Last night was the LA premiere of The Help, which I don’t really want to see. I like Emma Stone, of course, and Viola Davis walks on water, but I’m still rather meh on the premise. Sure, I think it’s great that Hollywood made a film with a diverse, largely female cast. But I have lived in the South for most of my life, and Hollywood tends to patronize Southerners and Southern history. Anyway, back to the photos. Emma is the lead in the film, but judging from her red carpet appearance, she looks kind of pissed off about something. The dress is Chanel! It’s pretty, and I kind of like it, but Emma doesn’t look comfortable in it, which is a bad sign. I do like that Emma is usually pretty covered on red carpets – it’s refreshing for someone her age.
Allison Janney! God, I love her too. She’s wearing Dolce & Gabbana. The dress is kind of meh and I absolutely HATE Janney’s hair. But I still love her.
Octavia Spencer, designer unknown. That’s a beautiful color on her!
Bryce Dallas Howard continues her reign of unflattering maternity clothes in Kate Spade NY.
Jessica Chastain in Oscar de la Renta that I feel sure that she’s recycled from a previous red carpet. I really think I’ve seen her in this dress before. Eh.
Sissy Spacek and her daughter Schuyler Fisk. I love how mother and daughter look so much alike. I love that Sissy isn’t messing with her face, but I wish she would mess with her hair. She would look so cute with a shorter haircut!
Viola Davis in Escada… love the dress, love the color, love the flattering cut, love the age-appropriate-ness. Dislike the hair, though. It looks like a wig!
Photos courtesy of Fame.
Kaiser: Did you read the book? It is so good that I can’t put it down. Although you say you lived in the South, I don’t think you would recognize it in this book. It is hard to read at times but also laugh out loud funny.
I can’t say that I want to see the movie but I definitely recommend the book!
I read the book a while ago based on a friend’s recommendation. We both really liked the book a lot. I couldn’t put it down wanting to know what was going to happen next. We actually had said it could make a great movie. So when I saw it had been made into a movie I was really surprised how fast Hollywood works. How do they notice certain books?
However the preview makes the movie look like complete Crap. Based on the previews it looks like they turned the book into a Hollywood superficial and predictable yawn-fest. I’m not seeing it.
Awww….I give everyone a big ole thumbs up, bless their hearts…lol! Maybe Emma misses those big old waist flaps she’s been wearing.
The book is excellent. Read it in a day. I hope the movie is as good. Love Emma and Viola.
I absolutely loved the book, so I’m looking forward to the movie.
I didn’t love the book the way a lot of people did. But I am not a southern lit fan at all, so that could be my bias.
Agree with Kaiser on the Hollywood thing but I also do want to see this movie. It looks like something relaxing, cute and funny, and I’m sorry once in a while I want to see a comedy where farts aren’t the main go to punchline. Is that so much to ask for Hollywood?
Yay for Octavia Spencer finally getting a leading role! I loooove Allison Janney, CJ Cregg FTW! I’m really looking forward to the film. I loved the book so much; it was one of those where I couldn’t put it down and every spare minute I had, I was reading it.
I do plan on seeing it….in a few weeks at the discount theater. I haven’t read the book yet, but I plan to. I’m afraid that they are going to do the same thing in this film as the did to the Ya Ya Sisterhood–a really insightful and original book that dealt with a lot of real social issues, that subsequently had all its teeth knocked in the film version. I love Sandra Bullock, but she should be flogged for what she let happen to that film.
I’m sure Viola’s hair is some awful church lady wig. She is so much better than that.
LOVELOVELOVE all of these actresses. Congrats to Mary J. Blige for the soundtrack coup. Glad Hollywood FINALLY took notice of a southern, interacial story with a female ensemble cast. However, I am still officially boycotting this movie. Here’s why.
The chick that wrote this book is getting sued by the real HELP she used as inspiration, the old black women who worked in her neighborhood and raised her and her peers because she used them as uncredited and uncompensated inspiration.
