By Kelly Cusack, Lauren Gedney, Sara Lucas, and TylerBell Smith
Precipitated by the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of white police officers, Black Lives Matter demonstrations took place across the world last June, protesting centuries of anti-Black racism and oppression. Also in June 2020, The Help, a movie adapted from the book of the same name by white author Kathryn Stockett, was the third most watched movie on Netflix. At a time when the question of race was at the forefront of most, if not all, American minds, audiences flocked in the greatest numbers not to educational documentaries or to genuine depictions of Black experiences from Black creators. Instead, they indulged in the feel-good, white-savior narrative of a film that, while titled The Help, focuses not on the lived experiences of the Black maids at the center of the story, but on the young white author who suddenly awakens to their plight and ultimately uses their stories to launch her own career. As The Help’s timely surge in popularity reveals, the movie offers a convenient and comforting—yet ultimately counterproductive—narrative for white people. It provides psychological distance from the immediacy of anti-Black racism’s effects and seems to absolve white Americans of personal responsibility for the perpetuation of racism.
Published in 2009, the novel The Help, on which the 2011 film was based, features limited and stereotypical depictions of Black women. Acknowledging that The Help features Stockett’s own perception of the feelings that her maid, Demetrie, might have experienced is crucial to understanding its significance and deeper implications (Azizmohammadi 23). Stockett claims she wrote The Help for the purpose of uplifting black voices, but then admits that she never asked or consulted Demetrie, or any black maid who worked during the 1960s for that matter, for their story. In fact, Stockett merely attempts (and ultimately fails) to write authentic Black women. Her characters’ voices become shrouded by her own, permitted only to function and speak in ways that reinforce her own identity. Stockett’s depictions of Aibileen and Minny, two of the Black maids whose story The Help supposedly told, are not sincere portrayals of Black women but instead are born out of her own imagination. As a result, they display the author’s own ignorance and prejudice. Had the maids’ actual voices and experiences been centered in this story, both the book and the film would have offered more honest depictions of the maids’ day-to-day lives: their struggles, their successes, the fullness of their humanity outside of white homes. If nothing else, a more comprehensive addition of Black voices and thoughts would surely remove the film’s emphasis on white saviorism while likely offering a more truthful rendition of the plot line.
A large part of the movie’s appeal to a 2020 white audience is that Skeeter, a white journalist, is portrayed as the hero. Skeeter, throughout the novel and film, is characterized as an independent and courageous white woman, who attempts to further her career while saving the Black “help” by documenting their experiences working for white families. Through Skeeter’s characterization, Stockett prioritizes the roles of white saviors in Black liberation while her depiction of those they are supposedly saving is half-baked and myopic at best. As a work of fiction, creative liberties do remain at Stockett’s discretion, but that should not prevent The Help from being recognized for what it is: a story about a white girl with a dream, and the serviceable and grateful Black bodies and lives that merely serve as stepping stones to accomplishing that dream. The act of placing Skeeter at the center of this story gives the white audience a heroine, a “good guy” to which they can compare themselves. The film’s increased viewership in 2020 makes sense in the wake of the mass media’s exposure of police violence against racial minorities; people wanted to see themselves as better than, or above, racial prejudice.
The Help was not only written by a white author; the story was adapted for the screen and directed by a white man. While having white creators helm a project doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t authentically center the experiences of Black people, in the case of The Help, having white voices in charge at every step of the creative process likely led to the film’s prioritization of white stories over those of the Black maids it claims to center. As Viola Davis, who starred in the role of Aibileen, said in a 2018 interview:
I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard… if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie.
In short, seeking advice about race-related issues from this movie is like asking your average man to describe modern sexism; it simply will not work, and you will probably end up with an oversimplified view that leaves you misinformed and unsatisfied.
While The Help has previously been praised as a hopeful example of anti-racist work, in recent years it has been deservedly critiqued for its underlying implications and biases. The ascendance of a movie that continues to glorify white saviorism, suppress black voices, and water down the reality of past race relations damages individuals’ and society’s movements towards equality. The Help serves to teach white Americans that their own activism and personal gain are more important than those of the Black community, and it essentially creates a more socially acceptable form of race-based discrimination. Nonetheless, The Help’s focus (as a feel-good movie that expands the white hero-complex, and fails to address—even romanticizes—the very real brutality of racism) draws in the white community, and it provided a large influx of support for the Black Lives Matter protest movement of summer 2020. White Americans can feel safe and comforted with The Help on their screens; they can claim to do anti-racist education and simultaneously avoid their own discomfort. Ultimately, the allyship of white America, especially during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, requires emphasizing Black voices, stories, and solutions, while engaging white ears and teaching white mouths what to say. In this regard, The Help is not at all helpful.
Here is a brief list of films that center Black voices and take a more thoughtful approach to race relation education: Fences, Moonlight, Fruitvale Station, Selma, Malcolm X, Judas and the Black Messiah.
Works Cited
Azizmohammadi F. A Study of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help from Patricia Hill Collins’ View: A Black Feminist Study. MLSJ. 2017; 4 (1) :1-6 URL: http://mls.europeansp.org/article-19-161-en.html
Dark, Alexa. “18 Movies by Black Directors to Watch This Black History Month.” L’Officiel, 3 Feb. 2021, www.lofficielusa.com/film-tv/movies-by-black-directors-black-history-month. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.
Dellatto, Marisa. “7 movies and documentaries about racism that you should watch now.” The New York Post, 4 June 2020, nypost.com/2020/06/04/7-movies-and-documentaries-about-racism-to-stream-on-netflix-and-more/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.
Moore, Kasey, editor. “Most Watched Movies & TV Series on Netflix in June 2020.” What’s on Netflix, 30 June 2020, www.whats-on-netflix.com/what-to-watch/most-watched-movies-tv-series-on-netflix-in-june-2020/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.
Murphy, Mekado. “Viola Davis on What ‘The Help’ Got Wrong and How She Proves Herself.” The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/movies/viola-davis-interview-widows-toronto-film-festival.html. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.
Taylor, Tate, director. The Help. Touchstone Pictures, 2011.