that the novel was told in “pitch perfect voices” (a phrase the publisher used to promote the book) more articles and interviewers asked the author about it. However by the time Stockett was on a press tour overseas, “dialect-gate” couldn’t derail the popularity of the book. Yet the author made this curious statement:

” . . . once I found it was going to be published I kind of braced myself for a lot of criticism, I’m still kind of bracing myself waiting for it, I’m sure it’s coming at some point, but it hasn’t come yet.”

Read the entire interview here: http://www.bookrabbit.com/blog/interview-with-kathryn-stockett-and-win-a-copy-of-the-help/

The real deal Aibileen, a distraught Ableen Cooper after her lawsuit tossed out

Abilene Cooper’s allegations surfaced shortly after. And I’d assume like others, that this is what the statement was in reference to. But what if it wasn’t? What if there was something else? After real life maid Mrs. Cooper  (who works for Stockett’s brother) went public with a lawsuit claiming the character of Aibileen Clark was really patterned after her, here’s what Stockett said:

What’s the status of the lawsuit that was filed against you earlier this year, by a woman who babysat for members of your family and says that you based a major character in the novel on her, against her wishes?

You know, it hasn’t been resolved yet. The only word I know to use is puzzling and confusing. I’ve met this person, I think twice, maybe three times, for ten seconds…I’m confused about where all this is coming from…I don’t know this person.”

In court, Cooper’s lawyer mentioned a note with a copy of the book that Stockett gave to Cooper. The note reportedly thanked Cooper for her years of service watching Robert Stockett’s two young children (reportedly a girl and a boy, much like Elizabeth Leefolt’s kids in the novel)

Viola Davis saying the line that was never uttered in the book "You are a Godless woman"

And here’s what Cooper states shortly before her lawsuit was thrown out of court (due to the statute of limitations):

. . . Abilene says: ‘When I started to read the book, I said, ‘‘This is the closest thing to my life I ever seen. It’s gotta be me.’’

‘Kathryn spelt my name wrong, but they pronounce it exactly the same way in the book and the film. I introduced myself to Kathryn when I first met her at her brother’s house that way: ‘‘Aib-e-leen”.

Kathryn has Aibileen teaching the white folks’ baby girl to call her ‘‘Aib-ee”. That’s what I taught Kathryn’s niece and nephew to call me because they couldn’t manage Abilene. . .

So how could Kathryn Stockett have known about Abilene’s story? The 42-year-old author has said she started to write The Help in New York, but Abilene does not claim she told the author her life story.

The fact that she was working for Stockett’s brother Robert and his wife Carroll may be how the writer learnt the details. Abilene says: ‘I met Kathryn on two occasions.

The first time she came to stay the night. She said, “I’m Rob’s baby sister,’’ and I said, “I’m Abilene.” ‘The second time she was married and she came with her husband and daughter. I never told her about myself. She was quiet, standoffish, but she’d watch me. I’d be dishwashing or it would be playtime with the children and she’d be just staring at me.’

. . . Abilene says she first learned of the book when she arrived at work to find her employer in tears. ‘Carroll was crying and she says, “Miss Abilene, I’ve got something to tell you.”

She says, “Kathryn’s wrote a book and you are the main character. Rob told her not to use your name.” ’ Then a copy of the book arrived for Abilene from the author with a note saying that while a main character is an ‘African-American child carer named Aibileen’, she bore no resemblance to the real Abilene.

Stockett contended in her note that she modelled Aibileen on a long-dead black maid called Demetrie who worked for the author’s family in Jackson: ‘The Help is purely fiction and the character was loosely inspired by my own relationship with Demetrie’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2033369/Her-family-hired-maid-12-years-stole-life-Disney-movie.html#ixzz1jewPbFMs

While Spencer went along with the agreement, Cooper’s reaction was the opposite, even though she represented the profession Stockett claimed to be paying homage to with her book (items in bold are my doing).

Q. What was the genesis of the novel?

A. “Growing up in Mississippi, almost every family I knew had a black woman working in their house–cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the white children. That was life in Mississippi. I was young and assumed that’s how most of America lived.

When I moved to New York, though, I realized my “normal” wasn’t quite the same as the rest of America’s. I knew a lot of Southerners in the city, and every now and then we’d talk about what we missed from the South. Inevitably, somebody would start talking about the maid they grew up with, some little thing that made us all remember–Alice’s good hamburgers or riding in the back seat to take Willy May home. Everybody had a story to tell.

Twenty years later, with a million things to do in New York City, there we were still talking about the women who’d raised us in our mama’s kitchens. It was probably on one of those late nights, homesick, when I realized I wanted to write about those relationships from my childhood.”
Link: http://www.kathrynstockett.com/stockett-qanda.htm

That southern ”group” consisted of Stockett, Tate Taylor, perhaps Brunson Green and a few more individuals. I highly doubt if Octavia Spencer was anywhere around when they wistfully recalled having of black maids. But, I could be wrong.

In any event Spencer says she was approached after the novel was published (or perhaps she inadvertently contributed to it, since Taylor seems to indicate that the book and screenplay were being worked on at the same time).

Unfortunately, the novel suffered from having “too many cooks.” Sloppy editing left in this line from Skeeter “They are scared, looking at the back door every ten minutes, afraid they’ll get caught talking to me. Afraid they’ll be beaten like Louvenia’s grandson, or, hell, bludgeoned in their front lawn like Medgar Evers.” (Pg 277)

And Stockett repeats the error in three known audio interviews. You can read about the Medgar Evers error in the novel  here

Click image for larger view

Error on Evers in the Paperback version of The Help

It doesn’t help that the principals involved with the novel and the movie still read as disconnected. I’ve yet to read where anyone involved with Schindler’s List dropped WTF, insensitive quotes as many times as the individuals associated with The Help. (Interview was done on January 12, 2012):

Taylor: What I really, really loved about the Medgar Evers storyline and backdrop was that he was in their neighborhood. While they were doing this clandestine project, this Civil Rights leader who’s their neighbor gets murdered, and their characters are wondering, “What’s going to happen to us?”

I don’t think I even have to explain how bad Taylor sounds in this quote.

And here’s Stockett and producer Chris Columbus in the same interview, note what they state about the poop pie. It’s all so funny to them, when real African Americans were murdered, assaulted and raped for far less:

Octavia: Oh my god! [Laughs] People always ask me if we were laughing hysterically through that scene, but I always say no, because it was never a funny thing for Minny. She always knew the danger. We never played the comedy of it; the comedy is knowing when it’s revealed.

Stockett: Tate was such a prankster! He still is. The horrible things he did to the people he even loved, or in high school, to me—he told me at one point I had to stop telling people what he used to do. [Laughs] For me, it was, “What was the worst thing you could do to Hilly Holbrook?” And it was her having the image in her own mind that she had eaten Negro shit. It’s kind of corny, the whole concept, but what saved that scene was Sissy Spacek.

Chris Columbus: “Run, Hilly Minny, run!” was a completely improvised line. People were falling down behind the monitor because we had no idea how Sissy was going to react. But the way that scene is shot, it’s a textbook scene of how to direct a comedic moment.

Octavia: And I did the “eat my shit” line about five or six times. That was the fun part!

Stockett: It’s fucking hysterical!

Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/12/the-help-an-oral-history-with-viola-davis-octavia-spencer.html

They’re all clueless. Even Spencer, though she attempts to clean it up while Columbus and Stockett have no clue how their behavior could be viewed. But what’s also interesting is Stockett referencing Tate Taylor regarding the “terrible awful.”

So, to review:

Stockett, while earnestly stating Medgar Evers was “bludgeoned” in three audio interviews, appeared to forget what she’d written in her own novel.  Especially since the PR on the book played up that she was from Jackson, Mississippi.

She also appears to “forget” that she’d already admitted using real people to fashion many of her characters. In another very early interview, the author references her grandfather and the Catbite scene in the book. Tate Taylor admits that Celia Foote was based on the author’s mother (and his) Stockett did admit Mrs. Demetrie McLorn was the inspiration for Aibileen and the voice for the other maid voices (perhaps also Constantine). Clyde is the name of Demetrie McLorn’s abusive husband. It’s also the name Stockett used for Aibileen’s “no-ccount” husband. Yet Viola Davis’s character (who’s made up to look like Cooper) somehow isn’t based on Cooper, but Demetrie McLorn. Here’s a pic of the real Mrs. Demetrie McLorn:

Photo of Demetrie, Stockett's grandparents maid.

Demetrie McLorn is nothing like the description of Aibileen Clark in the novel. Or the Aibileen in the movie. But Abilene Cooper is.

And now both Stockett and Taylor have published interviews which appear to confirm that the novel and screenplay were being worked on at virtually the same time, and Tate Taylor had the rights before the novel even found an agent. So just how much input did Taylor have?

To be continued . . . .

Aibileen and Minny having a ball in the kitchen, as the whitewashing of segregation via films returns

“The Golden Globe for best supporting actress in a film went to Octavia Spencer who played a maid in the Civil Rights era movie “The Help.” Spencer quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in her acceptance: “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance.” Although the “Help” characters are fictional “they represent scores of real people,” she said. “The narrative itself is part of our fabric,” Spencer said backstage. “It’s important to keep the younger generation abreast of how far we’ve come, because this is really foreign to them.”

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/15/showbiz/golden-globes/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Somebody may need to tell CNN that The Help isn’t a Civil Rights era movie, at least not to its director and screenwriter, Tate Taylor:

“Civil rights is just the backdrop. I’m not qualified to make a film about civil rights. People say to me: ‘Why wasn’t there a lynching? Why aren’t there houses burning down?’ But that’s not what this story is. For me, the most horrific moment in the film is the scene where the maid is sitting with her panties round her ankles in a three-by-three plywood bathroom, like a cat in a litter-box, while an impatient white woman is tapping her foot outside. If people need to see blood and gore and can’t see how horrific that is – well, I don’t have answer to that.”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/oct/20/the-help-domestic-servants-on-film

Minny, played by Octavia Spencer in tears

With ”uplifting” dialogue like ”Eat my shit!” to “Frying chicken make you tend to feel better about life”and “Minny don’t burn no chicken”  it’s no wonder Spencer walked off with the award. Powerful, compelling stuff (eye-roll).

 
Chris Rock had a funny tweet in honor of the event:

@chrisrock: I’m glad Octavia won the golden globe . I Hope that means now she doesn’t have to clean up the place when the shows over

BWAHAHAHAHAHA good one Chris.

