Upon my first (and second) reading of "The Help," Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 blockbuster hit about Black maids in 1960’s Mississippi, my white heart leapt. When 23-year-old Skeeter Phalen comes up with an idea to write a book about the racism ravaging the little town of Jackson, she befriends two interviewees, whose journeys unfold alongside Skeeter’s in alternating first-person chapters. The three of them traverse the racist landscape surrounding them. They set the town on fire. A fire of wokeness, we white people are made and pleased to think.
The way I saw it back then, this story wove a beautiful friendship between a young white writer and the Black women to whom she was providing a platform. Skeeter was ambitious and good-hearted, Aibileen was wise and perseverant, and Minnie was full of that kind of conviction we dare to have. After seeing the film at 11 years old, I thought, Here’s an admirable story, one with real moral character. Nothing like that corny Blind Side.
Oof.
Earlier this month, “The Help” was trending on Netflix in the wake of events in response to the murder of George Floyd. In fact, the movie was the number one film streaming. White people, we have so much work to do, and if you’re not sure why, I’ll tell you why.
I know the moral intent is there. At least, hell, I hope it is. However, intent can’t excuse offenses of unethical representation and whitewashed history. In the end, the book and movie’s mistakes are what becomes the lessons for its white audience, if they are to see those mistakes.
The flaws in white-written Black narratives lie in mostly subconscious realms of prejudice and misunderstandings of Blackness in America, and that itself is a plague of whiteness. An example of this, and where "The Help" makes error through Skeeter’s position as a writer for the maids, is the White Savior Narrative, for which authors think their heroic leads encourage love of Black people but in actuality remove their agency and voice, depicting Black people as incapable of helping themselves, and in the end glorify white non-racists who are far from anti-racists and are at most times disconnected from the reality of race in America—and the ways in which to be a true ally rather than someone who, to put it directly, hogs all the attention. We call this white-centering.
My initial interpretation of "The Help" must be noted because it was surely the experience of millions of fans, a terrifying thought to me now. After all, over 11 million copies were sold in 10 years. "The Help" slipped under so many white readers’ radar, including mine, and that’s because we have so much to learn going forward on the social implications and requirements of Black narratives by white authors—for whenever these should exist at all, which is usually when a perspective of whiteness is needed.
"The Help" portrays various techniques of remolding the uncomfortable reality of 1960s Black life in order to provide white readers an easy, fun, and optimistic lens through which they can feel better about the country’s past and continuing injustices. Stockett writes from Black women’s perspectives in a dialect that when juxtaposed with Skeeter’s prim and proper narration imply a superiority of white speech. The maid characters are emotionally attached to their white counterparts, depicting people who don’t seem to mind that they’ve been subjected to a occupation that descends from the institution of slavery and speaks to the employment disparity crisis our country maintains today. Minnie is the Angry Black Woman stereotype, while Abilene’s complexities are dependent on the idea of the Strong Black Woman. The white characters, though, lie at the center of the Black characters’ attention and thus at the center of this fictional universe.
When the film was released in 2011, Stockett’s story reached wider audiences and opened itself up to the world of film critics, where the book’s errors were scrutinized in the harsher judgments that the more generous and interpretive world of book criticism doesn’t produce in so great a quantity or to so wide an audience of consumers of criticism. What is the literary equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes, after all?
Roxanne Gay wrote that she was “convinced the movie was satirical,” and that review-aggregator opens its consensus with “Though arguably guilty of glossing over its racial themes,” before praising the performances and essentially dismissing the significance of what it has begun to identify. Viola Davis herself spoke with the New York Times last year about her one regret with the film, arguing that, while the Black characters were satisfactory, the story focused on its white characters and didn’t truly convey the realities of life for its Black maids. There was a missed opportunity for reality in a context of white audiences not seeing that reality.
Meanwhile, initial reviews of the book were mostly full of praise, even those coming from major publications. The Guardian wrote that the prose “merge fact and fiction perfectly.” The Washington Post shared a review claiming the book conveyed a “nuanced variation on…theme that strikes every note with authenticity…[this] page-turner…brings new resonance to…moral issues.” But there were still, thankfully, those who challenged the novel. Kirkus Review wrote, “This genuine page-turner offers a whiff of white liberal self-congratulation that won’t hurt its appeal.” Even this comment gives in to the hype.
One would wonder what Stockett had to say about all this. In an August 2011 interview with CBS, a rare public comment for the private figure, she said she’s “still not entirely comfortable with what [she’s] written. And [she] know[s she] didn't get it all right, but it's so important for people to explore what it must feel like to be in someone else's shoes.” In October of that same year, Stockett told The Guardian, “at the same time, I was mortified that I was doing the very thing I'd been taught not to do, which was to touch on the issue of race, to highlight the things that separate us. I’m still thinking I’m going to get into trouble. I’m still not comfortable with what I’ve done. It's a strange thing.” Clearly she was in the process of realizing the book’s damages. It is useful to note the seemingly good intentions. "The Help" was meant to be an honest portrayal of that time and place. And perhaps it was honest; but only of Stockett’s own perception of that time and place in retrograde.
Books and their authors are complicated. The mistakes they make are not justified by this fact, and they aren’t excused. They can be understood for what they are, and that can help us grow as readers and movie-goers. Dismissing a story because of its flaws is throwing away our reminders of those flaws and why we must continually work against them. There’s also the utility of looking at a work as artifact, in this case a scar, a time capsule item that reveals a piece of a culture’s ills, not in appreciation for what it was but in necessity to examine our change.
Once I saw "The Help" for the harms it held, I lost my love for it, and as unconscious oppressors, we white people must respect that kind of loss as essential progress.
Stockett’s book challenges us to identify the strengths (in this case, few) and weaknesses (in this face, plentiful) of a piece of fiction, to stray away from “cancel culture,” to instead appreciate the good, condemn and learn from the bad, and to realize that nothing is perfect, so what’s the use in striving to only read “perfect” books? This isn’t to imply that we should run to the bookshop and pick up "The Help" to read about race. Please don’t. Pick up a Black-voiced American classic instead, like If Beale Street Could Talk, or Invisible Man, or Beloved, or Their Eyes Were Watching God, or The Hate U Give, or The Color Purple, the last of which offers another conversation, in regard to Walker’s anti-Semitic views. These are just a few that come to mind. My mind, that is, and why they came to my mind is something I might want to challenge.
The most mature way to understand art is to see where it succeeds and where it fails, not to disregard or forgive those failings, but to push them toward creating a more complex relationship with the art.
When it comes to “The Help,” it is irresponsible and downright harmful to ignore the story's racism.