Having not read the (very popular) novel on which The Help is based, I can't speak to the way the book dealt with similar themes, but the film version falls into just about every pitfall a film like this can. When a movie about a specific ethnic group, culture or time period is made by a person (or group of people) not from that same ethnic group, culture or time period, there's always the risk the film will simply be exploiting these circumstances and characters for cheap emotion and sentiment without ever truly understanding what these people went through in the first place. And The Help, unfortunately, stumbles very badly over this particular pitfall.
Though the several white women in the film deal with issues like who they should marry and whether or not they're good mothers and the several black characters deal with issues like how to make it home at night without getting killed and whether or not they should leave the husbands who beat them, the film nonetheless equates the struggles between the two groups as more or less equal. They all receive more or less equivalent attention and focus despite the demonstrable difference in magnitude between them. This false equivalency is probably The Help’s most damning failure. It makes even the supposedly heroic main character (Skeeter, played by an uncharacteristically muted Emma Stone) seem tone deaf and clueless. And it makes the outright deplorable characters (like Bryce Dallas Howard's segregationist Hilly) into cartoonish, mustache-twirling villains.
That even the most progressively liberal character in the film doesn't fully understand how tone deaf and clueless she is isn't the problem, however. The problem is that the film doesn't understand how tone deaf and clueless she is either, instead choosing to celebrate her exploitation of a dozen black house maids, even going so far as to have the maids congratulate her for it despite the loss of gainful employment and potential threat to their lives her exploitation represents.
There's a tendency, when making a film set in a time and place so unlike our own, for the audience to pat themselves on the back for not being like the deplorable characters they see on screen. (Similar problems, I would argue, have plagued HBO's Boardwalk Empire.) The virulent strain of racism that dominated the Jackson, Mississippi of 1962 (as depicted here at least) is so unsubtle that it's very easy for most-- or even all-- of the characters to come off as naïve and hopelessly backwards. The reaction goes something like this: Oh, look how deplorable they all are. And yet how quaint. We would never behave like that today.
That, of course, is entirely not the point. But the lack of subtlety gets in the way of a more accurate reading of the character traits depicted here, namely that if you just go along with the way things have always been done, there's a pretty good chance you're going to look foolish in fifty or sixty years. It takes a very skillful filmmaker to tease out that particular theme and get a mainstream audience to comprehend it. Tate Taylor, unfortunately, is not that filmmaker. And The Help is content to simply revel in the fact that we're not as openly racist as the women of Jackson, Mississippi in 1962.
That the film sees Skeeter's actions as unequivocally heroic is its other major failure. A young white woman of wealth and privilege, Skeeter, like every other in woman in the Junior League of Jackson, was largely raised by a black maid (Constantine, in her case) while their mothers did more important things like play bridge. That Skeeter seems to be the only one in her social circle to realize the absurdity of this situation makes it difficult for her to continue perpetuating this deplorable tradition. In short, she wants out. She wants to be a writer in New York City. And to get there, she convinces Aibileen (Viola Davis), Minny (Octavia Spencer) and a dozen other black house maids to tell her their stories so she can publish them, sell some books and get the hell out of Mississippi. While clearly much subtler, Skeeter's actions are no less exploitative than those of the other women in the Junior League. In fact, by being up front about their intentions, the other women are arguably more honest about the way they see the black women they exploit.
Late in the film, Hilly, for all intents and purposes the antagonist in the story (though the greater existential threat of violence from white racists hangs in the air throughout), accuses Skeeter of being selfish. The film treats this moment as absurd. Clearly Hilly is the one who's selfish. She's the one who wants things to stay as they are despite the pain and anguish of the black underclass. Everything Skeeter did was noble, heroic and even altruistic, right? That's how the film sees her: as a hero. When Aibileen and Minny come to see Skeeter at the end of the film, they're not upset at the way they've been exploited. They're dancing with joy because Skeeter split the proceeds from the book with them ($46 dollars each). Of course, Hilly is absolutely correct. Skeeter's actions, though shrouded in nobility, are as selfish as Hilly's (or anyone else's in the film). And because of its subtlety, Skeeter's exploitation is arguably even more nefarious.
That the film clearly doesn't understand this marks it as similarly exploitative. Having the two characters who are most exploited thank their exploiter for the privilege marks the film as incredibly inane. The Help doesn't understand the subtle ways in which these people have been abused, only the larger, more obvious ways. It is indeed terrible that they had to ride in the back of the bus and use separate toilets; but it's also pretty damn awful that someone like Skeeter could use their hardships and tragedies as a vehicle to self-discovery and a dream job in New York. That a white woman of privilege achieves success on the backs of poor black maids is hardly laudatory, even if she does so while being real nice and understanding and making them feel good about themselves. But, gee, isn't it swell that we're not as openly racist as these people? I'm so glad we live in 2011.
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