Too bad moviegoers didn’t get to hear Minny recite these stunning, WTF lines from the book,  these truly uplifting and inspiring  mantras for “the younger generation”:

Plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump, but it’s just not something the colored woman do. We’ve got the kids to think about. (Minny, Pg 311 of the novel)

“Can’t have no proper sandwich on no raw bread. And this afternoon I’ll make one a Minny’s famous caramel cakes. And next week we gone do you a fried catfish. . .” (Minny, Pg 140)

Link: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/the-help-is-a-parody/

Gee, I wonder why Tate Taylor left out how Minny really felt about the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, one of the things so many people just looovvvvved about Minny in the book was how funny and clueless Stockett made her: 

“I told Shirley Boon her ass won’t fit on no stool at Woolworth’s anyway.” (Pg 217, Minny speaking ill of a person holding a community meeting concerning staging a Woolworth sit-in)

There’s also the scene the movie failed to include where Minny picks up a knife and chases down a naked pervert in a “noble savage” bid to protect Celia, who’s behind a locked door in the house. The pervert calls her a “fat black nigger” and Minny somehow misplaces the knife. Plus she runs out of breath cause she’s so heavy. This was one of the funniest scenes in the book to many readers. I suspect it’s also one of the many scenes that endeared this character to millions.

I think my favorite WTF moment was when Minny, an abused woman smacks her eldest daughter Sugar for laughing at Celia Foote, and then gives her Mammyish advice to grow on:

Excerpt from the novel

Then Sugar turned around, laughing with the others. She didn’t see the whap coming at her. Soapsuds flew through the air.

“You shut your mouth Sugar!” I yanked her to the corner. “Don’t you never let me hear you talking bad about the woman who put food in your mouth, clothes on your back! You hear me?”

Sugar, she nodded and I went back to my dishes, but I heard her muttering. “You do it, all the time.

I whipped around and put my finger in her face. “I got a right to. I earn it every day working for that crazy fool.”

(Pg 334, scene where Minny trains her daughter right)

Don’t feel too sad for Viola Davis. She’ll either win a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) award and there’s always the big one, The Oscars. Besides that, there’s the BET Awards, The Image Awards, The Soul Train Awards, The NAACP Awards, etc. and overseas awards plus regional awards.

THE LOOK OF EMPOWERMENT. Viola as Aibileen showing just what Kathryn Stockett thought it will take to make a black woman break down during segregation. Being separated from Miss Skeeter and Mae Mobley

Viola’s got her own equally riveting dialogue from the movie, such as “You is kind, you is smart, you is im-po-tent” which will melt Academy voters widdle hearts.

But either she or Octavia or someone from the film should also thank Abilene Cooper, the real life maid of Stockett’s own brother Robert and who served as the physical embodiment of Viola’s character, Aibileen Clark.

Read about Abilene Cooper’s connection to The Help in this post: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/abilene-coopers-tale-continues/

Aiblene Cooper's photo from the UK Daily Mail. This is the "real deal" Aibileen

To be continued . . .

Maid at the door, silence and almost invisible. Hey, how come she's not laughing and grinning like Minny and Aibileen?

But much like Stockett relegated Mrs. Demetrie McLorn to the back of her novel, the clean up on the fiasco both behind the book and the film comes Too Little, and Much Too Damn Late.

What’s sadly funny is Tate Taylor, after seriously putting his foot in his mouth in several earlier and more recent  interviews, has finally been apprised to one more thing left out of the “agreement” among a group of Southern friends intent on sharing their view of a rosey childhood, courtesy of having black maids.

I know the film courted a lot of controversy when it was in theaters. How important was it to include the documentary In Their Own Words: A Tribute to the Maids of Mississippi on the bonus section of this release?

Tate Taylor: It was very important to me to have this. And I don’t want to call it a tribute or a thank you. We just knew that couldn’t come from a white author, or a white filmmaker, or a studio. The people owed this thanks were the children of these women.”

Link: http://www.movieweb.com/news/exclusive-tate-taylor-talks-the-help-blu-ray

If I’d outlined my findings on this blog any earlier, much like the inserted piece in the DVD, then statements now on the Web by the principals associated with The Help and in published articles would probably look much different.

Stung by criticism that they hadn’t anticipated (gee, maybe if they really did have a black historian, like BEFORE the book was published they could have avoided all this). Or maybe simply seeing the black culture for what it is, one of BEAUTY, failings and triumphs similar to any other racial group, perhaps then a group of southern friends who lacked diversity would have worked a bit harder to be more inclusive. Sorry, but continuously calling on Octavia Spencer as a “black friend card” just isn’t enough.

It wasn’t her sole place to educate Taylor or Stockett on the stereotypes included in novel and the movie. Being Gay is not the same thing as being an African American, just as being African American is not the same as being Disabled or Physically Challenged (for the record, imho both of these terms fail to adequately describe or do justice to this group).

Even though his finished movie contains samples of his own flawed knowledge, Taylor stated:

Tate Taylor: “I didn’t think we should talk about the Jim Crow Laws because I felt like people know what that is and she told me when she wrote the novel, her editors in New York – highly educated people – had no clue about Jim Crow Laws. I go, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I know, I swear! You think people know. They don’t. So she goes, ‘I’m telling you put it in,’ and I did. I thought, being a Southerner, it was too much. ‘Oh really? Of course there’s Jim Crow Laws.’ That was the one thing.”

Link: http://movies.about.com/od/thehelp/a/tate-taylor-interview.htm

Laws are one thing. Not being able to discern that to further demean males of the black culture, men who’d already experienced enough skewed mythology which originated during segregation, while putting the black female on a fake pedestal highlights just what’s wrong in all this.

Respecting African American fathers, many of whom were also  The Help and married to The Help would have been a good start.  Far too many African American males died at the hands of bigots, including bigoted “southerners” and  those who didn’t wish to view them as men.

Howard Rollins Jr was the lead in A Soldier's Story. Black men, many of whom were soldiers, still served in a US military that practiced bigotry during segregation

Note Disney and Dreamworks’ bullshit overseas marketing which called Stuart a “handsome good ole boy” and deemed Johnny Foote a ”dreamboat and a southern gentleman.”

"A Handsome Good Ole Boy" You've got to be kidding

That "Southern Gentleman" and "Dreamboat" Johnny Foote

Really Disney and Dreamworks? REALLY?
On a personal note, I didn’t appreciate Stockett labeling most of the black men in the novel either “no-ccount” “lazy” “drunk” “a fool” and absentee fathers, while making certain readers knew the white males she created were either ”an honest man” (Carlton Phelan, renamed for the movie) “A good man” (Skeeter says this about Stuart after he takes back his engagement ring). There’s also Constantine’s daddy, who’s white and can’t afford to take care of his many bi-racial children or marry Constantine’s mother, yet Stockett concocts the scene where Constantine explains that he cried and told her he was sorry, so of course he doesn’t get labeled “no-ccount.”

That term is singularly reserved for some of the black males in the novel. For more on where the book went wrong, see this post

I AM A MAN. The march meant to have America recognize that fact. Note the brave white male who showed his solidarity in PUBLIC and in the daytime, Unlike Skeeter.

Senator Stoolie Whitworth, the man whom Stockett has standing shoulder to shoulder with avowed segregationist Governor Ross Barnett (scene in the book has them blocking James Meredith from entering Ole Miss)

Stockett has Stuart Whitworth do the character rehabbing for his daddy, as Stuart reveals that Ol’ Stoolie is really a progressive who’s trapped into doing the will of his constiuents, which is adhering to segregation.

The one white guy who should be given hell is the naked pervert who comes out of the woods and jacks off several times outside Celia Foote’s house. The only thing he gets called is a “fool” when black males get called much worse. Aibileen even teaches her son Treelore to call his daddy “Crisco” in a not so funny game of word association:

One day I say Crisco. He scratch his head. He just can’t believe I done won the game with something simple as Crisco. Came to be a secret joke with us, meaning something you can’t dress up no matter how you try. We start calling his daddy Crisco cause you can’t fancy up a man done run off on his family. Plus he the greasiest no-count you ever known. (Aibileen, Pg 5)

For an additional post that goes into the differences made in the black and white characters, see this post:

The naked pervert is dropped from the movie after Tate Taylor realized how messed up and out of left field this scene was. Instead he has Minny run from Johnny Foote, as laughs abound. The trouble concerns how the scene depends on being funny. Because like the novel, Minny’s girth and behavior as she runs from Johnny causes the laughs.

Much like Stepin Fetchit was required to cower and mumble, Octavia Spencer is reduced to buffoonery that should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

I found it offensive in the book and I’m pretty sure others caught on that laughing at Minny rather than laughing with her was the aim of the scene.

So Taylor’s DVD “Tribute” rings not only false and an afterthought, but more like a calculated ploy to counter the still building negative criticism.

I doubt if Taylor now thinks watching Viola Davis pretend to take a crap is even remotely worse than viewing a real lynching, especially after he was probably called on the carpet about his gaffe. For more on Taylor’s truly in bad taste statement, see this post

1936 lynching of Lint Shaw in Royston, Georgia

Here’s a much better explanation of  the  “bash a black man” mentality that happened in the book and in the film (wording in bold is my doing):

“. . . I see it as writers trying to stir up sympathy for black women by exploiting existing animosity for black men. It seems like there’s an inherent belief that portraying black men as abusive drunks is not actually racist because it teaches white people what the women go through.

But obviously it doesn’t work; look no farther than a mob of white protesters picketing a new Mosque, claiming, among other things, that women in Islam are oppressed. In what possible way do those actions help the women out?”

Comment credited to Mr. Matt Pizzuti

Link: http://www.racialicious.com/2012/01/05/choosing-between-the-help-or-faces-at-the-bottom-of-the-well-on-reproducing-racially-easy-work-or-constructing-courageously/

Damn. So on point. Many comments that hone in on what’s wrong with both the novel and the film come from males. For more on what went wrong with the movie, please see this post with excerpts from Writer/Editor Max Gordon:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/the-help-can-kiss-my-ass-and-go-to-hell/

Keep in mind that:

Stockett never mentions she loved Demetrie, not until it finally came to her attention. Not in her “special section” and not through her alter-ego in the novel, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan.

Here’s what she stated in the novel:

“. . . How I loved to talk to Demetrie. . . you felt loved when you tasted Demetrie’s caramel cake.” (Too Little, Too Late, Pgs 447 and 448 of the novel)

And as Skeeter, Stockett focused on how much Constantine (Demetrie was reportedly the inspiration for this character) “loved” and did for her and her family.

As much as Constantine loved me, I can imagine how much she must’ve loved her own child.  (Pg 358)

I don’t put in that Constantine’s daughter was high yellow; I just what to show that Constantine’s love for me began with missing her own child. Perhaps that’s what made it so unique, so deep. It didn’t matter that I was white. While she was wanting her own daughter back, I was longing for mother not to be disappointed in me. (Skeeter, Pg 360)

Cicely Tyson as Constantine in film version of The Help, coddling a young Skeeter. Tate Taylor stated the young actress is Stockett's own daughter.

As close as Skeeter ends up with Aibileen and Minny, by novel’s end it’s Aibileen who makes the first move to touch, hugging Skeeter and bragging on her hair:

We ain’t seen each other in six months. I give her a good hug.

“Law, let me see your hair.” Miss Skeeter pull back her hood, shake out her long hair past her shoulders.

