Racism In The Help

Decent Essays
Dana Stevens is a movie critic for online magazines. In her review of the motion picture, The Help, Stevens comes to the following supposition. “The Help, written and directed by Tate Taylor from the novel by Kathryn Stockett, belongs to the Driving Miss Daisy tradition of feel-good fables about black-white relations in America, movies in which institutional racism takes a backseat to the personal enlightenment of one white character.” Stevens describes the characters; Aibileen and Minny, two black housekeepers; as “tremendous” and “delightful.” The movie is filled with emotional influence, as well as racial confliction and dramatic social supremacy between upper and lower class women. The Help sheds light on important issues not only

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    The Help features a strong protagonist, Aibileen, an African American maid. She is a warm, compassionate woman who bears racial oppression with a quiet resilience. The bitterness over the death of her son prompts Aibileen to help Miss Skeeter reveal the truth about how “white” women treat their maids. Her honourable principles and desire to hold Jackson accountable for the oppression of black domestic workers, gives her the strength to continue working on the project, despite many dangers threatening her. Aibileen is always captured wearing grey-and-white uniforms, blending in with the starched tablecloths and sideboard doilies.…

    • 225 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis: The Help by Kathryn Stockett The Help is a novel written in 2009 by Kathryn Stockett that has been featured on the New York Time’s best-sellers list. The story is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s and tells the story of black maids working in white households. The story addresses issues such as racism and gender equality roles.…

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Which accounted for the fact that white people lived on the rich valley floor in that little river town in Ohio, and the blacks populated the hills above it, taking small consolation in the fact that every day they could literally look down on the white folks”(Marrison 5). The Help includes more of a positive effect where the characters are more positive or good than evil. Skeeter and Celia (who hires Minny after she gets fired form her other boss), are both good characters toward the maids. Skeeter communicates with the maids to get stories written down and acts if they were white and Celia acts very cheerful and respectful towards Minny where Celia want to sit next to Minny to eat together(Taylor). Aibileen is another important where she takes care the child of her boss and really looks out for her and cares a lot as well as if it were her real child.…

    • 1514 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Help focuses on the maids and how they are treated by the white women, which is very poorly. Skeeter, a young journalist, who believes that no matter what ethnicity you are, you shall be treated…

    • 1018 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Andrews quotes, “in “The Help” Aibileen’s story is tightly tied to those of white women around her,” (354). Andrews supports that pop-culture shows other minority groups of being unsupportive and fragile without the being of a majority group which Hollywood showed in “The Help;” Reason being since a black women was a maid and a white women was the “ruling” characters. Either way, pop-culture adorns using historically brought down scenarios today to be overt and oppressive of some race. This is not only racial discriminate but rather redefining what it means to…

    • 1669 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The movie the help is about a group of maids and their relationship with a white female journalist. Rather than a movie about the dark racial past, the movie shatters some common stereotypes. The movie shows that in a time when Jim Crow laws were still standing that Caucasian Americans and African Americans can come together for a common cause. The movie starts off with Aibileen talking to Skeeter telling her about where she was born and what she does with the family she works for. In the movie the journalist, whose name is Skeeter, comes back from college and is hoping to become a writer.…

    • 1424 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lastly but most importantly, white supremacists oppress the black community through murder. In the poem, it shows us that white supremacists want to oppress the voices of blacks which explains why they murdered Medgar Evers because, “A finger fired the trigger to his name” (Dylan line 2). The murderer shot him because of what he believed in. In The Help, it also shows us that white supremacists kill blacks that are speaking the truth. This is evident when “Carlton Roberts told Washington reporters what it means to be a black man in Mississippi calling the governor a pathetic man with the morals of streetwalker.…

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Movie Analysis Take yourself back to 1963 in Jackson Mississippi; you are right in the middle of the civil rights movement. The movie The Help (Taylor 2011) is an enlightening film depicting a group of women who are deprived of simple luxuries because of the color of their skin. There are many examples of: Modern Racism, Outgroups, System Justification Model, and Social Categorization in this movie. Most of us would say if I lived in that era I wouldn’t stand by and do nothing while these people are treated the way they were I would do something.…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Help is a storytelling film which focuses on the experiences of Aibileen, Skeeter, and Minny. The film reveals the inhuman living situation of black maids in Jackson, Mississippi and the widespread discrimination towards black people in South America. This paper would identify and analyze the racism presented in the movie. Different from many other films depicting racism, The Help is not about hate and crime. Instead it tells a warm story full of encouragement: The protagonist in the film are optimistic about their future and fight for a better world through helping with each other, which is quite unique and inspiring.…

    • 882 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Andrea Bollin ASM104 12/11/2015 Lab Racism is part of our everyday lives. Where we live, where we go to school, our jobs who we come in contact with. The belief of races carry along with prejudice and hate. People are taught how to interpret and understand racism.…

    • 362 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When we look back at the past and how people in our society were treated, we see several patterns of people experiencing Racism; especially African Americans. For the purpose of this project, I will begin by taking a closer look at the film “The Help”. The movie “The Help” portrays what life was like in the southern states during the 1960’s. In this film we see white families hire African American women and men to take care of their children as well as other household tasks. Skeeter, a white woman living in the town in which “The Help” takes place is unlike the rest of the women we meet in the film.…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Racism In The Help

    • 1010 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Taylor characterization of the actors in ‘The Help’ show the audience that racism is wrong and should be despised. Hilly and her “disciples” clearly personify racism in the fact of the way they treat the African American maids with inferior and the way…

    • 1010 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Student: Teresa Nguyen Class: English Communications Date: Grade: 12 Teacher: Mrs De Blasio What film techniques does Tate Taylor use to engage the viewer and present the ideas of injustice? Director Tate Taylor, in The Help, explores, through the lives of black maids, the injustice and imprudent judgments made towards the African American community in the 1960s. Camera work, dialogue, mise-en-scenè, and colours reveal the juxtaposing lifestyles of the racial classes, and the lack of development in society’s treatment of coloured people. Sounds expose the inferiority and challenges that African Americans experienced in attempting to display basic human behaviours, whilst historical context refers to the Jim Crow laws that…

    • 1064 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Aibileen Clark Essay

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages

    With the Help of Ralph Waldo Emerson When you think of an African-American female maid from the 1960s you probably do not think much about her. She might be passive, small-minded, unintelligent, nothing of a person whose job and only purpose in life is to serve the white family she has been put in charge of until the next one comes along. The character Aibileen Clark from the Oscar award winning film, The Help, is anything but that. She showed the people of the world the world is against you does not mean your voice does not matter. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson thought and wrote about the same concept in his essay, “Self-Reliance”.…

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    One of the best American historical fiction film The Help centered around racial discrimination and gender roles in the Civil Rights era in 1960s. Throughout American history, racial segregation has always been an issue. The ideology of “separate but equal” was once a legal doctrine in the United States Constitution. It was until Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education statewide segregation laws have become illegal, and was approximately sixty years after the decision made in Plessy v. Ferguson (“Important Supreme Court Cases”). The Help while the film’s title suggests as “the help” provided from black maids in Jackson, Mississippi to middle class white families.…

    • 1277 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays