Blog # 2 - The Help

"The Help" is a very powerful film that evaluates stereotypes, racism and social class. It opens people's eyes to the 1960s civil rights movement and shows history from a different perspective. As the interpretive approach focuses on "understanding and describing human behavior," I will be focusing primarily on how opposing cultural groups treated and interacted with each other as well as how people interacted within their own cultural group (Martin and Nakayama 2012, 60). 

It is a film about how African-American maids were treated unjustly by their bosses, which consisted of rich American housewives. My first cultural theme was repressed anger and retaliation. After being treated less than human by Ms. Hilly, Minny was fired from being her maid so she baked a chocolate pie with her excrement within it and brought it to Ms. Hilly and watched her eat it. Ms. Hilly asks her what is in it and she says, "Eat my shit." Ms. Hilly is too embarrassed to tell anyone, which turns out to be one of the key factors in the movie that allows them to write their stories and publish them in a book. 

Another theme throughout the film was social class. While Celia breaks the racial barrier that society has put between African-Americans and Caucasians, Celia has been caste aside from her group of friends. She is seen as a trashy, cheater who got pregnant and had to move out to the country. They want nothing to do with her, so instead she pairs up with Minny and finally Minny is treated as human, rather than just some piece of property. 

And finally the overall theme of the film is racism. African-Americans are thought to have diseases and that whites can catch the diseases if they use the same toilet as them. So when Mae Mobley starts using one of the toilets in Ms. Hilly's yard, she is beaten by her mother. Yet while racism is something that has been ingrained in the minds of the older generations, the younger generations were practically raised by their maids. In the ending of the scene Aibileen consoles Mae Mobley by telling her, "You is kind, you is smart, you is important."

Overall this film has countless examples ranging from racism to social class to retaliation to white expectations. It is a film crucial to history and telling the stories of African American maids. 

Works Cited

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2012). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th

ed). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD9Ua7FuzyA - “The Help - Minny's Chocolate Pie”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5PA-qKoqiM - “Minnie and Celia”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kScfcXOjdIo&feature=endscreen - “The Help –

Hilly's yard of commodes”