As the latest addition to the “white altruist” genre of cinema, The Help is most effective in its deviation from how it is portrayed through its trailer. This is not to say that the film is a failure or falls short of any expectations. Rather, it exceeds them. However, previews depict it as another incarnation of a film that allays nefarious social issues through comical rebellion. Prior to my viewing of the film, the most relevant example of this is when Minny (Octavia Jackson) defiantly enters the bathroom of Hily Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), who demands that she exit immediately. Minny doesn’t relieve herself, but does flush the toilet, an aural signal that she has soiled the restroom; to wit, Hily screams, and the trailer then cuts to the smiling face of Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone).
However, the preview’s comical clips do not do The Help justice. Rather than amusing, this scene is sad, appalling, and disturbing. The circumstance that drives Minny away from her designated outhouse to the Holbrook’s manicured toilet is a hurricane, God’s subtle reminder that death discerns not between races, regardless of the “Home Health Sanitation Initiative” – one penned by Hily, whose justification for such a proposition is based on her belief that “they carry different diseases than we do.” Despite the torrential downpour and permission granted from Missus Walters (Sissy Spacek) – Hily’s mother and a senile woman who is most lucid in her demented moments – Hily prohibits Minny from using their bathroom, leaving her with little recourse than to either go outside or sneak in unnoticed.
Clearly she chooses the latter, but as she squats to relieve her bladder, the knock on the door fails to evoke laughter; rather, the expression on Minny’s face bespeaks fear. Not that Hily will beat her, but that she will be fired, and, in turn, be blacklisted from the rest of the homes in Jackson. So, without going, Minny stands, contemplates, breathes, and shrugs amidst the sounds of a curt, condescending Hily. And then she flushes the toilet; but, there is no upbeat music that screams “triumph!” The white overlord doesn’t get her comeuppance — yet. Rather, her blood curdling scream suggests the earnest fear that Hily holds of catching “black” – despite the overriding, ironical theme within the film that shows black maids entrusted to raise the young white children of the white elite. And, it is in this moment of defiance, and in the crux of this juxtaposition ,that the audience feels Minny’s despair and helplessness.
The Help is too earnest to be poverty porn or an alleviation of white guilt. Instead, it’s a study in biopolitics, one that looks at the indentured servitude of African Americans as well as the subjugation of the wealthy, white, elite women whose positions as trophies and, ultimately, broodmares make them nearly as fungible as the laborers they employ.
The similarities illustrated between the two do not absolve Hily of her racism or Jackson of its backwards ideologies. However, there is a sadness evinced that depicts the subjugated woman of the upper-class hegemony as rulers over the subjugated woman of the lower-class minority. What’s also glaring is the ignorance of both sects. It appears that, towards the end, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) understands this paradox more fully than anyone else, but there are subtleties throughout the movie that drive the point home, most notably the subtle cuts between Aibileen repairing and preparing her wig for the next day while Charlotte Phelan (Allison Janney) does the same. Granted, Charlotte suffers from cancer, so her wig has a different purpose, but the other woman within Jackson all don their coifs with such similar style that it’s hard to believe only she and Aibileen are wearing wigs.
In a sense, the crux of the film – the use of the indoor outhouse – exemplifies the tension that exists between the ruling and the ruled. In other words, there needs to be some sort of separation – a dehumanizing edict – that prevents the confusion of black maid and white mother, particularly since the former is tasked with raising the progeny of the latter. The line between biological mother and employed caretaker is further blurred when the separation between husband and wife is seen within the Jackson community. Marriage, it seems, is an institution suitable for the posterity and the perpetuation of lineage rather than any other human connection, which leads to the husbands’ repeated dismissal of their wives and seemingly non-existent conversation between the two. All interactions seem to occur in the public realm at banquets and balls. Aside from then, the women play bridge with each other while exchanging pies and gossip. Meanwhile, the men are mostly absent. Perhaps at work, but not at home.
So, this is where the bathroom issue rears its head: the need to transform the most quotidian of human functions into something that designates one as an “other.” In other words, the construction of separate bathrooms for the help creates an illusion that degeneration – particularly black degeneration – does not occur within the confines of a white home. Moreover – and perhaps most importantly — regeneration, the byproduct of natural degeneration, via a black maid — is disallowed. Ostensibly, the only degeneration that takes place, does so in a separate quarter that resides outside of the house. In effect, the “Home Health Sanitation Initiative” removes degenerating filth from the home itself by the removal of the black servant. Clearly, Hily’s theory is both fallacious and illogical, but the exclusion of degeneration conversely suggests that generation, or — in the case of procreation – occurs within the home. Therefore, Hily’s initiative is not merely cruel and racist, but a method by which she separates her household into regenerative and degenerative social spheres where the influence of the black maid on the white children is occluded. By further disenfranchising Minny, Hily attempts to justify her own existence as mother, progenitor, regenerator, and caregiver, despite the fact that she’s only accountable for two of the four.
Even though The Help is deeply political and moving, it avoids wielding an agenda through a fifty-pound metaphor stick. The symbolism, for the most part, is subtle, as is the exposition. One of the finest achievements of this film is the actresses, primarily Viola Davis and Octavia Jackson, both of who should receive Academy Award nominations, and as of today, I would give the overall edge to Davis, who had already been nominated for her brief but powerful turn in Doubt. Characteristically, Davis brings her strengths to this films as well. Reminiscent of Mo’Nique’s performance in Precious, Davis plays Aibileen as an internally bifurcated woman torn between pride and self-preservation, but it never veers into the hyperbolic. Rather, the most heart-rending, touching, and funny moments are when she tempers any external emotion, only allowing elation, sadness, depression, or despair to subtly crest through her face in the form of a momentarily trembling chin, a subtle tear, a smile that forces itself through the very corner of her mouth but soon recedes in the presence of her employers. Davis’ strengths in The Help reside in subtlety, something that makes the film so much the better.
As with any movie, there are a handful of flaws: Emma Stone does a fine job as Skeeter, but, as an actress, her facial expressions and mannerisms have become predictable. At times, the flared nostrils and shocked expression she dons are reminiscent of her memorable statement to Ryan Gosling that “It’s like you’ve been Photoshopped” in last summer’s Crazy, Stupid Love. She gave a fine performance in that film as well, but I found myself watching Emma Stone rather than Skeeter. In the same vein, the love story within the film feels forced and, honestly, unnecessary. It’s an issue; then it isn’t; then it’s over. Perhaps Kathryn Stockett’s book, from which The Help was adapted, frames the relationship better and gives it more depth, but, in the film, it only served to add fifteen minutes. In the end, those are pretty venial sins given that any hiccup is quickly remedied by Davis and Jackson.
