Yes, I’ve seen “The Help.”
I’ve seen “The Help” my entire life.
I saw “The Help” when Whoopi Goldberg was in it with Ray Liotta and I saw “The Help” when Whoopi Goldberg was in it with Doogie Howser M.D. The good white people who treat their coloreds just *like* they were people! And the coloreds sho does loves the chillren too.
Lawd, chile.
VO. MIT.
No doubt I’ll see “The Help 2011.” I watch a lot of movies. It’s a thing with me, but I saw some tweets today, from a woman I actually know in real life and have always had a pleasant online rapport with, that pissed me the FUCK off.
And I quote:
I’m more than a little sad & annoyed @ how The Help is being demonized by people w/an ax to grind & overlooking ANY of its other themes.
Dude.
DUUUUUDDEEEEEE!!! What do you mean “you people”? Er…I mean, people. O_o
Last winter, a white friend of mine, used the phrase “black chip on her shoulder” to dismiss the criticisms a black friend of mine had about a popular British sci-fi show.
GAAWWWDD, you negroes are always complaining about SOMETHING! The Oscars don’t nominate any black people? You complain. We make a hackneyed movie about stereotypical “mammies” in the 60s who are saved by the earnest “good white folk,” a flick GUARANTEED to get nominated, you complain. Jaysus what is it with you people and your axes and chips?!
And I guess since I brought it up, I will tell you. Here’s the problem: the po black folk who need savin’ are the only movies mainstream Hollywood ever tells. I wonder whether the woman who is all saddened by the black people with their axe grinding has seen any other film this year with more than three lead black characters. (And listen, don’t get me started on those movies, but if “The Help” is your *only* “black film” I side-eye you and hard.)
Also, in an environment where leading Republican candidates for President of the United States of America are signing statements that explicitly say that black children were BETTER OFF in slavery, it is up to leading academics, historians and journalists — of ALL RACES — to cut the knees out from under ANY dramatization of slavery or Jim Crow era “stories” that romanticize the degradation of black Americans.
The help didn’t clean houses and wipe the snot of white children because that shit was fun. They did it because that was ALL they were ALLOWED to do. Can you imagine a world where your mother, your grandmother and your daughter ALL had the SAME fate… keeping someone else’s household together for pennies? Cooking food that you’re not allowed to eat for people who you can’t sit next to on the bus? Miss me with the “oh, but these whites were different.” The “different” whites were the ones killed for protesting WITH black people. Just sayin.
And then there’s the white washing of the reality of being a domestic… I can’t for a SECOND imagine a movie being made, about say 1930s Germany, where the gist is that the Jews decided to leave Berlin and all move in together in the Polish countryside. Where, though they had to wear certain clothing and get fun tattoos, they managed to strike up a friendly camaraderie with the German guards and they’d play cards together and give the kind-hearted “good Nazis” advice on child rearing.
FUCK.
OUTTA.
HERE.
And you know what, if they MADE that movie AND I saw it AND LOVED IT, no way IN HELL would I tell Holocaust survivors or their descendants to shut up when they complained that the movie didn’t track with their reality. I would fall the hell back because dude, DUUUUUDDDDEEEEEE.
ARRRGGGGHHHH.
Okay, I’m done. DONE. Just. DONE.
