The Help

[ladypuglover]

I read the book when it first came out a few years ago and I have to say that for the first time in a very long time I am on pins and needles waiting for this movie to come to theaters. The book was just amazing and every character was full and life filled that you just knew that these people had to be real. I feel in love with Minnie, Aibileen and Skeeter and just wanted to slap Hilly so bad that my palms itched.

 

Anyone else read the book and counting down the days to see the movie? I hope they do M, A and S right.

[lilwriter85]

I listened to the audiobook version several months ago and I really liked it. I think I might see it next weekend. It depends a few of my friends have read the book and want to see the movie but one of them sometimes works on the weekends. I'll probably see it at some point during the theater run. So far the buzz is good. A few critics who have screened it praised Allison Janney and Octavia Spencer.

[xDreamerx]

I'm reading the book now. I'm about half way through and really liking it.

[kemme]

My mum just got it from Costco so I might steal it from her to read before the movie comes out. I saw the film trailer a while ago and it looks really great.

[kpmom]

It's going to be quite a challenge for the movie to be anywhere near the book, but I'll be there to see how they do. In the book Skeeter is supposed to be awkward and gawky. I hope they don't make her out to be more glamorous than that.

I hope they do a better job than they did with Water for Elephants, which I thought was disappointing.

[maybeizfundie]

The book was awesome. I just read it recently, and I think it was even a reference on FJ that led me to it. :D Very interested to see how the movie goes.

[Hane]

I have to admit I mostly enjoyed reading it, but there were things in it that bothered me: the "white person saves the black world" thing, the fact that Skeeter had even a second date with a jerk who'd insulted her, the whole Minny-and-the-pie incident, how the Celia character was sort of shoved in sideways and marginalized. Oh, and then there were the historical anachronisms: it seems odd that people attending Ole Miss in the early '60s would have been so oblivious to the racial climate there. At times, it seems Stockett couldn't figure out where to go with her story and was more or less fumbling around in the dark. I think the Constantine story line was handled clumsily and seemed to lack authenticity.

I'm hoping that the movie version sands off the rough edges.

[xDreamerx]

I just finished it about an hour ago. I really liked it. Usually the sort of popular best seller novels aren't my thing. I mean, I'll read them ocassionally but mostly they're just something entertaining for a few hours and don't really impact me or stick with me. I thought this one was different, it had more substance and was a little gritter. Still, I wanted something more radical, more like what you get when you read Walker or Morrison. I feel like Stockett just kind of skimmed the surface of race. She didn't get down into the nitty gritty parts of it that make people uncomfortable, that people don't want to talk about. It was no Invisible Man that's for sure. I feel like it stayed safely in the realm of chicklit and didn't challenge enough or provoke enough. It could have been so much more.

There were a lot of things that bothered me about the book. How did she not mention the Freedom Rides? I mean they were mentioned but just in passing. I know these women were undereducated and in the domestic sphere but I found it difficult to believe that they would be so removed from Civil Rights, especially when the Freedom Rides came to Jackson. After the brutality there more bus loads were sent to Jackson. People descended on Jackson, it became like a hub. I mean, even if you were very wrapped up in your own day to day activities you would notice that, especially when it's in your own damn town.

I realize the book begins in 62 but still. Even Dr. King was kind of underplayed in my opinion.

[xDreamerx]

Sorry to post again. Melissa Harris Perry talked about it on Lawrence O'Donnell tonight. Her opinions pretty much sum up my feelings about it.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/melissa-harr ... troubling/

[kpmom]

I saw it last night. The theater was packed. Probably 75% women. It was very, very good. It followed the book very closely. There were a few things I wished they'd done differently, but overall very good. I still think the actress who played Skeeter was too pretty. Skeeter was supposed to be very tall and gawky, to her mother's chagrin. Her mother was supposed to be a petite, fading beauty. The actress who played the mother was at least as tall as "Skeeter"

Viola Davis, who plays Abi in the movie, was on Jay Leno last night. She said she got some flak from fellow African Americans for playing a maid, but she feels her character, Minnie, and the other maids were shown as fully fleshed out, dignified human beings.

She's such a good actress. I've seen her in other things, and she's always good. Jay's convinced she'll be nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Help.

[Rosa]

xDreamerx, did she talk about women organizers? The women working as domestics would absolutely have known about the civil rights movement - beauty shops and home beauticians were a big part of the movement, and so were ladies church circles.

I've been avoiding the book because of the "put a white narrator into the Civil Rights Movement" thing, it bugs me.

[keeperrox]

I kind of have a girl crush on Emma Stone, so I'd like to see this eventually. I'm not rushing to the theater or signing up for Netflix just to see it, but I'll check it out when it gets to one of our movie channels.

[xDreamerx]

xDreamerx, did she talk about women organizers? The women working as domestics would absolutely have known about the civil rights movement - beauty shops and home beauticians were a big part of the movement, and so were ladies church circles.

I've been avoiding the book because of the "put a white narrator into the Civil Rights Movement" thing, it bugs me.

No, this wasn't even mentioned. I mean, the ladies did attend church a lot but it was more about the church being there as a meeting place and a place of support for the maids involved in the book. It wasn't featured as a place of activism. Medger Evers assassination got a few pages, the women were shaking up and then people moved on. Kennedy being shot was mentioned in about two sentences. The March on Washington was mentioned...but it was like these were just passing things. I had trouble believing that. I mean, even if these women had little means to agency or ways to become active, it would have mattered to them a great deal more than it seems like in the book. It wasn't background noise on the TV or the Radio...these things mattered to people's lives. I'm white, so maybe I shouldn't be so mad. But it made me so mad!