“It is beautiful,” I say and I mean it.

She smile like she embarrassed and set her satchel on the floor. “Mother hates it.”  (Pg 435, Aibileen)

From giving nurturing hugs to publicly stating the white characters are “pretty” (Aibileen tells this to Mae Mobley on Pg 392, saying “How you like your teacher?” and Mae Mobley responds with “She’s pretty.” Aibileen makes it a point to tell the child “You pretty too.”) and finally crying buckets of tears she was never able to shed in the book for her own son Treelore, Aibileen finally turns into the perfect Mammy.

Wisely dropped from the movie but still in the book:

That night I lay in bed thinking. I am so happy for Miss Skeeter. She starting her whole life over. Tears run down my temples into my ears, thinking about her walking down them big city avenues I seen on tee-vee with her long hair behind her. Part a me wishes I could have a new start too. The cleaning article, that’s new. But I’m not that young. My life’s about done (Pg 437, Aibileen)

The touch Skeeter dared not do

Yet where are the sections of the novel, or the movie where white characters impart observations that those of the black community, or that one of our children are either “cute” “pretty” or “beautiful?” Where’s ol’ liberal heroine Skeeter proudly proclaiming in the novel that any black person strikes her as attractive?
Even as Skeeter describes Constatine’s honey colored eyes, here’s what she states:

What you noticed first about Constantine, besides her tallness, were her eyes. They were light brown, strikingly honey-colored against her dark skin. I’ve never seen light brown eyes on a colored person. (Skeeter, Pg 65)

The acting legend, Cicely Tyson played Constantine in The Help

Stockett as Skeeter never mentions that Constantine’s eyes are “pretty” or “beautiful” against her brown skin. Nope. What she does next is focus on detailing all the many shades of brown/black on Constantine’s body, which make the woman sound as if she’s a calico cat:

In fact, the shades of brown on Constantine were endless. Her elbows were absolutely black, with a dry white dust on them in the winter. The skin on her arms and neck and face was a dark ebony. The palms of her hands were orangey-tan and that made me wonder if the soles of her feet were too, but I never saw her barefooted. (Skeeter, Pg 65)

Combine this with Skeeter’s admission of “Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums” (Pg 63) and its no wonder Stockett doesn’t have Skeeter, or herself for that matter initially admitting feelings of “love.”

It’s either in the context of “We love them and they love us.” from the novel (Skeeter trying to sell her book’s premise to Ms. Stein) or Stockett’s after the fact interviews. And edited movie scenes, again, after the fact.

The movie is based on the novel. Most of the skewed attitudes and also omissions come from the novel, that book which many claimed was “pitch perfect.”

Based on the sensational-LY FLAWED bestseller, you mean. This was part of the trailer for The Help

Far too many rapturous reviews of The Help appeared to see the novel from the perspective of “Hey! Obama’s been elected and now all racism is gone, and oh wow, let’s talk about how funny those poor black women were back in the day! Oh, and my friend and my wife likes it!”

Too bad the US publisher didn’t have the guts to get rid of the Disney-esque three little birdies cover for the one the Brits used:

UK Cover of the Help AKA The cover they dared not put on US bookshelves

“Cover-gate” as well as “Dialect-gate” simply foreshadowed the myriad of other problems with this book and its too saccharine to be true PR spin.

Pay no attention to this cover. It's just a marketing ploy. So which bird is Aibileen?

I’m not even going to get into how a few of them were hoping that Stockett was the next Harper Lee.

Just like Stockett could only view the maids she created as carrying weight, dark in complexion and English language challenged, the movie attempted to faithfully duplicate the author’s words from the novel with the scene posted below, where most, if not all of the maids are one color fits all and are matronly, a direct contrast to how Stockett and Taylor view their own culture.

The women are tall, short, black like asphalt or caramel brown. If your skin is too white, I’m told, you’ll never get hired. The blacker the better. (Pg 257, Skeeter. Words in bold are my doing)

All the "blacker the better" maids in one room, as the film attempts to duplicate Stockett's words with heavy handed film shots

This is a glaring error and insult

The scene goes on to show more of Skeeter’s observations and to talk about women like Callie, who’s “wide and heavy and parts of her hang over the chair” (Pg 259) Faye Belle is “palsied and gray-skinned, cannot remember her own age” (Pg 257). Yet the reader is supposed to believe this woman recalls “hiding in a steam trunk with a little white girl while Yankee soldiers stomped through the house.” (Pg 257)

Faye Belle is such a loyal maid, years later she’s still tethered to that white girl and her family, working as a maid for the grandson of the little white girl who’s now deceased (they were lifeline friends and Faye Belle held the woman in her arms as she died). Stockett/Skeeter claims “When she’s feeling strong, Faye Belle sometimes goes over and cleans up his kitchen” (Pg 257)

If you do the math, you’ll realize that Stockett (or her editors or a ghostwriter) inserted The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman type character, where a woman who experienced the Civil War lived long enough to tell Skeeter her tale (but not join in with the Civil Rights Movement) and still get up to clean kitchens, as if that’s someone over one hundred years of age would look forward to.

It’s important to note that the maids stories are glossed over, another major error in the book. Because you see, it’s not about the maids stories, but Skeeter’s journey to “enlightenment.”

The best thing Stockett and co. could have done for the African Americans referenced in her novel was to not just use the maids as props to move Skeeter’s story along. But to appreciate and see the beauty and love that Demetrie McLorn imparted to the author. And that she (Demetrie) was also beautiful and beloved, SHE ENCOMPASSED ALL THESE THINGS even while the woman was being treated in Stockett’s grandparents household during the 1970s and 80s as less than equal.

Only Stockett failed to see and weave that in her book, just as Taylor neglected to portray this in the film. Thus readers and moviegoers are again treated to the same old same old. A resurrection of caricatures that consist of matronly African American domestics, one docile and blindly loyal to the point of sainthood, and the other sassy enough to bring the funny in every scene.

Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for playing the grumpy, “shoot from the hip with her comedic quips” character of Mammy. Now Hollywood will honor the other Mammy, the one Louise Beavers portrayed (ironically she played the serene, angelic Delilah from 1934′s Imitiation of Life before there was a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Otherwise Beavers, and not Daniel may have been the first Africam American to win an Oscar.

Louise Beavers in Imitation of Life, touted as "the greatest screen role ever played by a colored actress"

Animated black woman, one of many comedic depictions of the black race, this one especially for children

Hattie McDaniel's haunting Oscar pic. Hard not to wonder what she was thinking or going through

A product of her upbringing, Stockett failed to filter out what she’d wrongly been taught about African Americans. That our mothers and fathers were far more than the depictions previously presented, stereotypes which originated during segregation. That’s the true failing of her book, and now the movie.

For as Stockett again reveals in her own creation:

Grandmother wanted Demetrie to rest so that she could finish her work, not to mention, white people didn’t sit at the same table while a colored person was eating.

That was just a normal part of life, the rules between blacks and whites. As a little girl, seeing black people in the colored part of town, even if they were dressed up or doing fine, I remember pitying them. I am so embarrassed to admit that now.

I didn’t pity Demetrie though. There were several years when I thought she was immensely lucky to have us. A secure job in a nice house, cleaning up after white Christian people. But also because Demetrie had no babies of her own, and we felt like we were filling a void in her life. . . . (Pg 448, Too Little Too Late)

Much like Tate Taylor admits about the hastily slapped on “thank you black people” that’s really not a “Thank you” on the recently released DVD:

“It’s not about white people saying ‘thank you’. It’s about their children.”

You see, after checking out just what the criticism was, the clean up began. Children of The Help began speaking out long before the movie was released. And some of their posts are on this very site. The carefully conceived Mayberry/Pleasantville/Gone With The Wind hybrid that is the dramedy called The Help got wind of the empty void in both the book and the film.

Nevermind Skeeter. Or Mae Mobley.

The littlest victim of Segregation

What about Sugar, and Kindra, and Benny and Robert. And Treelore? What about all The Children of The Help reading the book (like me) and those who paid to see the movie (not me) only to realize it wasn’t about the maids, but Skeeter.

Only they didn’t have an answer to that. Because they’d never thought to focus on it. Until the DVD.

Read actual accounts from The Help and  Children of The Help, some of whom became domestics themselves, here:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/actual-accounts/

Next up . . . how The Help ignored and caricatured the next generation, The Children of The Help

You can get a headstart by reading this post:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/comparing-mae-mobley-to-kindra/

Sunflower, the stereotypical centaurette from Disney's Fantasia. Kindra is another stereotypical depiction of a black child

To be continued . . .

When an African American does it, the effects can have lasting repercussions. Especially in a public forum. Just look at Herman Cain, and his absurd 9-9-9 plan. I cringed whenever he’d get a question during the Republican debates, because he’d refer back to his tax plan, never really giving any concrete details, simply parroting 9-9-9, as if he were on autopilot. Cain was more than willing to grin and tap dance for the Republican party. Now that he’s merely a footnote, the guy still thinks his opinion matters. I’m sure his press conference will be packed when he finally gives his endorsement.

The way we were. Cain on the Cover of Newsweek, prior to his downfall

I don’t think he gets it. After allegations of serial infidelity, none of the still remaining candidates may want to align themselves with the man.

So what did he get for his willingness to conform to a known stereotype?

Not much, from what I can tell. The woman who’s stood by his side for all these years has to be hurting, as well as his children. Sure, Mrs. Cain put on a brave face. But the revelation that her husband is a lothario appeared to be a serious breach of trust and character, and the sacred vow of marriage to remain faithful.

But while Cain may end up simply being a footnote when the history of the 2012 presidential campaign is mentioned, it may not be as easy to ignore the stereotypes on celluloid of The Help.

Because when I heard Viola Davis state this:

“I’m playing a maid, a black actress playing a maid in 2011 in Hollywood, is a lot of pressure. You don’t play a maid. That is something  you don’t do. When you play a maid where a white woman has written a story and a white man is directing it, so there is no way that it’s gonna be. . . I’m essentially playing a Mammy. So I felt a lot of pressure. Absolutely. And then and of course pressure from the readers who all wanted Oprah to play the role. And saw her as being seventy years old and about two hundred and  fifty pounds or you know,  yeah, I felt a lot of pressure. But it’s like Tate says, if you work from that point of pressure and fear, your work is gonna crack. At some point you just have to leave it alone. And know that we have our own standard of excellence . . . “

Viola’s statement starts at about 8 minutes into the 10 minute audio clip

Link: Atlanta Mom’s on The Move  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shc0mdT-0Cc

Yes, she admitted her role was as a Mammy. But she also sounds tired. Before I transcribed the above quote, Viola was pouring her heart out to the interviewer. I wish the audio was better, but essentially Viola explains that while she may be viewed as a working actress, her parts haven’t always been as the star:

Viola Davis as Aibileen in film version of The Help and young actress as Mae Mobley

” . . . I work a total of 9 days maybe and that’s a lot. And people will say yeah but you were in that movie. So this was a chance for me to actually really develop a character, to be a part of it. And characters who are fully explored beyond taking care of babies and cooking in the kitchen. And they’re real roles for black women.”

