the help: in which i attempt to quote karl marx and alison bechdel
I was feeling skeptical about The Help for reasons articulated nicely by Raardvarks . It appeared to fall in a genre I call Slavery Is Bad—historical movies that let us feel good about taking the right side of an issue that was highly controversial in its time, which is kind of like betting on a race that’s already been run. Not to mention the whole Black People Becoming Liberated Only With The Aid Of White People/White People Finding Themselves With The Aid Of Magical Negroes issue. But while I was content to spend most of my undergraduate years being outraged by things I didn’t know anything about, I decided it might be interesting to actually see The Help before hating on it. We went this afternoon with AK’s parents. AK’s mom spent many years working in a middle school cafeteria, and although working at a school in your own community is really different from working as a domestic in the Deep South, AK thought she might relate to this story of working class women of c...