Blake Chapman Essays (525 words) - Cinema Of The United States

Blake Chapman Period 1 3/5/17 The Help Welcome to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963, a place where African-American maids work in the homes of white women cleaning, cooking, and raising the children. Most of them are treated shamefully and are forced to listen to nasty comments on their failings and derogatory remarks about their race, including charges that colored people carry disease. What is forgotten is the patience, loyalty, and tender loving care the maids give to the often neglected children of their employers. The (2011) film "The Help", based on a novel by Kathryn Stockett, Starring Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Octavia Spencer, takes place in the world of Southern women. The white men may rule the world but not their own households so they are deliberately shut out here. The prejudice they display toward their wives or girlfriends sets up a chain reaction where the white women take their own insecurities and inadequacies out on the black help. The book tells the story of Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, starting in 1962 and ending in 1964. These are turbulent times for the entire country but especially turbulent for the people in Jackson, who are being forced to face up to their old ways - ways that are no longer acceptable to many. For the most part those ways revolve around segregation and the mistreatment of the blacks that live and work in a white man's town. Skeeter plans to write a book to change white people's minds. Aibileen and minny are the oppressed maids searching for acceptance. Hilly is the white woman that mistreats blacks and doesn't want equality for blacks. Stone is one of our very best young actresses and she acquits herself well in this role. She makes you imagine that this might be how Scout from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird might have turned out had she become a journalist: Too inquisitive, sensitive and empathetic not to brush aside the common wisdom of the day to see eternal truths about human beings. There are small moments in the film though that make you long for a movie that is not so deep-dish serious and self-conscious, a contemporary movie that could take advantage of the viewpoint of a half century to look at the past with a kind of cock-eyed grace such as the TV ser ies Mad Men . These moments come when you see a maid absurdly vacuuming a large stuffed bear. The Help is a serious drama that also has plenty of comic moments. You will care for all these characters. You will find yourself trying to figure out what makes them tick and the larger social context in which they live. You will worry with them, laugh with them, and, best of all, celebrate with them. This film has all the qualities of an engaging and heart-affecting movie. It was one of the Best Films of 2011 and even resulted in an Academy Award nomina tion for Viola Davis and a win for Octavia Spencer as Best Supporting Actress.