Does The Help, Help?

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is, by any measure, a media phenomenon. On the January 15, 2012 New York Times Best Sellers list, The Help tops combined Print and E-Book sales and it is #1 in Trade Fiction. According to Box Office Mojo, as of January 5, 2012, the movie grossed $170 million in North America and $34 million in other territories, for a whopping worldwide total of $203,427,931. Add to all that the DVD of the film that sold just south of 3 million units since its release in early December 2011. In what some believe is our post-racial society it seems a lot of folks are still interested in race relations. Does interest and exploration of the pre-civil rights era do anything for race relations today? Does The Help help us going forward or does it keep us tethered to the past?

Kathryn Stockett’s story takes place in the 1960s, we are now more than a half century past that point in time and yet so much that is written or produced about race is about what occurred in the past. We’ve all benefitted from the courage and conviction of the women and men – the Abelines, Minnies and Medgars - who were the frontline of the civil rights movement but it’s time to change the focus and engage in a new narrative.

Over the last few years I found myself avoiding media that looked backward into the black experience in America. I know the problems already, we all do. Despite my preference for exploring the present and the future of race in America, I read The Help and I watched the movie. The experience left me wondering why aren’t we telling tales for the 21^st Century? Like any good story, shouldn’t we want to know what happens next?

My novel, Provenance, takes that forward looking view of what race now looks like in America. As one of my characters, Ella puts it:

We’ve loaded and unloaded enough trucks, scrubbed enough floors, welded enough seams and hauled enough garbage, we know how to work hard. That has never been our problem. The next step is to work smarter, not just harder; it is understanding the power of wealth and putting yourself in a place where you can use it to enrich yourself and others.

 

Ella chooses the art world as that place and there are others venues in the 21^st Century – finance, diplomacy, education, business and even literature and entertainment. There may still be remnants of 1960s style racism but the challenges to our shared racial future are different today. While there must always be reverence for the amazing things accomplished in the past, there is also enough content, compassion, conflict and culture to create a new narrative that helps us into the present minus the white uniforms, separate bathrooms and seats at the back of the bus. Perhaps my novel, Provenance, can be the media phenomenon for what’s next for race relations in the 21^st century.

Comments

[Donna]

Linda:
Thank you for your comment. Your perspective was similar to my own. My grandmother was a hotel maid. We never knew how hard and foul her job could be. Thank you for sharing your insight.

[Linda]

Actually The Help does help. Growing up my great aunts either were currently working as maids or had retired from that profession. All of their stories were told to me in the absence of details, such as "Mrs. Soandso had a party I worked last night." Well, I never knew what the party was like, I just new my Aunt Mildred came home late and was tired as hell.

Now we all know that maids were regularly seen in movies and the scenes were usually quick glimpses of a drink being poured or meals being served. However, the movie under discussion was such a detailed, daily account of the lives of these women that I literally cried through the whole thing. I had finally been given a glimpse into the type of life my aunts lived and I was appalled.

The movie allowed me to see their lives in a way I have ignored. Maybe I was in denial. But how was I supposed to know? There were no "take your daughters to work day" back then. Maybe they wanted to keep it from me. I will never know, they have all passed on.

But this movie can be shown to young girls today so that they will never forget what their families went through in order to give them a better life than they had themselves.

Personally I will never forget or take for granted their Help.