Mammy, How I Love Ya...

Everyone's talking about the film based on the novel "The Help"…I saw the trailer , read the Facebook page and saw the film.  I'm incensed…Everyone's singing it's praises and I can't see it…This is the ultimate travesty of truth. Not since the ridiculous "re-writing" of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to replace the word nigger or the "N" word (for those of you who are registered in the Politically Correct club) have I been more outraged.

Here again is media trying to "soften the blow" of America's injustice and glamorizing the turbulence of the 6Os south. As if this story would have really happened. This is truly from my perspective a work of fiction. And as I'm writing this entry, I just read a current event. A 46 year old black man in Jackson Mississippi, where "The Help" story is set, was the victim of a hate crime and brutally murdered, a racially charged hate crime. This was just a couple of days ago….When are people going to get it? 

Here we go again, the black woman portrayed as the selfless matriarch who seems more involved in the family she works for than her own. This "vision" of fiction has played out in Hollywood too many times to count…

The ABC series, 20/20 did a story on "The Help and interviewed  women "mothered" by black women who felt more familiarity and closeness with "the help" than they did their own flesh and blood mothers. But as I am watching this and biting my bottom lip, I'm wondering if anyone else is asking my questions.

In all of this soapy romanticism of these women recalling life with their "mammies", did anyone consider the children of the women who had to walk or ride the bus long distances? These women, mothers themselves prepared the food, polished the silver and cared for the children in these wealthy white households and couldn't even use the toilet in the house.

Did anyone consider the black children whose mothers and grandmothers came home, exhausted and tired, working for a penance, feet aching? Did anyone consider how these children were victimized in the process? There were many victims in this scenario, from the white children to the black children to the black domestic help. It is the heartbreaking side of the story that isn't portrayed in this work of fiction. It's the reality of poverty, the reality of a different kind of Christmas, of not having enough for your own, while the children you watch for someone else are lavished and yours go wondering "Why can't I?" The question was asked in the film. "How does it feel to raise other people's children while yours are being watched by others? This would have been a perfect time to show that with a visual vignette.

Hattie in character

Hattie McDaniel

Let's face it, the 60s were probably the most turbulent decade of our times…The only positives are the music.  Motown and the Beatles  became the backdrop of our lives, but there is also the big fail on America's report card as to how it treated its own citizens. 

Hattie McDaniel's speech as recipient of the Academy Award was cleverly edited to make it appear that she gave her speech in the room with her Hollywood "colleagues".

When Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to sing on the radio in America and the first to win the Academy Award for playing Mammy in "Gone With The Wind", mentions being a credit to her race in her acceptance speech it seemed to me to take black people back to slavery. I understand that she was humbled by the award. But who told her to say that? I'm a baby boomer. I'm supposed to be in the last generation to know of these indignities and tragedies of the human spirit in America and the "colored only" signs.

I want the younger people to understand that it was women like McDaniel who played numerous roles in Hollywood, mostly all the same: 300 roles and only credited with 80. So many black actors, great pioneers of color pushed forward through the indignities of a selfish, segregated playing field all in the hopes for the future of the young people of color of today. And what do these youth do today? Run around like a crazy bunch of banshees with no dignity and no shame in their game.

The show Beulah (1950-1953) was the first sitcom to cast a black woman in a leading role. She was the domestic for a middle class family set in the 50s. There were three actresses who played Beulah: Ethel Waters (1950-51) Louis Beavers (1952) and Hattie McDaniel (1952).  There were about 78 episodes, but only about 7 survived.

Of course the mammies and the children they worked for bonded. They were both victims of the same sick cesspool of social iniquity.  Had "The Help" been real, the maids would have been lynched and killed, the male members in their families would have followed the same fate. The progressive white woman who wrote for them would have been labeled  a "nigger lover" and run out of town. This is the reality of our truth in America in the 60s in Jackson Mississippi. The fantasy of this film is a travesty and an affront to those who suffered massive indignities. This is my problem with "The Help".


While I didn't grow up in Mississippi, I do know people who did. Their childhood  no real romance, with memories of social horrors and treatment and what they had to do without and the "lump in the throat" reality of what they were forced to accept.

It's almost as if Hollywood embraces the bullshit that it feels most guilty about. In the glory of its political-correctness it concocts a sticky-sweet stagnating stench in the hopes that somewhere in the very distant future someone will come upon this film and /or this book and believe that this taste of media is real history and it wasn't really that bad. None of us who grew up in it, will be here to defend it. It's apparent that the only time a film with these social parameters gets pumped is when a white person helps a black person out of an abyss.

Can author Kathryn Stockett accurately echo the thoughts of a black character with any integrity? I say no, just because of the fantasy that falls in with the plot line. Ask Ablene Cooper, who works for the author's brother. She happens to have the name of the main character in the book with distinguishing resemblances that are more obvious and more than a casual coincidence. She is suing the author for damages and feels humiliated…I do understand…The case, which Ms. Stockett is trying to get squashed, asserts that the author used Cooper's name and likeness without permission. A hearing is set as of this writing in the next several days. If I were Ms. Cooper, I would get a percentage of every book and a percentage of royalties from the film.

The critics are singing the praises of the film and dub the main character, a woman of color named Abilene, a heroine. Of course. This appeases the guilt and takes away the sting of the reality of Jackson in the 60s. And so it goes: this conundrum that we call showbiz...I had to keep asking myself if this was done through Disney studios.

I'm not blaming anyone for how our country earned its "black marks". All things being said, the performances were brilliant and gave the film the credibility it needed. Sissy Spacek (Missus Walters) and Cicely Tyson (Constantine Jefferson) gave their experience in the game as the true veteran actors they are with a myriad of solid portrayals to their credit. Viola Davis deserves an Oscar for her performance as the signature character Abelene Clark. I am always amazed at her talent and the depth of her input into her characterizations. A super standout is Octavia Spencer (Minny Jackson). She should get an Oscar for her performance. She was all up in this role. Bryce Dallas Howard was intense as the hot mess southern socialite, Hilly Hilbrook. Of course she's good! Her dad is Ron Howard!

I do take issue with the big romance that's going on with "The Help" and the tunnel vision of those who laud it with blinders on. I really had a problem with the white viewers who gave me a patronizing look as they left their seats when the house lights went up. Yee gads! HELLO! I'm not a maid! This isn't all we are. Can you see me???? THIS is why I have an issue with this film and find it subliminally dangerous.

While I'm at it,  here's my memo about the NAACP which endorses this film, (but had Amos and Andy thrown off of TV) The NAACP is about as obsolete as the 8 track tape and Betamax.

I do take issue with an author who writes a story that takes place in the very turbulent south and turns it into a fairy tale. I know, I know. The credit does read, "based on the novel". I don't think that hotbeds in history should ever be romanticized. Even the Brothers Grimm kept it real.