
What is the main idea of the movie the help?
"The Help" centers around a young, privileged white woman named Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone), who writes a book about the experiences of two black maids, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) and Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), during the Civil Rights Movement in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960s.
Who are the actors in the movie the help?
The Help is a 2011 period drama film written and directed by Tate Taylor and based on Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same name. The film features an ensemble cast , including Jessica Chastain , Viola Davis , Cicely Tyson , Bryce Dallas Howard , Allison Janney , Octavia Spencer , and Emma Stone .
Is ‘the help’ a black film?
Black film critics and writers have pointed out the blatant issues with "The Help" ( both the movie and its original source material, a book written by white author Kathryn Stockett) for close to a decade now.
Is ‘the help’ a safe film?
Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis in "The Help." "The Help" is a safe film about a volatile subject.
See more

What is the main message of the movie The Help?
The movie teaches us about race relations, respect and love. The spectator puts himself or herself in the shoes of these women in uniform, invisible and humiliated on a daily basis, but find the strength to survive! They also remind us that love can conquer everything else.
Is The Help based off a true story?
The Help is based on a book One thing we know for sure: The movie "The Help" is based on a 2009 novel (of the same name) which, by definition, is a work of fiction. So that would seem to answer the question of whether the story is true or not in the negative.
Is The Help worth watching?
This is a good film, both involving and wonderfully acted. The characters in it are especially quite moving. It is your generic feel-good fable, but with an important message. It is undoubtedly a story that deals with pain but doesn't care to be all that painful.
What was in the pie in The Help?
Hilly can't resist and helps herself to two slices, wolfing it down until Minny informs her she baked an extra ingredient into the pie – her own poop.
What is the L shaped crack in The Help?
Miss Leefolt craved perfection and acceptance from the other white ladies. Yet, she had a crack in her table shaped in an “L”. The crack signified how perfection could not be obtained no matter how hard it was chased down.
Why was Minny fired in The Help?
Minny eventually worked for Hilly Holbrook, a mean and racist white woman but her 60-year-old mother, Missus Walters, likes Minny. She gets fired by Hilly for using her inside bathroom when there was a storm. Minny's abusive husband, Leroy, returns home and physically beats her.
Is there any violence in The Help?
There's no graphic violence, but a character is obviously physically abused by her husband, and a woman has a miscarriage, leaving her in a pool of her blood. Reflecting the '60s setting, almost everyone (even a pregnant woman) smokes cigarettes and drinks.
What happens to Minny at the end of The Help?
In the end, Minny decides to leave her abusive husband and chart an unknown course rather than live with the pain he inflicts. Minny is an individual struggling against society. Her inner nature is often at war against the world.
Is there a real book like The Help?
Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward If you're looking for books similar to The Help because you liked reading about what life is like for those who are black and underprivileged in Mississippi, then Jesmyn Ward's 2011 novel Salvage the Bones is great next read for you.
Was The Help a real book?
The Help is a historical fiction novel by American author Kathryn Stockett and published by Penguin Books in 2009. The story is about African Americans working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s.
Why does Viola Davis regret her role in The Help?
Viola Davis was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of 1960s housemaid Aibileen Clark in 2011's The Help, a role she's publicly regretted since its release due to the marginalization of Black maids and its "white savior" narrative.
What happened to Abilene from The Help?
Aibileen is finally retiring from her lifelong career, and using her expertise to write the Miss Myrna column. She leaves the Leefolts satisfied that she's provided young Mae Mobley with the self-love and other skills she needs to survive in her society and, hopefully, to resist the racist ideas being drilled into her.
Storyline
Sarah seems to have found her calling working in a Liverpool care home where she has a special talent for connecting with the residents. Then, in March 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic hits.
Did you know
Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham had previously worked together in Episode #1.1 (2012). While filming that episode, Graham was so impressed by Comer's performance that he proceeded to call his agent Jane Epstein while on the set.
Contribute to this page
By what name was Help (2021) officially released in Japan in Japanese?
Storyline
Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter (Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives -- and a Mississippi town -- upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families.
Did you know
Kathryn Stockett 's book, on which this film is based, was rejected 60 times before it was eventually published.
What is the Help movie about?
Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis in "The Help.". "The Help" is a safe film about a volatile subject. Presenting itself as the story of how African-American maids in the South viewed their employers during Jim Crow days, it is equally the story of how they empowered a young white woman to write a best-seller about them, ...
Who plays Hilly in the movie "Minny and Spencer"?
Davis and Spencer have such luminous qualities that this becomes their stories, perhaps not entirely by design. The society lady, Hilly Holbrook ( Bryce Dallas Howard ), is a relentless social climber who fires Minny after long years of service.
What does Skeeter convince Aibileen and Minny to do?
Some details about a pie seem to belong in a different kind of movie. Skeeter convinces Aibileen and then Minny to speak frankly with her, sharing their stories, and as the book develops so does her insight and anger.
Who plays the mother in the movie The Nanny?