You have to really listen to the interview. Because just as Viola gets going, and if this had been a seasoned interviewer (or one a bit more in tune with realizing Davis was speaking from a place celebrities rarely go, just like in The Help when the book veers from Minny almost revealing her abuse to Celia, then switching inexplicably to the highly absurd naked pervert scene. Just listen to what the interviewer does (I’m not blaming who ever was asking the questions. It’s just ironic that it happened the way it did).

Because when Viola talks about her mother, mentioning the abuse she endured:

“. . . My mom the other day said something, . . . told me about horrible abuses that she endured when she was younger but she skimmed over it, because we’re just used to it.”

The interviewer changes the subject like this:

(close to the end of the interview) “But the book is so beloved to so many people. When both of you took on this project, how were you when you took on this project. . .”

Do you realize how heartbreaking that is? And how in a weird way, it mirrors what went wrong both behind the book and the movie, and the reactions of some who loved the book so they couldnt see straight.

Viola Davis, perhaps after an enormous amount of interviews let her guard down. She talks about her six years of therapy and what blacks go through but don’t talk about.

Instead the inteviewer listens for a bit, then decides to dwell on Kathryn Stockett’s book and movie, which ironically has a premise of giving a “Voice” to rarely heard African American domestics. And Davis essentially gets shut down when she’s trying to use her “voice.”

 
There are a few other weird (no, more like creepy)  moments in the interview, like at the very end Tate Taylor states:

“Every time I start to write a screenplay, I keep making the characters female. They just have so much more going on with the female characters . . . They’re just infinitely more interesting to me. Every time I write a character I’m like oh, here come the breasts . . .”

Link: Atlanta Mom’s on The Move http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shc0mdT-0Cc

Listen, the audio wasn’t very good but I replayed it several times, and I could have sworn he said “breasts” but if I’m mistaken, please leave a message in the comments section. This is the same director/screenwriter that Emma Stone said requested and collected the menstrual cycles of his female stars.

“Emma said you kept a calendar of everyone’s hormonal states?

TT: Oh, yeah. Yeah, varying menstrual cycles and 110-degree weather in Mississippi could have been a time bomb, but it was not.”

The link to the interview referencing the menstrual cycles can be found here

You know, in the real world Taylor would be brought up before Human Resources for pulling something like that. And yet, somehow people are supposed to believe he could avoid stereotyping blacks just as well as he handles dealing with females (eye-roll).

And Taylor again mentions working on the screenplay prior to the book getting published:

“The greatest gift that could have ever happened was I got the rights when Kathryn had nothing. She had been turned down by her 60^th person. So when I got the rights I thought I was adapting my friend’s un-publishable manuscript. So I went out and wrote it free of Hollywood or anybody saying this has to be in there, and this has to be in there and I just wrote it as a tribute of my friend’s book and making her happy and to Carol Lee and Demetrie and the women that I all knew. So no offense to the readers I just didn’t worry about it. Cause if I kept true to the book and told the truth that hopefully it would work out.”

Link: Atlanta Mom’s on The Move http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shc0mdT-0Cc

Yes, he kept true to a book that hadn’t been professionally edited yet. A book that he wouldn’t have known what the editor(s) wanted to omit or alter. But somehow he just knew, though other interviews have him stating he didn’t speak to Kathryn Stockett on the changes in the novel during all that time. Uh, yeah.

But I digress.

Back to Viola’s quote “When you play a maid where a white woman has written a story and a white man is directing it, so there is no way that it’s gonna be. . . I’m essentially playing a Mammy.”

It’s difficult to know whether Davis was being sarcastic without viewing the video attached to this piece. But this is the second quote that I’ve read where the author mentions she’s playing a Mammy. Yet she strikes me as conflicted when she states: 

“So this was a chance for me to actually really develop a character, to be a part of it. And characters who are fully explored  beyond taking care of babies and cooking in the kitchen. And they’re real roles for black women.”

But see, taking care of Mae Mobley and that big baby Skeeter, and joking with Minny in the kitchen are what take up most of Aibileen’s time. She has no true backstory, not like the other actress who shares co-lead screen time with her, Emma Stone.

“Of course I had trepidations. Why do I have to play the mammy? But what do you do as an actor if one  of the most multi-faceted and rich roles you’ve ever been given is a maid in 1962 Mississippi? Do you not  take the role because you feel in some ways it’s not a good message to send to Black people?”  – Viola Davis, in a quote from Essence Magazine

As a Mammy, Aibileen has no romantic interest, no “dates” which again, is unlike Emma Stone’s character Skeeter Phelan.

Skeeter, played by Emma Stone in the movie version of The Help

Unlike the unsavory tale in the novel explaining why Aibileen’s spouse is no longer with her, the movie doesn’t mention whether she’s a widow or was even married previously. That’s because while on screen Mammies can have a single child, they rarely have a male companion or a love life after that. And guess what? Both Aibileen and Constantine have one child. And live for the remainder of their “lonely” lives to give affection to Li’l Mae Mobley and Skeeter respectively.

Aibileen writing out her thoughts and living the life of an asexual hermit

Tate Taylor tries to explain it like this in an interview:

“Viola is just power. She’s just gonna bring such a truthfulness to this. The role of Aibileen, it be, it could go so awry.

It could be so cliché, you know the warm fuzzy big fat black woman that makes everything okay.  It would just really cheapen the character, really cheapen the story. Stories like that have been told. Viola is being very brave in showing the true other side of these ladies are where they’re at home. The loss, the poverty, the loneliness, how tired they are and then her ability to swallow it up for the family the next day.

Link: http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/the-help/interview-tate-taylor

Like Herman Cain, I don’t think Taylor truly gets it either. Having Viola Davis carry extra weight to play the character of the docile, asexual hermit Aibileen, having the character  live alone (like Constantine), only to get up each morning to play the “strong black woman” who smothers Mae Mobley with love, and risks her life to help get the other maids to talk to “Miss Skeeter”, so she can make everything okay, only she really has no life of her own except church and her job is the definition of a Mammy.

Young Actress playing Mae Mobley learning her "You is" isms, a contrived and condescending piece of dialogue meant to "inspire"

Guess this was the “truth” Taylor repeats in several interviews:

“We just wanted to tell the truth. Tell the real story and get it right. Many times as southerners our stories have been handled, taken into hands that were outside the south that’s not always as we know it to be. So we just really want to tell the truth . . . (pause) the good and the bad.”  – Screenwriter and director of The Help, Tate Taylor

Link: http://screencrave.com/2011-08-11/interview-writerdirector-tate-taylor-and-author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-help/

Yes, the “truth” according to southerner. Excuse me, but far too many times the truth regarding the relationship between blacks and whites has rarely come out of a book or movie by a southerner, Stockett included. For example, a southerner by the name of DW Griffith directed The Birth of A Nation:

Birth of a Nation movie poster

Well, Griffith showed his “truth” regarding blacks and whites, note the black man enjoying fried chicken, which is a known mocking stereotype of African Americans:

Birth of a Nation, where a black legislator is eating a piece of fried chicken

And here’s the dialogue Tate Taylor created for his good friend Octavia Spencer to utter in The Help, that movie he claims is so “truthful”:

“Frying chicken make you tend to feel better about life” and “Minny don’t burn no chicken” – dialogue from The Help

See the picture below? This is but one of the demeaning ads created during segregation to link African Americans with chicken.

It's Chicken Time! The stereotype of blacks loving chicken is resurrected in The Help

And here’s the “award  winning” short film that Taylor mentions during a few other interviews that some in Hollywood loved enough to hand him the reins direct The Help. Those with experience and a knowledge of the stereotypes to avoid when crafting black characters need not apply:

Tate Taylor's Chicken Party, starring Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney and of all things, "fried chicken"

I really, truly want Hollywood to award this movie, yes, give The Help all the awards they covet. Because if “liberals” in Hollywood can be bamboozled into thinking they’re doing black people right by this crap of a film and book, they deserve to go down in history as being just as clueless as Stockett and Taylor and all the others who heaped praise on this travesty.

Based on the sensational-LY FLAWED bestseller, you mean. This was part of the trailer for The Help

Because as Stockett’s editor stated, the book was a “beautifully written story.”

That “beautifully written story  included unfounded, negative stereotypes like this:

“Plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump. But it’s just not something the colored woman do. We’ve got the kids to think about.” – Minny, Pg 311

And this:

That night after supper, me and the cockroach stare each other down across the kitchen floor. He big, inch, inch and a half. He black. Blacker than me. (Pg 189, ”Regal and wise” Aibileen compares her skin color to a roach, one of the filthiest insects on the planet, and her publisher is just fine with it)

And there’s also this, a stupid as hell conversation between Minny and Aibileen. Minny is the first speaker:

“You know Cocoa, the one Clyde ran off with?”

“Phhh. You know I never forget her.”

“Week after Clyde left you, I heard that Cocoa wake up to her cootchie spoilt like a rotten oyster. Didn’t get better for three months. Bertrina, she good friends with Cocoa. She know your prayer works.”

“You saying people think I got the black magic?”

“I knew it worry you if I told you. They just think you got a better connection than most. We all on a party line to God, but you, you setting right in his ear.” (Pg 24, Minny and Aibileen’s highly stereotypical, insulting, offensive, throwback Amos ‘n Andy dialogue from the novel)

Oh . . . Law.  They really done stepped in it. (That’s me, doing my imitation of Aibileen and Minny)

For those who don’t get it, during segregation the offensive myths about African Americans, which were excuses used to block integration and equality were as follows:

That blacks carry venereal diseases.

Note that Cocoa has a venereal disease.

See, it’s one thing to write a bigoted character and have that character state it. It’s another to claim to pay homage to your beloved maid and have a character “inspired” by her and your “good friend” utter demeaning stereotypical lines about their own culture. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Where and WTF were the editors doing on this book?

Now check out this scan from The Clarion-Ledger in 1963, where a woman representing the women’s group called United Front even states that little black kids carry venereal disease (’cause don’t cha know, she didn’t want her kids to go to school with blacks for this very reason).

A few women of Mississippi speak. Note Mrs. E A Copland believing that little black kids are afflicted with diseases and immorality

Back to the mistakes in the dialogue between Minny and Aibileen. The scene also resurrects another often spoken slur, that no matter if blacks were Christians, we’d revert back to the beliefs of our motherland, which apparently consisted of “black magic.”

Somehow, these devout Christians are too stupid to realize black magic and Christianity are opposite ideologies, as most Christians who read the bible would know. Except of course, these supposidely devout church goers. Maybe its because Stockett has Aibileen and Minny gossiping in church like a couple of mean girls, contrary to the movie. And so the highly offensive insinuation is that Aibileen has the power to call down a venereal disease on another woman, via God and the power of prayer. This conversation actually starts on Pg 23, where Minny lists examples of all the people Aibileen’s prayers have “healed.”

