The film The Help is about an young, white, and educated women writing a book

focused on how the help of black maids in the 1960s were treated, and what role they

truly played in the white households they were employed in. Emma Stone’s character,

Skeeter Phelan, the woman writing the book about the maids, feels a strong connection

with these maids because a black maid raised her herself and she feels closer to her than

she does to her own mother. This film offers a fair representation of how African

American and white people in the film lived in two completely different social classes at

that time in Mississippi, where the film takes place. Although the white people are shown

to be of a higher and “better” class, they are not better people. The African American

maid is shown as the better person, with more values and more love. This film exposes

this reality. In the end, after all, the African American maids and the person who helped

them, come out on top. The women who look down on the maids are proven to be hurtful

and small-minded bigots.

The main characters are the white journalist Miss Skeeter and the two black maids

Aibileen and Minny, and the film is set in 1962 in Jim Crow times in Jackson,

Mississippi where white women of a certain class all belong to the same clubs and live in

the same neighborhoods and come from the same kinds of families. Miss Skeeter wants

to write a book about the relationship between the black maids and their employers from

the point of view of the help, something no one has ever done before. With her assistance

Aibileen and Minny tell her their stories. Skeeter goes to their homes to hear what they

have to say and becomes part of their lives. Throughout the movie we get to know all the

women, but especially the maids. We see them as part of a group but as also as

individuals.
 .

Sources support the contextual evidence that the film shows problems between

the races and the struggle for equality. The sources also talk about the way the movie

handles the subject, and how it makes viewers believe in the decency and depth of the

African American women and the shallowness of the white women. Romero (2012)

commented that most white people in films are concerned about finding “good help”

rather than being “good to the help.” This is reinforced in the film. The white women

only care about having good quality people in the house who are not going to steal, listen

to their every word, be at their beck and call, take care of the kids, and so on. These are

all tasks they are capable of doing but do not want to do, or won’t do, for themselves. The

scene in the film that shows this is when there is all kinds of problems with the maids

using the bathroom in the house. One of the characters wants the maids only to use

separate toilets. They are good enough to do all the work but they can’t use the same

bathroom.

Murphy and Harris (2017) said that white saviors are in movies. A white savior is

someone who speaks on behalf of others, specifically African Americans or other

minorities rather than those people speaking up for themselves. Skeeter is a white savior

in a way. She’s capturing the voice of the maids. She’s calling the shots and pulling the

strings. She’s making it possible for their story to be heard because she has the privilege

and they don’t. Some people could beg to differ that this could be a positive not a

negative thing. Other people could say the white savior is a negative and find fault with it

in the story line. Within the context of the film this seems to me to be a positive thing.
This person has the ability that other people don’t have. She can help people speak. Why

shouldn’t she do it? Why shouldn’t she help them?

Travers (2011) wrote that the film is so well acted that you believe in all the

characters. Skeeter is really sincere and really cares about these women and has a strong

connection to them because of how she was raised. Our individual characteristics and the

social group to which we belong work together to shape our attitudes and ideas about

race (Holzmann & Sharpe, 2014). Skeeter is different than her group. She’s her own

person with her own ideas. She steps out of the stereotypical context of the group

influence. It’s the love for the woman who raised her that has made this happen but it’s

also her own passion to raise awareness for the help. She’s the help helping the help! This

Holzmann and Sharpe (2014 quote describes Skeeter perfectly. It captures her self-

identity, her characteristics, and the values she embodies. She “can form a healthy

relationship across racial lines” where her peers cannot. She avails herself of their ideas

and she’s open to them as people not for what they do for her. Holzmann and Sharpe

(2014) wrote, “The more conscious we are of the racialized nature of those societal forces

and the extent to which they influence our lives, the more adept we can become at

forming healthy relationships with one another across racial lines and building working

communities based on shared power and mutual respect” (p. 241).

Within the context of the film and the context of the circumstances and time the

film takes place, the portrayal of the black characters as good and the white characters

makes sense. Skeeter’s friends can’t be who she is because they’re not. She’s an

individual with her own opinion, thoughts, and feelings, and if she wants to help the

women who don’t have the voice or the means to do so, she will, despite her social class
and the bounds that they are placed in by that and by bounds of the attitudes of the people

she grew up with. Looking past the group, racial stereotyping is more about the

individual. We might not all take the time to see the individual. We might associate

behaviors with groups. But movies like The Help show a beautiful depiction of a

particular time and decade and show how a single person can see a greater good and

make it happen.
 References

Holzmann L., & Sharpe.L (2014). Media messages. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe

Murphy, M. K., & Harris, T. M. (2018). White innocence and black subservience: The

rhetoric of white heroism in The Help, Howard Journal of Communications,

29(1), 49-62, doi:10.1080/10646175.2017.1327378

Romero, M. (2012). The real help: American Sociological Association, 11(2), 54-56.

http://contexts.sagepub.com. doi:10.1177/1536504212446462

Travers, P. (2011). The Help. Rolling Stone Magazine. Retrieved from:

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/the-help-20110809