Problematics Behind "The Help"

"Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers."
- Association of Black Women Historians

What? When The Help premiered in 2011, it was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey and became one of the most popular feel-good stories in America. Emma Stone plays a charming, white, proto-feminist writer fresh out of college. She dares to document the struggles of black maids in the face of the her racist Southern community. But how does the film industry fail to structure the real stories of these women? The film is starkly devoid of the ongoing and brutal sexual harassment and assault of female domestics, and depicts black men as violent, cruel, or absent. Not to mention "Skeeter" Phelan's role as the white savior to these oppressed women. The film vaguely takes place in 1963 (indicated by the assassination of Medgar Evers), a harrowing time in African-American history; in the film, this is transformed into an enlightening and happy experience for white people.

 Additionally, there is no historical basis for "Skeeter" Phelan's project or book that becomes published. It is a way for a white woman to rewrite the history of Civil Rights, effectively whitewashing the 1960s.

Dana Ammann