Based on Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 worldwide bestseller, The Help tells the story of African American maids who raise children of white families in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s. A story of racism and feminism, through the eyes of three women and three friends, who join their voices to be heard in a world that doesn’t give them space. READ ALSO: Why Green Book is a must see film
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Here are the reasons why “The Help” is a film that everyone should see. It tells about racism through women
Often treated with paternalism, the issue of racism is approached here from an unprecedented angle. From three women, two black and one white, who also position themselves as feminists in the fight against racial discrimination. Being black, anti-racist and feminist is a revolutionary act in the America of those years, but equally complicated and being white, anti-racist and feminist.
These black women raise white children and after twenty years those children become their masters. We love them and they love us… but they can’t even use the bathroom in our house. […] Margaret Mitchell has exalted the figure of the mummy, who dedicates her life to a white family, but no one has ever asked the mummy what her life had been of hers . history
A great little miracle that was voiced by the writer Kathryn Stockett, who entrusted the narration to an otherwise submerged polyphony of voices. In fact, the voices of Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, two African American maids, together with that of “Skeeter”, a young white writer, lead the story. Because if it is true that the winners tell the story, the challenge of literature, art and cinema is to overturn the perspective, to give a voice to the defeated, to those who have changed history by staying in the rear, who have fought day after day for something to change.
They killed my son. And he fell carrying beams to the sawmill. A truck crushed his lung. The foreman threw the body into a truck bed. He went to the Negro hospital, he dumped him in front of him and honked the horn… There was nothing to be done, so I took my baby home. I put him on that couch. He died in front of me … and he was twenty-four, Miss Skeeter, those are the best years of life. When the anniversary of his death comes, I can’t breathe every year, but for you it’s just another bridge day. If she stops, what I wrote and what he wrote, everything that was him, will die with him. It is a story of courage
It takes courage to make a small revolutionary gesture every day and these women teach us it, triggering an irreversible change inside and outside of them with their words and actions. Because, at times, a gesture or a right word can do a lot, especially when they arrive and impose themselves in the eyes of others for their contained, never excessive or violent strength.
Courage does not always equate to prowess. Courage is having the daring to do what is right, despite the weakness of our flesh. And God says to us all, He urges us all and He urges us all to love. Amen. You see, love, as set as an example by our Lord Jesus Christ, is to be ready, willing to put ourselves in danger for our neighbor. And by neighbor I mean your friend, your sister, your brother, your neighbor and your enemy. If you can love your enemy, you already have victory in your hand