Her mother ( Alison Janney) harbors the secret of the nanny's disappearance, and after revealing it she undergoes a change of heart in a big late scene of redemption. Two observations, for what they're worth. All the white people in the movie smoke. None of the black people do.
Who was the maid in The Long Walk Home?
There was a 1991 movie named " The Long Walk Home " that starred Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek as a maid and her employer at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It had sharper edges than "The Help.". But I suppose the Stockett novel has many loyal readers, and that this is the movie they imagined while reading it.
What is the Help movie based on?
whatsapp icon. Directed by Tate Taylor; screenplay by Taylor, based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett. The Help. The Help, based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett, is a film about race and class relations in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. A century after the American Civil War, the work makes clear, ...
Why did the film "Change begins with a whisper" come about?
It is ironic that the filmmakers choose 1963 to illustrate their notion that “Change begins with a whisper.” An unfortunate choice! The combined conditions of poverty and racism were provoking a powerful popular response . President John F. Kennedy, whose own murder late in the year spoke to the explosive contradictions of postwar American society, was obliged to order his advisers to look into the conditions of economic deprivation. The government feared that riots would erupt that summer. In fact, some 900 demonstrations took place over civil rights and jobs in 1963 in 100 US cities, culminating in the massive March on Washington in August. Twenty thousand people were arrested and 10 killed in the course of those protests.
What did Taylor and Stockett portray as the main tormentors of the black population?
Taylor and Stockett portray the white socialites as the main tormentors of the black population. But in reality, this is the periphery of the periphery. At issue is the ugly face of American capitalism. The violence and terror in the South were not some inexplicable aberration.
What are some examples of Hollywood films that show racism?
One could cite, for instance, Douglas Sirk’s 1959 masterpiece, Imitation of Life, and Raoul Walsh’s 1957 Band of Angels. Both works, in one fashion or another, point to the source of racism in social relationships and conditions. The Help, however, cringes in the face of hard facts and removes the blemishes of its “good” characters, even refusing to show Minny’s husband’s transgressions against her on screen.
Is the movie "The White House" a happy ending?
The film’s defenders tout it as heartwarming and uplifting, with a Hollywood-type happy ending that symbolizes the progress made since the 1960s. In truth, there are several moving moments and the performances of all the leads are committed and passionate. Though not articulated, the subtext here has much to do with elation over the ethnicity of the present occupant of the White House. After all, the book was published in 2009 and the film released in 2011.
Is the Help a reductive film?
The Help is not simply a reductive—to say the least—period piece, whose main dynamic is a skirmish between good and evil, with blacks on one side and whites on the other. It rewrites, probably out of light-mindedness and lack of knowledge more than anything else, the history of social struggle in America and postwar history in general. It is not, however, directly for those weaknesses that the film has generated a certain amount of controversy, although one confined to a narrow social segment.
Is the movie "Change begins with a whisper" credible?
This is provocative and potentially fascinating subject matter. Unfortunately, the film falls short of a credible presentation, as the reality of the situation is not tackled with any degree of seriousness. One of the most jarring elements is the absence of any reference to the mass struggles that shattered the Jim Crow structure in the South at the time, or any indication of their influence and atmosphere. This is not the concern of either the movie or the book. In fact, the book’s jacket cover informs the potential reader that “Change begins with a whisper.” And elevated to historical catalyst—or whisperer-in-chief—is the middle class do-gooder.
What is the Help movie about?
Movies like "The Help" have been promoted and touted as inspiring narratives about racism and the capacity for change in this country for decades. Intentions of those who praise the movie may be well-meaning, but those opinions are ultimately uninformed and damaging.
Who is the actress who plays the help?
Emma Stone costarred in "The Help.". "The Help" became the most-watched movie on Netflix over the past week, according to their US trend bar. Written and directed by two white creators, "The Help" serves as a classic example of "white savior" tropes in Hollywood. If white Americans want to learn more about our country's history of racism, ...
How do movies shape our lives?
Stories told through movies are inherently designed to invoke empathy from the viewer, and draw you into a story and the experience of a character. If white Americans keep watching box-office-hits like "The Help," we're absorbing the wrong message.
Why should we watch movies created by black people?
Watch movies actually created by Black people if you want to learn more about the country's history and the pain that a system built upon slavery and white supremacy is still causing in 2020.
Is the Help movie racist?
The intentions of people watching "The Help" may be well-meaning, but intention doesn't matter — the results are still the same. Movies like "The Help" (or the more recent example of "Green Book") only serve to placate non-Black Americans who feel they're not racist.
Is there enough black people to write movies?
There are not enough Black Americans being hired to write and direct movies. Diversity studies about Hollywood have shown some improvement, but it's not enough. In 2018, a study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative showed that just 14% of the top 100 grossing movies were directed by Black people.
Who wrote the Help podcast?
Writer and podcast host ReBecca Theodore-Vachon also tweeted about "The Help," and why it was a terrible option. "Even as a fictional story, it was ahistorical in how it robbed Black people of their autonomy," Theodore-Vachon told Insider in an email.
