BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch

Subject: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 11:50 AM

I cannot recommend this film more highly, which we saw at a preview this morning at the Everyman in Reigate. If you want to see racist - see how racist they were in Jackson Mississippi during the 1960s.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 11:56 AM

This film is from a young white woman's point of view, and if you want to see a film that, according to some reviews I've read, in general annoys black viewers, you want to see this film. Similar reviews to The Blind Side, another white feel-good film.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 12:15 PM

according to some reviews I've read, in general annoys black viewers

That may be true, and I haven't seen the film - but reviews that make generalisations about what "in general annoys black viewers" do sound as if they might be a smidgeon racist themselves...

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 12:17 PM

When you're one race, represented by another race, this tends to happen. If you feel defensive about your own race and your own civil rights movement, does that make you racist? I don't think so.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 12:40 PM

Here was a "review" in the sense that the author said why she wasn't going to see it. Her reasons are similar to a lot of the literary criticism I've read about popular novels written by white authors about black or American Indian protagonists - sometimes disguised behind a pen name to hide the author's race. It's an old criticism that most film makers don't pay attention to. Dances With Wolves is a film that sums up a lot of those problems.

A book and film that sometimes brushes with this argument is To Kill a Mockingbird, but since that one is about two white children and how they experience the racial elements in their changing world, the critics aren't really able to make that one stick.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 01:08 PM

Okay, I haven't seen The Help, which hit theaters yesterday and web banners way before that, nor have I read the book by Kathryn Stockett it's based on....

I can't imagine why anyone would bother to read a "review" starting with those words.

The logic here seems to be one that would suggest that men shouldn't ever write books with women protagonists or women write books with men protagonists. Extend it a little bit further and all historical fiction is out. How can you write in the voice of someone in another century? Or another country? Stick to autobiography as the only form of fiction...

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 03:12 PM

Anyway, despite all the ramblings above it was a bloody good two and a half hour's entertainment. I do have the advantage that I will watch a film for what it is - nothing more and nothing less. There were some wonderful old USAian cars too.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 05:08 PM

Given that I think humanity is all of one Spirit...and that we have probably all lived numerous lives before in both genders and in every race that's out there...

I think anyone can write a book about anything if the spirit strongly moves them to. They have more than just this present life to draw on. They are intimately connected to the entire web of life. And if they write well, then it's a good book that's worth reading. And the same goes for movies. There's isn't a color line drawn across artistic creativity nor is there a gender line drawn across it.

People are far more than just their present outward appearance and their present cultural description. It's up to them to find that out for themselves. If they think that they are limited merely to working from the outward appearance of what they seem to be NOW, I think that they are mistaken about that. They are in no way so limited...unless they imagine they are.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 06:38 PM

I'm just sharing what came across my desktop, but I do tend to agree with the woman who didn't go to see it. There is a reason they call these "feel good" movies - they are glossy and not very close to the truth of what those women were actually living.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 10:44 PM

I read the book and saw the movie and liked both. I saw Viola Davis, who played Aibileen, being interviewed. She said she had never wanted to play a maid but that Aibileen was so special she took the role when it was offered to her. Even though I liked the movie, I thought the book was better at conveying the risks the women took.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Oct 11 - 11:29 PM

I sometimes avoid certain "feelgood" movies, if I think they are pandering to popular (trendy) causes in a way that is cloying and contrived. There have been any number of American movies that have done this in the last few decades, but I'm not going to name them. It would just annoy the people who like them, and they have their own good reasons for liking them, so what good would it do for me to bug them about it?

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: freda underhill
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 12:18 AM

Here is a very interesting discussion in the Huffington Post about The Help, the film, the book, and black and white feelings about it all. It also refers to Porgy and Bess, and how some black actors refused to go in the film, while others regretted that they did.

I saw the film here in Sydney and was glad I did, it gave me some insight into what Black Americans have been through. so does this further discussion.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 02:57 AM

Yeah. Good article.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 07:58 PM

Excellent article, Freda, thanks for the link.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: gnu
Date: 10 Oct 11 - 08:21 PM

"I do have the advantage that I will watch a film for what it is - nothing more and nothing less."

As all should... no?

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Oct 11 - 09:09 AM

And we are going to see the new Johnny English film tomorrow too!

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Oct 11 - 09:33 AM

No. No film, no book, no work of art stands alone. To introduce a little post modern theory, we all bring our own experience and ideas to a film and respond accordingly. We are all the author, in some sense.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Oct 11 - 10:32 AM

No contradiction - you experience a film, or read a book, or hear a story, in the light of your life experience etc, and what you see or hear is what is there to see, read or hear. It may get labelled post modern, but that's how it's always been.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Help' - a must film to watch
From: Stower
Date: 12 Oct 11 - 05:05 AM

Many years ago, when The Life Of Brian was released, I had a very frustrating conversation with a Christian minister who had been picketing a cinema to prevent others seeing it.

"Have you seen the film?", I asked.
"No! Of course not!", he replied.
"Then how can you criticise something you haven't seen?"
His reply was immediate: "If a bottle is labelled 'poison', you don't drink it, do you?"

It was one of those times when I thought of my reply several hours after the event! He didn't seem to realise that he had himself put the 'poison' label on the bottle without ever knowing what was in there.

This is no different to those who criticised The Color Purple for being racist without having seen it. I have seen it. In my judgement, it isn't. On a more extreme scale, we have the burning of The Satanic Verses by those who would never read it.

I haven't seen The Help, so won't comment on that particular film.