It’s also worth noting that when Stockett and her “good friend” Octavia Spencer went on tour to promote the novel, their road show included this scene. Stockett even voices Minny, faux black dialect and all (remember, she was brought up in a family that speaks “the King’s English” so she doesn’t believe she has a an accent of the southern variety, especially not one like her black characters).

Stockett voices Minny talking "spoilt cootchies" at the Tower Theatre during her book tour

Here’s a link to my post with the You Tube video: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/stockett-voices-minny/

Yes, this is all part of that “beautifully written novel”  by Kathryn Stockett, the very same author who claimed Medgar Evers was “bludgeoned” in his front yard in three known audio interviews. And in the novel also contained the error:

Error on Evers in the Paperback version of The Help

For more on the Evers error in The Help and Stockett’s other audio interview gaffes on civil rights icon Medgar Evers, see this post:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/medgar-evers-error-in-the-help/

At the end of both the novel and the movie of The Help, Aibileen walks off into the sunset crying. In her interview with Katie Couric, Stockett claimed the book ended on a hopeful note, as times soon changed for the better. There too, the author forgot that while the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, real change didn’t come to Jackson, Mississippi until many decades later. Stockett torpedoes her own rationale when she admits in the back of the novel how her grandparents still had Demetrie McLorn working under the rules of Jim Crow during the 70s and 80s, and until the day she died.  In a UK interview Stockett admits the only time she viewed Demetrie out of her white uniform was when she was in her casket. The author was sixteen at the time.

THE LOOK OF EMPOWERMENT. Viola as Aibileen showing just what Kathryn Stockett thought it will take to make a black woman break down during segregation. Being separated from Miss Skeeter and Mae Mobley

So when Viola Davis walks across the stage to pick up her award for the role, I know she’ll reference her family and thank Stockett and Tate Taylor. However I hope she remembers Abilene Cooper in her awards speech. Cooper’s the real life African American maid who, in my opinion, was the physical embodiment of the character of Aibileen Clark. Yet because she didn’t read the book in time her court case was thrown out (due to the statute of limitations, not on the merit of her law suit) and when she finally did, vehemently objected to pieces of her life and her likeness being used by Stockett and co. Cooper had her full story revealed by a UK paper.

The real deal Aibileen, a distraught Abileen Cooper after her lawsuit is tossed out

Maybe in a few years the US media will finally catch on. See Abilene Cooper’s sad tale here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2033369/Her-family-hired-maid-12-years-stole-life-Disney-movie.html

For more on the not so secret life of Mammies, see this post:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/u-just-might-be-a-mammy-if/

Next up, Octavia Spencer goes along with the “agreement.”

to be continued . . .

Oscar statuettes Photo from Telegraph.co.UK

When the award shows for this season are broadcast and the winners revealed, and The Help takes a prize for whatever, remember this post.

Because the controversy over what’s on the pages and the depictions on screen are only half the story.

**Update**

If you’re linking here from another site, please know that I read the book. And I know full well about segregation. So if you’re going to talk smack on another site, please bring your questions here and I’ll be glad to answer them. The book was crap  and movie reviews are on this site, both pro and con. I’m willing to back up my statements with archived information from Southern newpapers and researched articles. In addition, I’ve listed the quotes from principles both behind and in front of the camera, with links.

How the book came to be, from inspiration to movie will be covered here. No, its not pretty. But taken on the whole, business goliaths like Publishing and Hollywood don’t have a system of checks and balances when it comes to a fair and balanced depiction of minorities. That’s possibly because these entities aren’t as diverse as they’d like to think.

The system is broken from the top down. And since Hollywood loves to pat itself on the back, especially when it believes its found a property that has a message and can make money,  it was only a matter of time before they were bested at their own cut throat game by newcomers.

When I was younger I used to love to watch The A Team. I recall Mr. T,  Face, and when the ringleader, played by George Peppard would light up a stoogie and muse “I love it when a plan comes together.”

In a nutshell, that’s what happened with The Help. So forget the PR spin of a southern author writing about an unjust system her beloved maid toiled under.

For as the actual quoted statements by the participants attest, their answers invite more questions on what exactly the inspiration and motive behind The Help was. The highlighted words are my doing. Please pay attention to them.

A CONVERSATION WITH KATHRYN STOCKETT

Q. What was the genesis of the novel?

A. Growing up in Mississippi, almost every family I knew had a black woman working in their house–cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the white children. That was life in Mississippi. I was young and assumed that’s how most of America lived.

When I moved to New York, though, I realized my “normal” wasn’t quite the same as the rest of America’s. I knew a lot of Southerners in the city, and every now and then we’d talk about what we missed from the South. Inevitably, somebody would start talking about the maid they grew up with, some little thing that made us all remember–Alice’s good hamburgers or riding in the back seat to take Willy May home. Everybody had a story to tell.

Twenty years later, with a million things to do in New York City, there we were still talking about the women who’d raised us in our mama’s kitchens. It was probably on one of those late nights, homesick, when I realized I wanted to write about those relationships from my childhood.

Link: http://kathrynstockett.com/stockett-qanda.htm

Some of those transplanted southerners the author speaks of include Stockett’s childhood friend Tate Taylor, who also had a maid during his formative years (1970s, 80s). Co-producer of The Help, Brunson Green also admits that they were all long time friends. There are a few other individuals who made up this group, but of those frequently mentioned (Stockett, Taylor and Green, and lastly Octavia Spencer) at least three have numerous published interviews revealing how The Help, both in novel and screenplay form came to be.

And so it began, Looking for Mr. Good Plot by mining the past, present and most of all,  people (all items in bold are my doing)

Still giving comfort. Back cover of 1959 version Imitation of Life DVD

Watch a Black Person to truly  “know” a black person

TT:  . . . And then Katy said, “I want to come meet everybody!” And so she came to New Orleans in 2003 and she met Octavia. And Octavia was being Octavia and she goes, “You know that book I’m writing? Do you think Octavia would mind if I modeled a character after her?” And I go, “Just do it, just don’t tell her about it.”

KS: No, not modeled – we have to kind of step carefully on that one.

TT: Oh, true.

Link: http://screencrave.com/2011-08-11/interview-writerdirector-tate-taylor-and-author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-help/

Interview with real life maid Abilene Cooper by the UK Daily Mail: 

Ablene Cooper's photo from the UK Daily Mail. This is the "real deal" Abilene

” ‘I met Kathryn on two occasions.

The first time she came to stay the night. She said, “I’m Rob’s baby sister,’’ and I said, “I’m Abilene.” ‘The second time she was married and she came with her husband and daughter. I never told her about myself. She was quiet, standoffish, but she’d watch me. I’d be dishwashing or it would be playtime with the children and she’d be just staring at me.’

. . . Abilene says she first learned of the book when she arrived at work to find her employer in tears. ‘Carroll was crying and she says, “Miss Abilene, I’ve got something to tell you.”

She says, “Kathryn’s wrote a book and you are the main character. Rob told her not to use your name.” ’ Then a copy of the book arrived for Abilene from the author with a note saying that while a main character is an ‘African-American child carer named Aibileen’, she bore no resemblance to the real Abilene.”

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2033369/Her-family-hired-maid-12-years-stole-life-Disney-movie.html

“. . .It’s because I usually have my mind on a story– either mine or someone else’s– where the tomatoes are riper, the itches are itchier, the sun burns hotter than in regular life.”

Link: http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/New-Reads/HELLO-FROM-KATHRYN-STOCKETT-AUTHOR-OF-THE-HELP/td-p/335699

Be the pedigree

Shrieks and squeals from Skeeters pals

“. . . Stockett is completely charming. She talks like a Southern belle, though it’s probably the English concept of a Southern belle; ‘Would y’all care for something to sip on?’ she asks. She serves tea and cake while telling me about when she attended ‘culinary school’, caressing the words in her high sing-song voice.

Stockett is telling me about her grandparents, who played a big part in her life when she was a child. Her grandmother Caroline grew up in Shanghai in a family of missionaries (‘Grandmother went over there with her family to save the souls of the heathens’), returning to Mississippi when war broke out. ‘She came back to settle down and start a family with a very strict idea of how things should be between people of colour, coming from Shanghai, where there was no middle class. And of course that is exactly how Mississippi did things, so she fitted right in.’

. . . Stockett says it took her 20 years to realise the irony of the situation with her beloved Demetrie. ‘We would tell anybody, “Oh, she’s just like a part of our family,” and that we loved the domestics that worked for us so dearly – and yet they had to use a bathroom on the outside of the house.’

Did Demetrie have her own bathroom? Stockett looks steadily at me. ‘Yes.’

And did you just accept that at the time? ‘I never knew about it! I’m so naive and stupid that I never gave a thought to where she went to the bathroom until I was 20. I’m so embarrassed about this. It never occurred to me that she had a separate bathroom, but when I came home from college I found this door on the outside of my grandparents’ house.’ “

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5844739/The-maids-tale-Kathryn-Stockett-examines-slavery-and-racism-in-Americas-Deep-South.html

Sell it, work it, own it

“In 1970s Mississippi I didn’t have a single black friend or a black neighbour. Yet one of the closest people to me was Demetrie, our family’s black housekeeper.” – Kathryn Stockett

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1199603/This-Life-Kathryn-Stockett-childhood-Deep-South.html

“Revealing a parallel between The Help and her own life, Stockett said she idolized her family’s housekeeper and tried to mimic her “chocolatey, rich” voice. “I would try to imitate the way she talked and, of course, my parents would get very upset that this little white girl was trying to talk like a black person,” Stocket said. “When I was 30 and wanted to put those voices on the page [for The Help], of course I felt very conflicted, like I was doing something wrong. All those voices from my parents were coming back to me.”

Stockett on CBS, a photo of Demetrie McLorn is in the background

Link: http://www.stage-rush.com/2011/02/driving-miss-daisy-talkback-kathryn-stockett-the-help/

Cicely Tyson in full nurturing mode as Constantine

“. . . motivated in part by nostalgia for the maid who had helped raise her in the 1970s. “I felt like if I wanted to hear her again – she died when I was just 16 – the fastest way to do that was to start writing in her voice,” Stockett says. “Honestly, I didn’t think anyone was going to read the story.”

As a result, she wrote with “abandon,” letting her feelings lead her. It was only much later, when she decided to try publishing what had become a full-blown novel, that she started to get “very nervous that I had crossed a line that should never be crossed in America.”

To help cover her tracks over that line, Stockett recruited an actress friend, Octavia Spencer, to participate in her first book tour. “I would read the white parts and she would read the black parts and we had a lot of fun,” Stockett says, adding that Spencer’s free spirit was the inspiration for Minnie, one of her two black heroines. “She got it. She grew up in Alabama and she understood that world probably better than we do.”

