I'm going to go a little sideways in the article to make a point. Do you remember the movie Do the Right Thing? It was, in the minds of a lot of people, a very powerful movie addressing issues of the time. It was in your face with the language, but you come out of the movie talking about it. Do the Right Thing was nominated for an Academy Award but didn't win. What movie won that year?

Driving Miss Daisy.

Yes the film about a black man driving a grumpy old white woman to Piggly Wiggly, and it could be added, helped cultivate the image of the all knowing, magical Negro.

I saw The Help a few days ago, and it has taken a long time for me to put into words my feelings for the film. I don't think I should have expected much from this type of film. I should think of it like a zombie film, or a vampire film. You will have certain elements that must be placed in this, both for formula and to make sure the pain that is part and parcel of the subject matter is melted away and we are left with feel good and hopefully box office success.

When I first saw the ads for the movie, with women reading a book, squealing with pain or joy, black maids with sideways, knowing glances and doing their best Florence the maid sassy looks, I thought this was going to be a lighthearted comedy. Yes, a feel good maid story set in 60s Mississippi.

Obviously this was a different movie from the advertising.

The Help is not an easy film to review. There is so much emotional turmoil in the movie, because of its subject matter, some want to heap more praise on the film than it deserves because it dares to tackle a difficult subject. Others with to tear it apart with the viciousness of a hungry pitbull because it falls into so many clichés of this type of film. We have the white savior, naive to the plights of the blacks surrounding her all her life, who gets so inspired to do something she become the voice of the voiceless, by writing a book which gives them hope.

While much praise has been heaped on actress Viola Davis, her role as the main maid, to me, is akin to a glamorous actress who strips down the glamor to take a ‘demanding role’ for awards glory. Let’s see, you will be a black actress who will play a maid in early 60s Mississippi, which means you will have to do a lot of standing and holding a dignified resilience while white characters will insult you behind your back and your face. If you can show anger in your eyes when you turn your back, you are awards bound.

That isn’t an overly cynical statement. Movies like this, again because of subject matter, tend to go over the top with the casual racism as well as over saint-ifying the oppressed people. Some of the white female characters probably would have twirled mustaches to show their villainy if they weren’t women. Thankfully there was no sittin’ n’ grinnin’ moment where the maids sang and or danced, but we did get an ‘I loves me some chicken’ moment and there was the church scenes. The production had a TV dramedy feel, not a motion picture feel and Viola Davis seemed to be the only actor who realized it was a film. That was another factor that made her shine over the turgid material.

Being a man I was struck by how little we saw black men in the lives of the maids. A telling example of this was when Minny, the sassy maid, lost her job. She is on the phone with Aibileen, that’s Viola Davis’ character when Minny’s husband comes home, yells at her about losing her job, and then we see something thrown at her and shattering on the wall. Aibileen can hear this and slowly hangs up the phone. In the whole scene, you hear the husband’s voice but you never see him. He’s like a phantom that shows up to give her grief. Many days later, and it could be months later, after Minny gets a new house to work for, she has a cut over her eye, implying it was from her husband.

There is a ‘secret’ event that happens in the film which illustrates how dull this film is on the real racism in the film. It happens fairly early in the film and it is a cornerstone to motivations of some of the characters actions throughout the film. The question you have to ask yourself is if a maid who steals a ring can be picked up by the police, if using a white bathroom can get you fired, why would the secret event not end up with a lynching or killing? It is played off as humor, but in reality the maid who did it would have been killed, no two ways about it. Even if you want to dismiss it as the person being too shocked to do anything so drastic at the first instance, when she is reminded about it not once, not twice but at least three times over the span of at least six months or more in the course of the story, I would figure she would have someone take care of the problem maid. When the incident is published in the book, all this woman does is drive drunk in her car to confront the writer?

I suspect this film will win some awards for Viola Davis and maybe a few others in the cast. This will be similar to the clamor given to the Sandra Bullock film The Blind Side or with Driving Miss Daisy. It will make a lot of people feel good, but will give little insight to the real peril these maids faced during this time. People will laud the performances, which they should, but will overlook the cartoonish and simplistic images of intolerance and of overcoming adversity.

Here is a suggestion of a film to see which deals with the racial conditions of the time with the same melodrama but with much better results. Find Imitation of Life, a 1959 film directed by Douglas Sirk. It is a very similar story but handles the central issue of class and race carefully and without a television and politically correct sheen. It shows both the subtlety and cruelty of race in the time period.