As I have family members who also served in these jobs once upon a time, are still broke and struggling and still have very painful memories of this period (and The Bosses) in their lives, I can’t view this as entertainment or enlightenment. It’s just pain for us. Not enough time and distance has passed to make this palatable for a lot of African-American southerners who have to watch their stories told (yet again) through other eyes and still filtered through the lens of The Boss and his kids.
I do hope it does well so other, similar pictures will get greenlighted. Movies about female A-A civil rights workers and the sexism they experienced during the struggle, the Mississippi chinese who were discriminated against by both A-A’s and whites, or about white women who were the first in their field or industry in the south are long overdue. While I hope this movie opens the door and is successful to an audience who is just being introduced to this situation, I won’t be seeing this movie anytime soon.
I’ve gone off Emma Stone. I don’t think she’s as talented as everyone says. Gorgeous and funny, yes, but overexposed and overrated.
Nah, nah, & nah… my thoughts exactly. I’m so glad I learned about that controversy awhile ago, because she barely even bothered to change the names, and as a writer, that bothers me. As a human, it bothers me way more. It’s a very complex situation, and I hate white people being “the voice” for voiceless black communities, especially in this day and age.
However, the actresses are all good, and I hope the movie does well for audiences who take some good away from the perspective (maybe the screenwriters used some actual black experience for their script?)…
“The Help, ultimately, is best compared to Mean Girls playing in front of a blurry newscast of the Ole Miss riot.”
More in this well-written article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/lynn-crosbie/bestseller-novel-the-help-needs-help-with-its-history-homework/article2120638/page1/
@ Ally – Wow. Thanks for sharing.
While I am really glad this woman wrote this book from her perspective (because this is the USA and free speech is our right) and that it did get made into a movie, I can relate to a lot mentioned in this article.
As I said in a former post, I’m waiting for the book and movie called “The Boss” written by Anonymous Help. Then I might spend a chick flick, rainy Sunday watching them both, back-to-back.:-)
I don’t think Stockett set out to write the seminal novel of black oppression. Ally, your article seems to say that her novel can’t sit beside other writers as a choice because it doesn’t treat the subject matter with proper perspective. I enjoyed the book for what it was — an entertaining read that recalled memories of my childhood in the South and stories that my mother told me of HER childhood.
If someone wants to write a novel from the perspective of the help, I’d probably read that too.
Boycotting the movie makes no sense — Hollywood FINALLY puts out a movie about women with a cast of diverse women, to me, women need to support it because we vote with our wallet. Movies of a certain genre get made because they make money. So I’ll go see it, even though I think they probably butchered the book.
Emma makeup is horrible, as much as her hair.
@ JustJen – The problem is that The Bosses written by The Help would be doing good to get published and promoted by a big house, let alone to get optioned for a movie. I am so glad that you stated you would read it, but it has to get published first. To do that, it has to be written in a way that not only makes it readable but that makes it have mass-market appeal.
Plus, in real life, The Help is like, in their 70’s to 90’s. If they could have written it themselves or dictated it to another writer, the time to do that for most has probably passed. Most 90 year old women of color who can finally rest everyday in a senior citizen’s facility aren’t interested in revisiting their domestic past.
Meanwhile, their kids have dismissed all of that from their daily memory for a reason, too. Think Hoke’s daughter from “Driving Miss Daisy” who is now a dermatologist/grandmother herself or some such, writing her and her family’s view of his driving years. Boolie and Daisy might not be so lovable and quirky from that perspective, hence, no book or movie deal when the mirror is moved to reflect the other side of the car.
I’m not even talking about anything antagonistic, racially-retaliatory or that would reflect The Bosses in a totally unfavorable light. It’s just uncomfortable, for people of any race or background who demanded respect and loyalty from those they once had power over, when they are made to realize that respect given for employment purposes and admiration/affection do not always go hand in hand.