Interview with John Barber for Saturday’s Globe and Mail

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/kathryn-stocketts-southern-discomfort/article2012818/singlepage/#articlecontent

Stockett discusses Skeeter's "bravery" and voices Minny talking "spoilt cootchies"

Dapito: And is there a movie version coming out of The Help? Did I hear that right?

Stockett: The movie rights have been sold to a fellow Mississippian Tate Taylor (inaudible) Green and I’m just so lucky that the book is in the hands of people, not only Mississippians but friends of mine from Jackson. They’re two filmmakers based in Los Angeles.

Dapito: Oh I can’t wait. Do you think they will cast Octavia and some of the other narrators?

Stockett: I think Octavia will be the part of Minny because ah . . (pause and laughter) you know, that was just the agreement. It wasn’t that hard of, it you know, there was no pulling hair on that one. She’s such a natural.”

Link: An Interview with Kathryn Stockett, Author of ‘The Help’ Narrated by Diana Dapito

Research? We don’t need no stinking research!

“…1963 was a horrifying and momentous year in Mississippi’s history as well as the entire United States. It was… the fall of 62 when James Meredith was accepted into Ole Miss and in 1963 Medgar Evers the uh…who was with the NAACP he was bludgeoned to death on his front yard in front of his children.”  (stated at 8:34 minutes into a 10:31 interview)

Link: http://media.barnesandnoble.com/?fr_story=59e76c8fa39941fb2ff1013f7928b8ed42d449c2&rf=rss

For two additional audio interviews where the author repeats Evers was “bludgeoned” see this post:

Link: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/medgar-evers-error-in-the-help/

Error on Evers in the Paperback version of The Help

Tate Taylor: “I didn’t think we should talk about the Jim Crow Laws because I felt like people know what that is and she told me when she wrote the novel, her editors in New York – highly educated people – had no clue about Jim Crow Laws. I go, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I know, I swear! You think people know. They don’t. So she goes, ‘I’m telling you put it in,’ and I did. I thought, being a Southerner, it was too much. ‘Oh really? Of course there’s Jim Crow Laws.’ That was the one thing.”

Link: http://movies.about.com/od/thehelp/a/tate-taylor-interview.htm

Tate Taylor's Chicken Party, starring Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney and of all things, "fried chicken" which was a popular, mocking symbol blacks were paired with during the Jim Crow Era

D.N.: When you interviewed people for the book, was there anything that stood out?

K.S.: What stood out was the emotion that white people had about the connection to their black maids. When I spoke to black people it was surprising to see how removed they were emotionally from those they worked for.

That was not always the case, but it was one of the dynamics that struck me. Sometimes it was a total disregard. It was just a job.

Link: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/feb/11/q-help-author-work-book-no-2/

Young Actress playing Mae Mobley learning her "You is" isms, a contrived and condescending piece of dialogue meant to "inspire"

“I think they were surprised that I was able, hopefully able to portray the love we felt for these woman and that you know, I assume that they felt for us . . .” (11:29 into the interview)

Link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/speakingvolumes/2009/05/26/interview-with-kathryn-stockett

“The scene where Viola Davis is sitting on a toilet in a garage in 108 degrees, and then a white woman comes out and tells her to hurry up was visually brutal. To me that’s worse than seeing a lynching. It just is.”

http://www.thegrio.com/entertainment/the-help-director-people-are-too-critical-of-this-film.php?page=1

The Lynching of Rubin Stacy in Florida. Note the little girl on the right

More Cowbell

“There were times when the studio was talking about a cookbook, but I don’t know if anyone wants to cook these things. Southern food is much better, but when they’re not eating these fancy, baby showers and things, the food they served is horrendous but it’s real . . .”

Link: http://movies.about.com/od/thehelp/a/chris-columbus-interview.htm

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Link: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/the-help-movie-cleans-up-after-itself-the-novel/making-the-help-pay/

Review by Australian columnist Liz Jones makes an important point:

“I went to an advance screening last week of The Help, the Oscar-tipped Hollywood film that has already taken $62 million at the American box office and which opens here next month.

It amused me no end that it was a “fashion press” screening, which has been followed up with “get the look” emails from various High Street firms, due to its setting in the Deep South of Mississippi in the early ’60s. Never mind that the film is about segregation and lynchings.

It’s like being asked to a screening of Schindler’s List, and then “getting the look” of all the lovely uniforms. Such is modern-day marketing.

The film has caused controversy in America, particularly because the story concerns a young, white, privileged journalist who tells the story of the lives led by black maids, the “help” in the title.

I disliked the fact that the black actresses, particularly Octavia Spencer, are so “eye rolling”, but I suppose I’d still be complaining if Halle Berry had been cast instead (too white, too beautiful). But what I found most interesting was its premise that it was women who oppressed black people. . . “

Link: http://www.perthnow.com.au/crushing-women/story-fn6o0xxk-1226129928849

Dreamworks and Disney decide to pimp an alternate universe, where segregation is all about ”Handsome Good Ole Boys” and “Southern Dreamboats” for overseas dollars:

"A Handsome Good Ole Boy" You've got to be kidding

That "Southern Gentleman" and "Dreamboat" Johnny Foote

When real questions are asked, cracks appear

“I just made this shit up!” quote by Kathryn Stockett

The National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Philadelphia convened on August 6, 2011. During a post-screening of the film The Help, a Q&A moderated by MSNBC’s Tamron Hall, Stockett reportedly answered a question from a female audience member.

Link: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/i-just-made-this-shit-up-per-stockett/

“. . . All of the criticism we’ve been facing is based on the fact that I’m not an African-American director and that Kathryn is not an African-American writer” – quote from Tate Taylor, director and screenwriter of The Help

“Civil rights is just the backdrop. I’m not qualified to make a film about civil rights. People say to me: ‘Why wasn’t there a lynching? Why aren’t there houses burning down?’ But that’s not what this story is. For me, the most horrific moment in the film is the scene where the maid is sitting with her panties round her ankles in a three-by-three plywood bathroom, like a cat in a litter-box, while an impatient white woman is tapping her foot outside. If people need to see blood and gore and can’t see how horrific that is – well, I don’t have answer to that.”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/oct/20/the-help-domestic-servants-on-film

“ ‘I am not Skeeter,” she said. “I’m not that brave. I never thought to question how things were.’

. . . I was taught that racial issues were considered tacky for a young lady to discuss,” she said. ‘I wasn’t even allowed to watch ‘The Jeffersons.’ – quotes from Kathryn Stockett

Interview with Dan Latini of One Book http://www.courierpress.com/news/2010/nov/04/author-details-risky-story-of-race/

“. . . this may sound ridiculous but I’m not criticizing the people that were living through those times and not questioning it. I’m just trying to examine it and also look at how far we’ve come.” – Kathryn Stockett

3:42 into the 10 minute audio interview with Barnes and Noble

Link: http://media.barnesandnoble.com/?fr_story=59e76c8fa39941fb2ff1013f7928b8ed42d449c2&rf=rss

 
“ ‘People say, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe she would try to represent black women that way.’ Demetrie didn’t go past sixth grade. She lived in a shack. I wasn’t trying to represent a whole race or people,’ she says.”

Interview by Lonnae O’Neal Parker for the Washington Post.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/12/AR2010081206721_2.html?sid=ST2010081302928

WOW: Oh, how interesting. How bold of you to write in the voice of a black woman.

KATHRYN: Oh, it’s not that bold if you think no one’s going to read it.

WOW: OK, so you’re writing this privately; you’re feeling this – your story – is only for yourself?

KATHRYN: Oh, yes.

Interview with Joni Evans of WOW.com

http://www.wowowow.com/culture/the-help-todays-to-kill-a-mockingbird-with-author-kathryn-stockett/

“I’m still waiting for the jack-in-the-box to pop,” she says, “for somebody to corner me and say everything I say in my own head – that I had no right to do this.”

Interview with John Barber for Saturday’s Globe and Mail

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/kathryn-stocketts-southern discomfort/article2012818/singlepage/#articlecontent

“The author’s father, Robert Stockett Jr. of Jackson Miss., told ABCNews.com that he is “neutral” in the division between his son and daughter, but agreed that plenty of people are profiting, especially filmmakers who plan to release a movie version of the book this year.

`Sure, I liked the book. It’s fiction. They didn’t give me the critics’ copy until it was too late,‘ he said. ‘I would have got some factual things changed. But I’m low down the totem pole . . .’ “

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/lawsuit-black-maid-ablene-cooper-sues-author-kathryn/story?id=12968562&page=1

THE LOOK OF EMPOWERMENT: Viola as Aibileen showing just what Kathryn Stockett thought it will take to make a black woman break down during segregation. Being separated from Miss Skeeter and Mae Mobley

So remember all this when Hollywood, in an attempt to appear “liberal” awards this bungled blast into the past.

Ironically, in 1933 virtually the same scenario of “phone a black friend” occured with writer Fannie Hurst for her novel “Imitation of Life.” Hurst called Zora Neale Hurston her friend, and Hurston championed her book, even for a time, enlisting writer Langston Hughes to promote the novel. However Hughes was soon swayed by the critics, and ended up writing a parody.

Also take particular note of how enamored reviewers are, similar to some reviewers of The Help:

“The black, bulging Delilah abounds in the warm vigor which is Fannie Hurst at her best. I can think of no character of (Hurst’s) since Lummox who is as actual a creation as the mammy whose face and skill were the foundation of Bea’s fortune. (NY Herald Tribune)

“One of the most magnificently drawn characters in all the great store of literature depicting Negro life.” (Cinncinnati Enquirer)

“Most of us have at some time known a servant who partook in some measure of the nature of Delilah.” (Christian Science Monitor)

In the novel Delilah is described as “the enormously buxom figure of a woman with a round black face that shone above an Alps of bosom…the chocolate and cream effulgence that was Delilah. The heavy cheeks, shellacked eyes, bright, round and crammed with vitality, huge upholstery of lips that caught you like a pair of divans into the luxury of laughter.”

 Critic Sterling Brown’s review of Imitation of Life (1934) from the magazine Opportunity

“It requires no searching analysis to see in Imitation of Life the old stereotype of of the contented Mammy, and the tragic mulatto . . . Delilah is straight out of Southern fiction . . . Her idiom is good only in spots; I have heard dialect all my life, but I have yet to hear such a line as “She am an angel.”

In 1968, William Styron’s Pulitzer prize winning novel The Confessions of Nat Turner had an ally in writer James Baldwin. Yet the outcry was so loud against Styron’s depiction of a self-loathing, racially conflicted Nat Turner that the planned movie version was shelved.

