The Help

It will be hard for me to solely write about the movie, without referencing the book as well. First off, I should say I do not think that I would recommend seeing the movie, without first reading the book. Unfortunately, movies cannot capture every single storyline written in a 500 page book. On the other hand, what movies can do, that books cannot, is show you, and make you feel things through the visuals that you cannot get by just reading words off of a page.

For me, this was the greatest part about seeing The Help in motion picture. I was able to see these characters in real life and have their stories truly come to life for me. I laughed with them. I cried with them. For those that have not read the book, it is about 1960's Jackson, Mississippi and a group of women from the southern town that decide to write a book about what it is like to work as "the help" for white families in Jackson. The character that decides to write the book is Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) who is a recent college graduate of Ole Miss and an aspiring "serious" writer. After returning home from school, post-graduation,  Skeeter finds her maid growing up, Constantine, to no longer be working with her family. Throughout the book and film, Skeeter is in a constant struggle with her mother trying to find out the true story as to why Constantine, the woman who raised her, suddenly left the family she worked for, for 27 years.

It is a fact that Skeeter is from Jackson, but it is evident that she never belonged there. She comes back from college questioning everything she grew up knowing to be normal. In search of meaning and understanding of the world she lives in, Skeeter sets out to write The Help: an expose of sorts from the point of view of the help (the maids) in Jackson. Aibileen and Minnie are the two African American maids that set out on this journey with Skeeter.

The journey for these women was not easy. They set out to write this book during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. The nation was in a state of disarray with the death of President Kennedy and an approaching march on Washington, D.C. by Dr. King. It was a very dangerous time in the United States, and a terrifying time in the deep south. This movie, this book, is a story of courage and strength. I have no idea what it was like to live in that time. I have no idea what it is like to work as a maid, to make below minimum wage, raising someone else's children, and still be treated like a second class citizen, often by the families that I worked for. I have no idea what it is like to be forced into a working environment, because I literally had no other option.  I do not know what a life like this is like, but I have a new found respect for the women that came before me, and what they endured- what my own great grandmother and great aunts endured as maids in 1960's Virginia, just so I could have the life I have now.

This isn't a movie about blacks or whites. It is not a movie about civil rights and the Civil Rights Movement. It is a movie about women. It is a movie about people and about this world that we live in and this life that we lead. It forces you to ask questions and it gives new meaning to the phrase, if you don't know where you came from, you cannot truly know where you're going. The Help shows us where we came from,  helps us understand where we are, and makes us realize that we still have so  much further to go.

Read The Help. After that, watch the film. I can guarantee that no matter how you feel after reading it, after watching it, you will certainly have felt something and it will be very real, and this in itself is very rare in entertainment, but very important.