I mean, if I were one of these children who was raised by one of these maids, to realize that the woman who seemed to lovingly raise me didn’t love me at all and only did it because my parents paid her to? Meanwhile, my momma treated that lady like dirt and my daddy couldn’t spend a great deal of quality time with me because he was too busy out fighting to SAVE segregation? And, he was forcing himself on The Help so I never got to have a relationship with by black, half-sibling? Might sound far-fetched, but who’s to say that isn’t The Strom Thurmond Story if told from the perspective of The Help. Now THAT movie? I would love to see.
I really enjoyed the book, and while found some parts amusing, did not find it a “comedy” as the trailer seems to reveal this movie as. I’m not against all books made into movies, but I won’t be seeing this one.
Here’s the take of the awesome commentator/professor Melissa Harris-Perry:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/melissa-harris-perry-breaks-down-the-help-ahistorical-and-deeply-troubling/
“What kills me,” she concluded, “is that in 2011, Viola Davis is reduced to playing a maid.”
I respect that many of you enjoyed the book. Nonetheless, it seems that the movie is a historically/culturally tone-deaf and therefore trite take on a period of deep, significant upheaval.
Moviemakers: if all your non-white characters are servants with no lives of their own, your movie is deeply flawed. This goes for literal cases like this, as much as for movies like The Adjustment Bureau, where Anthony Mackie gets a lead role only to spend it worrying exclusively about Matt Damon’s personal life.
I saw the Help yesterday, and enjoyed it. It wasn’t nearly as good as the book, but most movies aren’t. As to it being a comedy, there were funny parts in it, but there were scenes where I cried too. I definitely would not call it a comedy.
Re: “What kills me,” she concluded, “is that in 2011, Viola Davis is reduced to playing a maid.”
Viola Davis NOT playing a maid in this movie would be incongruent.
Kaiser,
First off I love this site and I love your writing style! 🙂 I haven’t read the book but black domestic servitude is a large part of American history, as is slavery, Jim Crow segregation laws in the South, and other forms of oppression like sexism and homophobia. I’m not sure exactly what you meant by Hollywood patronizing Southern history, but it is what it is. I’ve recently done a lot of research on the history of racism in the U.S., and while not everyone from the South supported the policies and actions of lawmakers and groups like the KKK, too many people went along with it (as did Northerners). Your relatives may have never owned slaves or even been around during Jim Crow, but it’s the history of the South and the real history isn’t ever even close to being accurately portrayed on-screen.
Having said all that, maybe you meant something else. There’s just still such a widespread denial of what really went on during that time period. I haven’t read the book so I’m not sure how it handles it, and I’m sure Hollywood found a way to screw it up. P.S. I love Fassbender too!
…or imagine that you spent the overwhelming majority of your parenting time and energies were spent on kids who are being trained to eventually view you as a relic mammy from your past you would naturally discard once ‘life’ began? You think a domestic didn’t understand it, didn’t live with that in minds when working, didn’t have that reinforced by employers? And what is the prize for having instilled so much into the posterity project? I think the answer is ‘f&^% all’. Nostalgia’s not good compensation. How about working for the guy who is actively campaigning for your continued degredation, effectively renderinging your optionless and yet complicit? What about being a latchkey for years on end with no one to teach you, help you or dote on you because that figure is out giving what is owed to you to some other family. Maybe it’s too close to home but I just don’t feel bad for the kids being transistioned out of a babysitter when that babysitter’s kids have no one. You don’t get those early years back. I’m sure they felt affection for the kids, but if they didn’t, I wouldn’t fault them for a nanosecond. And what’s bothering people is that in this case, as with so many others, we’re being served a story of black struggle…as viewed through the lens of a spunky white kid who doesn’t with in with her own. Blackness isn’t is the story, it’s the uplifting thing of struggle that isn’t the structure of the house, just a disingenuous tapestry on which the story of whiteness is written, shouldn’t you feel empowered, co-opted for an alternate agenda like that? Again?
Mmm, not really.
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