Cover of the novel "The Confessions Of Nat Turner"

In the case of The Help, an attempt to anticipate what criticism might occur (from the black community in particular), only caused more problems and verbal gaffes, like these on seeking “authenticity” on food of all things and not the time period, ”street cred” and “telling the truth” (items in bold are my doing):

All the "blacker the better" maids in one room, as the film attempts to duplicate Stockett's words with heavy handed film shots

“What’s unusual is that almost all the food in the movie was made by real Southern cooks—including teachers, a journalist and a cafeteria manager—recruited in Greenwood, Mississippi. Hollywood filmmakers typically work with caterers and food stylists, but Taylor, a Jackson native, wanted authenticity. “There’s a way we cook in the South; vegetables get a certain color to them,” he says. “That gets lost a lot of times, unless the right people make the food.”

Link: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/new-jim-crow-the-help/

Minny at the door with an apology and a shit pie for Hilly

“My key objective was to give this movie street cred especially within the African-American community, to represent them and not sugarcoat it,” said Taylor.

LA Times interview By NICOLE SPERLING

Reprinted by http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/05/3058228/the-help-actresses-talk-roles.html

Over done angry black woman pose featuring hand on hip

Angry black woman results in frightened look from lovely, young, liberal and scared do gooder

“If you want to see a historically accurate portrayal of life in the sixties, but go behind the door and see the humanity and the love behind these courageous . . .” – Director of The Help Tate Taylor

Link: http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2011/aug/08/interview-director-star-the-help-why-see-movie/

Over done angry black woman pose of a full stare down

“We just wanted to tell the truth. Tell the real story and get it right. Many times as southerners our stories have been handled, taken into hands that were outside the south that’s not always as we know it to be. So we just really want to tell the truth . . . (pause) the good and the bad.” – Screenwriter and director of The Help, Tate Taylor

Link: http://screencrave.com/2011-08-11/interview-writerdirector-tate-taylor-and-author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-help/

Salt and Pepper's here. The comedic duo of Celia and Minny, making segregation fun for all

“About 20 minutes into the movie, you’re craving fried chicken,” says director Tate Taylor. That movie is The Help, the new film based on Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling novel . . .”

Article link: http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/the-help-southern-food

The Birth of a Nation scene, where an elected black official is eating fried chicken

“Frying chicken make you tend to feel better about life”  and “Minny don’t burn no chicken” – dialogue created by Tate Taylor for the film The Help

1950s bigoted advertising, for of all things, blacks and fried chicken

The Help Tweet by an executive producer of The Help with name blocked

“If we are to reckon honestly with the history and continued legacies of slavery in the United States, we must confront the terrible depths of desire for the black mammy and the way it still drags at struggles for real democracy and social justice.” – Mikki McElya scholar and historian. Author of Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007

The Asexual, Solitary, ever faithful and obedient Mammy is a fixture in America's consciousness

I’ve put enough hints in this post so that as a reader, you should be able to figure out a number of things. If you still don’t get it, well then you possibly need a diagram or a how to book. In any event, I kinda felt like Neo from the The Matrix.

The Matrix

I believe I now understand how Kathryn Stockett could have completely forgotten she’d written that Medgar Evers was shot instead of bludgeoned.

And it goes back to the odd feeling I had when reading the novel for the first time, as if  more than one person had  “helped” to write it.

But what do I know? I’m just a blogger.

If you’re still having trouble “visualizing”, maybe this will “help”:

Tate Taylor: The gift of the whole thing was that I got the rights from Kathryn before she had a publisher, and she didn’t even know the book would get published and if it did get published, if it would do anything, so the real gift and the miracle of this movie is that I got to go off and adapt my friend’s screenplay unencumbered, by myself, and just write it from the heart and write it as a Mississippian and write it as a guy that had the pleasure of having an African-American woman in his life, Carol Lee, the woman who co-raised me with my mother. So I just got to tell the truth and write from the heart. Once the script was done and the book came out, that script kind of served as the calling card.

Link: Exclusive Interview: Filmmaker Tate Taylor on The Help – ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=84880#ixzz1j5esR8MC

And this:

KS: Mmmmm, I don’t. I read! So no. But while I was writing the manuscript and Tate was reading it he kept saying, “Oh good, in this scene we’ll do this…” And I kept going, “Tate it’s not a movie – it’s a book!” I didn’t even have an agent and Tate said, “well listen when you shoot this scene…” We’re just very different writers. But it was really exciting to hand this project over to Tate because I knew he’d get it. We grew up in the same circumstances. It’s amazing how parallel our lives were. Both of our mom’s were divorced.

Read the full interview here: http://screencrave.com/2011-08-11/interview-writerdirector-tate-taylor-and-author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-help/

For more on the southern “agreement” see this post:

http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/so-about-the-help-and-this-agreement-among-friends/

Find more published contradictions in this post: http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/trivial-pursuits-of-the-help/

One of the best one liners I’ve read to describe The Help comes froms Boston Globe critic Wesley Morris, where he states ”One man’s mammy is another man’s mother”

Race, class, and Hollywood gloss: ‘The Help’ manages to mean well without forging new ground

by Boston Globe film Critic Wesley Morris

”. . . One woman’s mammy is another’s man’s mother. What can you do? It’s possible both to like this movie – to let it crack you up, then make you cry – and to wonder why we need a broad, if sincere dramatic comedy about black maids in Jackson, Miss., in 1962 and ’63 and the high-strung white housewives they work for. The movie is too pious for farce and too eager to please to comment persuasively on the racial horrors of the Deep South at that time.

Ads mostly feature the white actors in various tizzies, using accents wide as a boulevard. It’s “Tin Magnolias.’’ Meanwhile, the heart of the film itself belongs to Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) and Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), the two very different maids and best friends at the center of the story. Aibileen is stoic. Minny is defiant. But the movie, like the extremely popular Kathryn Stockett novel it’s based on, uses the civil rights movement to suggest that the help could use some help. And so a young white woman named Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone) finds herself writing a controversial book in the words of the maids who work in the homes of her girlfriends.”

Read the full review here:

http://articles.boston.com/2011-08-10/ae/29872908_1_hilly-holbrook-maids-emma-stone

Here’s journalism instructor and author Valerie Boyd’s take on the movie for Arts Critic ATL.com (items in bold are my doing):

“The Help,” a feel-good movie — for white people”

“In fact, the movie ends on a falsely uplifting note, with Aibileen claiming to feel liberated after being fired while Skeeter plans to go shopping with her mother for a new wardrobe before starting her big new job in New York City. Aibileen is now an unemployed maid, Skeeter is moving forward in her life of white privilege — and the filmmakers expect viewers to feel good about this.

The problem is, many white viewers will.

Director (and screenwriter) Tate Taylor, a white Mississippian, presents his white characters in such stark, simplistic terms that white viewers will naturally identify with Skeeter, who the director wants us to see as heroic (despite what more politically conscious viewers will see as her exploitation of Aibileen’s ideas and words). Those well-meaning white moviegoers also will find it easy to distance themselves from Hilly, a society girl whose racism is so cartoonish that it becomes laughable rather than alarming. No contemporary filmgoer will see herself in a walking stereotype like Hilly. Of course, white viewers will say, I’m not like that.”

See the full review here:

http://www.artscriticatl.com/2011/08/film-review-the-help-a-feel-good-movie-for-white-people/

I’d like to give the last word to this highly on point quote from a poster on Amazon.com, which states:

“Misrepresentation in a novel, whether or not it’s fiction, hurts. It hurts more when the writer connects it with something as profound as the civil rights movement. It’s the same sort of argument I hear from young adult readers when the issue of whitewashing book covers is brought up: a publisher releases a book with a white model on the cover when the book is about a black protagonist. When black readers complain, some white readers go, “It’s just a book cover. Stop making this into a race issue.” They say it, because they don’t understand. When you’re white and you’re used to having your race take centre stage in every single TV show, movie, video game – every facet of popular media – it’s difficult, probably near impossible, for you to understand that even the littlest things like fiction characters are big things to black people. Because we don’t have Harry Potters or Edward Cullens (thank God) or any of those popular white characters to represent us. So we have to make do with the little black characters that populate contemporary fiction.”

To be continued . . .

But Viola may need to break out of doing almost the same stoic, woman of mettle through hardship role, even though she does it beautifully.

Nina Simone, Forever Young Gifted & Black

Because just like Halle Berry took her own funds and did a tour de force performance of Dorothy Dandridge, Viola may have to do an indie flick on Nina Simone.

NINA. SIMONE. The High Priestess of Soul

Why Nina?

Because after playing the docile maid Aibileen, a nice hot shower of a fiery, progressive female is in order. Nina Simone was fierce, beautiful, ahead of her time and a DIVA baby. Nina was fierce before the word even came into vogue. Nina personified fierce at a time when black people needed it most.

Just like Jamie Foxx did Ray Charles proud, Viola could release all that pent up emotion many of her roles fail to let her release, unless it comes in the form of tears. I know Viola can cry. Now I’d like to see Viola be cool. And hot. And sultry on screen. And take command. Playing Nina Simone would allow her to do just that.

I’d also love to see Viola on a piano emoting on the classic Four Women.

just some of the song’s Nina left her indelible mark on: Sinner Man, Feeling Good, My Baby Just Cares For Me, Little Girl Blue

Nina Simone at the piano

If you’ve never seen Nina do Four Women here’s a clip from You Tube.

Other groundbreakers I recall:

Get Christie Love star Teresa Graves, the first African American female with an hour long drama on TV

Teresa Graves on the cover of TV Guide

Christie Love TV Guide article

Brenda Sykes:

Brenda Sykes

Brenda Sykes and James Brown

Brenda Sykes, a 70s icon

Brenda wearing that Tam, and millions of black teen girls imitated her

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pat Evans

Pat Evans portrait

 

 

Pat Evans on the Ohio Players "Pain" album

The Ohio Players "Ecstasy" Cover featuring Pat

Judy Pace from the TV movie Frogs

Judy Pace

Nichelle Nichols

Nichelle Nichols on Ebony as Lt. Uhura. Maybe space is the "final frontier" for black actors

Sylvester

 

 

 

Sylvster''s hit song "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real"

 

 

 

Portrait of a Diva and a pioneer for Gay Rights

 

 

I need to put up more photos a bit later. Like Jazz singer Nancy Wilson, entertainer and sexpot Lola Falana, Jayne Kennedy, Cicely Tyson from back in the day, Pam Grier, etc. People need to remember and never forget these trailblazers.

Haha. Someone sent me this. I love it! Dolls of Color baby!

I used Comet on my Barbie’s hair to give her an Afro back in the day.

The latter doesn’t usually happen. But on occasion, when I get the OMG! It’s just a book! Lighten up will you? inquiry on my motives. my response may not be pretty, especially since I’m at that wonderful point in life when I don’t have to answer to someone who’s not paying my bills. That kids, is the one true beauty of getting older and not being “beholden” to anyone. Except God. 

But it’s not as if I just blow off those opinions. Because you know what they say about opinions. Everybody has one. Besides, it gives me a bit of  insight on just how Stockett’s novel got so popular.

