The Help (2011): Film Review and Cultural Awareness Analysis

Introduction: Setting and Overview

The film The Help (2011), adapted for the screen and directed by Tate Taylor from the novel by Kathryn Stockett, attempts to tackle heavy and complex subject matter from a questionable perspective. The film is set in the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi — two details that make it as loaded and complex as it can possibly be. The 1960s were the Civil Rights era in America, and Jackson, Mississippi was a dangerous place. It was home to Confederate sympathies and was a place where hundreds of innocent Black people had been lynched, among many other horrors they suffered. This review focuses on two characters: Skeeter Phelan, the main character played by Emma Stone, and Minny Jackson, played by Octavia Spencer.

Emma Stone's character Skeeter is perhaps one of the most problematic figures in a film that is already very problematic. The film attempts to tell the story of marginalized women who survived the Jim Crow era, one of the ugliest periods in American history. Instead, the film teeters on the edge of being a "white savior" movie, attempting to tell the story of these marginalized women through the lens of a brave and spunky woman who is trying to help them — Skeeter.

Skeeter Phelan and the White Savior Problem

Stone's character has just graduated from college, and her experiences away from home have created a sense of dissonance between the people she grew up with and the realities of the wider world. Her mother (Allison Janney) is incredibly ill and wants her to focus on finding a husband. Skeeter continues to spend time with her old friends in town and edit the Women's League paper, but she is eager to become a legitimate writer and establish herself through a serious piece of writing. She gets the idea to write a book interviewing the Black women of the town, who have worked as housekeepers. The book will detail and discuss their experience helping to run the households of white women and raising white children.

While this might seem well intentioned, the film gets off to a clunky start. The Skeeter character, however sympathetic, fails to be anything more than the hero of a movie about white people trying to help Black people, rather than a film offering authentic and unfettered stories of the Black experience.

In terms of cultural awareness and intercultural adjustment skills, Skeeter registers at a relatively early stage in her own journey. Her time at college likely brought her to Stage One: recognizing that cultures other than her own exist. When the film opens, she appears to be at Stage Two — rejecting the backwards and racist culture of her hometown and being unable to comfortably mesh with her old friends. By the end of the film, one could argue that Skeeter reaches Stage Three, having made a definitive decision to permanently reject the culture in which she was raised. Whether she has meaningfully selected a new culture, or whether her departure for New York is simply meant to imply that, is left unclear.

Skeeter's Cultural Awareness Journey

To develop her cultural awareness, Skeeter must create distance from the family and friends who previously served as the primary transmitters of her cultural values. She undermines and criticizes many of the complaints her friends make about their Black maids and subtly holds up a mirror to the injustices these women have suffered. Her journey begins when she reaches out to the Black maids of her neighborhood to write the book. Much of what Skeeter accomplishes involves rejecting the historically created solutions to race relations that governed life in the Deep South — the idea that Black and white people should not socialize, and that the experiences of Black women are unimportant.

In short, Skeeter must choose individualism over collectivism. She must view herself as an outsider within her own community as the starting point of her journey. She also has to learn new forms of social negotiation — specifically, how to earn the trust of the women around her whose stories she hopes to tell.

Conclusion: The Help in Broader Context

For Skeeter, the journey is a simple one. She is the archetypal good-hearted white person: she wants to help the Black women, and they are happy to assist her in achieving her goals. This dynamic makes the film far too comfortable and self-congratulatory. For the Black women of the film, the struggle continues long after Skeeter's story ends — but the film shows little interest in exploring that reality with any depth.

All things considered, it is good that a film like The Help exists, as it suggests that Hollywood is finally beginning to reckon with the idea that the stories and experiences of non-white people are important. However, Hollywood still needs to recognize that Black people do not exist solely to help white people achieve their goals, with their own ambitions treated as secondary to the main plot. The film attempts to tackle subject matter involving one of the ugliest periods of American history in one of the most dangerous places in the country — Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Rights era — and yet it wants to do so in a way that is neither ugly nor truly honest about the anguish of that period. It wants to approach a heinous topic in a manner that leaves audiences feeling good.

For this reason, one could easily argue that The Help is a dishonest and problematic film, even while acknowledging its good intentions. Despite its flaws, it has strong moments, interesting characters, and represents a transformation in Hollywood storytelling — one that, however imperfect, is a step in the right direction.

The Help. Directed by Tate Taylor, performances by Emma Stone and Viola Davis. DreamWorks, 2011.

Holcomb, Thomas K. Introduction to American Deaf Culture. Oxford University Press, 2013.