[Rosa]

It makes me mad, too. If it were just some of the movies about the time period, it wouldn't bother me - but it's such a pattern, it really sucks.

You might like the book Beauty Shop Politics -the writing style is a little basic, but the content is AMAZING, it gives a general overview of the beauty shop industry but a big long section is about beauticians in the Civil Rights Movement.

There's another one I can't remember the title of, about the networks of women who figured out secret rides for domestic workers during the bus boycott - most women just walked, since they wouldn't ride the bus, but some were fired for the boycott and so some others figured out secret walking routes & rides to help people keep their jobs and also to keep tabs on some of the anti-boycott thugs including KKK leaders.

[PennySycamore]

Rosa,

Have you ever seen the film The Long Walk Home with Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg? It's about the carpools arranged during the Birmingham Bus Boycott to help African-Americans get to and from work. Sissy gets involved with the carpools when her nanny Whoopi can't take the bus to work. Sissy's involvement goes far beyond transporting her nanny, however

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Walk_Home

I went to see The Help this afternoon with two of my daughters. The performances were wonderful especially Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. I had the good fortune to sit two seats away from an African-American woman who is probably about my age so we both remember that time. She had some great comments like when the maid found the ring behind the couch.

[Rosa]

I haven't, I'll put it on my list!

[xDreamerx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDgJN7kTN3c

Here's a YouTube link to the The Long Walk Home. I'm going to check it out as well.

[lilwriter85]

I saw this last night with friends and I really liked how it turned out.

[treemom]

I lure the long walk home! And I started reading the help yesterday.

[Austin]

Has anyone else seen The Help? My husband and I saw it last night. I agreed with the reviewers who declared it somewhat heavy-handed (kind of an understatement in some parts), but we enjoyed it enough to make it worth our time.

[Aurora]

I haven't seen it but I read the book, I thought it was quite good - written from the perspective of four different women - interesting idea.

[Shirley MacLaine]

I haven't seen it or read it, but I'm a little uncomfortable with the premise so I don't think I will.

[luckylassie]

I saw it. It is a bit heavy but some parts are funny as hell. My mom and her friend actually cried at the end but I managed to suck in my tears. It is very interesting to hear from people who lived during the time portrayed in the movie in America. My mom's friend is almost sixty and was reared almost entirely by "The Help" instead of her bio mother.

[luckylassie]

What irritates me is when people in the South where I live or wherever hold racist or ignorant attitudes such as the women in the film. They are still alive in well here and it sucks.

[Guest Anonymous]

The author is being sued for appropriating the character of her brother's nanny, Ablene Cooper, against her wishes.

This doesn't seem like a coincidence, not cool in my opinion.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/lawsuit-bl ... d=12968562

A lawsuit against Kathryn Stockett, the author of best-selling novel "The Help," has divided brother and sister in a dispute about the real-life identity of one of her fictional characters.

Ablene Cooper, the longtime nanny for Stockett's brother, has filed a $75,000 lawsuit against the author, claiming she was upset by the book that characterizes black maids working for white families in the family's hometown of Jackson, Miss., during the 1960s.

Cooper also once babysat for Stockett's daughter, according to the Jackson Clarion Ledger, and the lawsuit alleges that she had been assured by Stockett, 42, that her likeness would not be used in the book.

The 2009 novel was an instant favorite among book clubs, written in the voice of black "help" by a woman raised by maids herself and who is white.

Cooper, 60, maintains that the book's fictional character -- Aibileen Clark -- is her. She says the alleged unauthorized appropriation of her name and image is emotionally upsetting, and her employers, Carol and Robert Stockett III agree.

He is Kathryn Stockett's brother and employs Cooper as a nanny and maid.

The book focuses on the friendship of three women: a young white woman, Skeeter, who aspires to be a writer, and two African-American maids, Aibileen and Minny.

Aibileen speaks in heavy ethnic lingo and, in one passage, compares her skin color to that of a cockroach.

"That night after supper, me and that cockroach stare each other down across the kitchen floor," Aibileen says in the book. "He big, inch, inch an a half. He black. Blacker than me."

Cooper has said the portrayal of Aibileen -- an almost saintly figure who is subjected to the racial prejudices of the period -- is "embarrassing."

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page, who is-African American, said, "There is an old saying, 'You can joke about your own crowd, but not about someone else's.

"Whether you are writing for yourself or a poetic work of fiction, you take a risk; like if I tried to write a book with a Yiddish dialect," he said, noting that the book has generated mixed reaction.

But in addition to being mortified by the black patois, Cooper is angry that the character so closely resembles her in many details.

"Ain't too many Ablenes," Cooper, who was unavailable for an interview, told the New York Times.

"What she did, they said it was wrong," said Cooper, who looks after the Stocketts' two children. "They came to me and said, 'Ms. Abie, we love you, we support you,' and they told me to do what I got to do."

The character Aibileen is a "wise, regal woman raising her 17th white child," according to the book jacket flap. "Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way."

Saintly Aibileen Has Gold Tooth Like Ablene

Cooper has said the likeness is uncanny. Besides their names, both maids have a gold tooth. Like the fictional Aibileen, she lost her son to cancer several months before the birth of the Stocketts' first child.

Her lawyer, Edward Sanders, who did not return calls from ABCNews.com, has said the similarities between both maids -- Aibileen and Ablene -- "seem very striking."