The depictions don’t matter to some, in fact many proclaimed them spot on in accuracy. While they bother others because they’re the same old stereotypes about the “strong black woman” and the “funny, big black woman” better known as the beloved ”Mammy”.

Pay no attention to this cover. It's just a marketing ploy. So which bird is Aibileen?

And it also underscores another point:

If African Americans aren’t the watchdogs of our culture’s history, just where do you think the truth will come from when errors arise?

Al Jolson, a beloved American entertainer in blackface singing about his "Mammy"

Let me see if I can frame this another way, for those who still don’t understand:

If Americans aren’t the watchdogs of our shared nation’s history, just where do you think the truth will come from when errors arise?

Say for example,  if someone claims one plane or no plane was involved in 9/11, or that the Holocaust never happened, then who will challenge it?

Those who were there. That’s who.

Those who REMEMBER. Who have it burned in their memory and pass it on, so that others never forget THE TRUTH.

Those who do the research, and study, and can cite their findings with surety.

But it won’t come from an author who states “I just made this shit up!”   to a crowd when asked to address the issues in her book. Especially when that same author states in three audio interviews that Medgar Evers was “bludgeoned” on his front yard, which not so coincidently makes its way into The Help, on page 277 where Skeeter states “or hell, bludgeoned in their front yard like Medgar Evers”:

Error on Evers in the Paperback version of The Help

See more on the Medgar Evers error in this post

And the truth won’t come from  a director/screenwriter who admits:

“All of the criticism we’ve been facing is based on the fact that I’m not an African-American director and that Kathryn is not an African-American writer,” Taylor says. “It suggests that race relations in my country are still very black and white. But outside of a small academic elite, it doesn’t matter . . . “

In the same interview, Taylor also states:

“Civil rights is just the backdrop. I’m not qualified to make a film about civil rights . . .  ”

Link to the full quotes: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/oct/20/the-help-domestic-servants-on-film

Also keep in mind Taylor’s Stockett’s good friend and the man who was entrusted with bringing her book to the big screen. Yet he continued to spout lines like this (items in bold are doing):

“If you want to see a historically accurate portrayal of life in the sixties, but go behind the door and see the humanity and the love behind these courageous . . .”  – Director of The Help Tate Taylor

Link: http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2011/aug/08/interview-director-star-the-help-why-see-movie/

And also

“We just wanted to tell the truth. Tell the real story and get it right. Many times as southerners our stories have been handled, taken into hands that were outside the south that’s not always as we know it to be. So we just really want to tell the truth . . . (pause) the good and the bad.”  – Screenwriter and director of The Help, Tate Taylor

Link: http://screencrave.com/2011-08-11/interview-writerdirector-tate-taylor-and-author-kathryn-stockett-on-the-help/

Here’s a small sample of  Tate Taylor’s “truth”

“The scene where Viola Davis is sitting on a toilet in a garage in 108 degrees, and then a white woman comes out and tells her to hurry up was visually brutal. To me that’s worse than seeing a lynching. It just is.”

Link: http://www.thegrio.com/entertainment/the-help-director-people-are-too-critical-of-this-film.php?page=1

And here’s a portion of the cringe worthy dialogue he wrote for his good friend Octavia Spencer:

“Frying chicken make you tend to feel better about life ” and “Minny don’t burn no chicken” (spoken by Octavia Spencer as Minny in The Help)

Taylor may have gotten his cue from the dialogue Kathryn Stockett created for Minny in the novel:

“A course. Can’t have no proper sandwich on no raw bread. and this afternoon I’ll make one a Minny’s famous caramel cakes. And next week we gone do you a fried catfish . . . ” (Minny, Pg 140 of the novel)

Minny’s public declaration of her love for chicken, or the lines Tate Taylor created for her weren’t in the book. However they unfortunately play upon a known stereotype that exists to this day, of African Americans and chicken. This is but a part of the bigger stereotype involving African Americans and our history in America. For linking blacks with food to encourage laughter has been a national past time.

1950s bigoted advertising, for of all things, blacks and fried chicken

Or perhaps the chicken humor was merely a continuation of Taylor’s short film:

Tate Taylor's Chicken Party, starring Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney and of all things, "fried chicken"

There’s a reason why Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima smile on products that they neither own a controlling share of or have any say in the daily business operations. They smile, but it’s not out of happiness.

Uncle Ben, now distinguished looking and a permanent sales image for Uncle Ben's Rice

Aunt Jemima has her own button

One thing Kathryn Stockett’s novel has shown is that African Americans, or for that matter, any minority group should not take it on faith alone that an author has the ability, or the willingness to present their images/histories in a manner that avoids accepted stereotypes.

What Stockett’s novel also shows, is that from publishing to film, there were more than enough people content to either overlook or condone her use of caricatures, possibly because they too  thought the depiction of the author’s black characters were authentic.

The debacle centering around Stockett’s creation highlights that actors are people too. And that just because someone is an actor, it doesn’t mean they don’t have their own self- esteem issues. Thespians seek validation from others just like regular folk. None more so than minority entertainers, who must navigate roles that either play off their race, or parts which steadfastly avoid it altogether.

It’s that middle ground, the quest for a depiction that can give a message without much compromise and limits mockery which is the holy grail.

And it’s not as if it hasn’t been done, or that there haven’t been performers whose prior sacrifices paved the way for others.

It may be time to remember what came before, in order to move forward.

Because there are actors and writers, both white and black whose work encompassed history, dignity and a message that resonated without resorting to humor that demeans or drama that demands the viewer suspend belief.

Stockett’s book and subsequent film, while revealing the hardships African Americans faced during segregation, also continues the mistake of mocking a people who’ve historically had their image co-opped for that very purpose. In addition, Stockett’s work unwittingly or perhaps knowningly continues a great myth. That African Americans had ”affection” akin to love for those who oppressed them.

For as this early 1920s Houston Chronicle article, reprinted in the NY Times declares:

DESERVES A MONUMENT – Plan to Memorialize the “Black Mammy” Wins Southern Favor

Excerpt: . . . those who can remember dear old “black mammy” of the days of long ago. The movement has for its object the erection of a monument to perpetuate the memory of the mammies of the South . . .

Mammy monument aritcle pg 1

Excerpt from the newspaper article below, Part 2:  Wholly unlearned, without even the rudiments of education, holding with unshakeable belief to all manner of superstition . . . “sperrits” and “ghostes” even as she believed in her own identity with hellfire and brimstone as essential ingredients of her religious belief- she was the truest, more faithful, most trustful, most devoted creature that ever served with simple faith and love sincere . . . How intense was her pride in “white folks” how tender, how constant was her love of her “white chilluns!”

Excerpt from the novel The Help:

I got my prayer book out so I can write some things down. I concentrate on Mae Mobley, try to keep my mind off Miss Hilly. Show me how to teach Baby Girl to be kind, to love herself; to love others, while I got time with her. . . (Pg 192)

Heather, Miss Hilly’s girl, she pretty cute. Heather got dark, shiny curls all over her head and some little freckles, and she real talkative. One thing I got to say about Miss Hilly, she love her children. About every five minutes, she kiss Will on the head. Or she ask Heather, is she having fun? Or come here and give Mama a hug. Always telling her she the most beautiful girl in the world. And Heather love her momma too. She look at Miss Hilly like she looking up at the Statue a Liberty. That kind a love always make me want a cry. Even when it going to Miss Hilly. Cause it make me think about Treelore, how much he love me. I appreciate a child adoring they mama. (Pg 184)

Tate Forrest, one a my used-to-be babies long time ago, stop me on the way to the Jitney last week., give me a big hug, so happy to see me. . . he start laughing and memoring how I’d  do him when he was a boy. . . And how I told him don’t drink coffee or he gone turn colored. He say he still ain’t drunk a cup a coffee and he twenty-one years old. It’s always nice to see the kids grown up fine. (Aibileen Pg 91)

Mammy monument, part 2

Excerpt from part 3 of the article: Her faith in god was the simple, trusting faith of childhood, unclouded by doubt., undisturbed by mysticism or metaphysical refinement., which had no place in the narrow field of her mental operations. Her (word is unlegible) crude prayers framed by her unlearned lips were lifted to the heaven in which she believed, with the unquestioning faith that they would be heard and answered by a merciful Father. . .

Excerpt from The Help which relate to the sentiment and mindset above:

Cause that’s the way prayer do. It’s like electricity, it keeps things going. (Aibileen, Pg 23 )

“You saying people think I got the black magic? (Aibileen, Pg 24)

“Rumor is you got some kind a power prayer, gets better results than just the regular variety.” (Minny, Pg 23)

“We all on a party line to God, but you, you setting right in his ear. (Minny, Pg 24)

Mammy monument, part 3

Mammy monument, part 4

Excerpt: Though her skin was black, her soul was white

Excerpt from The Help:

That night I lay in bed thinking. I am so happy for Miss Skeeter. She starting her whole life over. Tears run down my temples into my ears, thinking about her walking down them big city avenues I seen on tee-vee with her long hair behind her.  (Pg 437)

If you’re one of the millions who, like Kathryn Stockett believe that laughter is the best medicine when dealing with serious racial issues, then The Help is the book and movie for you.

I’ve previously mentioned non-fiction novels like Danielle McGuire’s At the Dark End of The Street, a book that revisits the systematic gang rapes of black women and girls during segregation. And Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, which chronicles the great migration of African Americans from the south to the north.

Salt and Pepper's here. The comedic duo of Celia and Minny, making segregation fun for all

Another dissenting opinion on The Help:

I have an observation that needs to be named and explored, the heavily reliance upon emotion to defend loving ‘The Help’.  I notice that the many fans of ‘The Help’ book & movie, praise both for the emotions that it invokes within them. Fans have said they were inspired, encouraged, angry, fearful, happy, and often hungry for southern cooking. All emotions and feelings that can stand by themselves without any explaination-emotions are personal. It is great the project can make you feel something. Emotions are one piece of `The Help’ fan nation.  I value the coupling of emotion to seeing the lasting outcome of those emotions WITH action.

For example, I was angry and scared when I watched “Saving Private Ryan”. I felt happy watching “Pretty Woman”.  I felt encouraged and comforted (in my teenage years) reading “Sweet Valley High”.  While I remember those emotions, yet I returned to my life. I didn’t have to change, think about the status quo, acknowledge what I ignored, face my American privilege, etc, etc. I wasn’t pushed to fight for veteran’s rights.  I didn’t start working or learning about sex workers.  I didn’t start volunteering at the local all-girl high school for bake sales. Nothing else was required of me-I keep it moving.  Those films and books didn’t force me as an audience member or reader to DO anything.

Viola Davis saying the line that was never uttered in the book "You are a Godless woman"

Kwanda, I thank you for your passion, your knowledge, and your willingness to share this on my blog. This comment was on another site, so it was edited to take out  a few personal references, but Kwanda still graciously allowed me to re-post it here.

Kwanda is also on twitter. You can follow her tweets under @AmethystNite

To be continued . . .