The Help and Stereotypes

The movie The Help stars Hollywood It Girl Emma Stone along with Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. The film follows Skeeter (Emma Stone) as she interviews the maids of her town. In this day and age the maids were African American and were seen as lower than whites. As the story goes along we are able to see what the lives of these African American women's lives were really like in the 1960's.

I would like to focus on the stereotypes that were portrayed in this movie, but before we dive into the juicy stuff, lets get some definitions out of the way.
Stereotype will be classified as: A schema for understanding a group of people.
Prejudice: Individual beliefs about certain groups, placing them in inferiority.
Racism: Places one group in subjugation to another group based on race.


In this post I would like to focus on one character particularly, Minny Jackson, played by Octavia Spencer. While this film shows how African American women were treated in the 60's and the stereotypes that went along with being an African American in the 60's, it also portrays one stereotype that can be seen as endearing, even today. That is the stereotype of the "strong black woman narrative".

We can see this in many places throughout the film, but I think it is most evident in the way Minny 'fires back' on her emloyers when she bakes a cake for Hilly Holbrook (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) that contains her "shit". While this can be seen as immaturity in some cases I believe it is a portrayal of the strong black women narrative because it shows that Minny is not afraid of her white employer and will stand up for herself.

The movie is also based on a group of African American maids that are hired to cook, clean, and care for white people's children. This goes along with the stereotype that these women are tireless and caring.

One way I believe this movie does not fully embrace the stereotype of the strong black women is by including the information that Minny's husband is abusive to her and her kids. We see this in a part where Minny goes to Aibileen Clark's house (played by Viola Davis) and stays with her. This does not fit into this stereotype because it shows that she is not always strong.

Anyone who has seen this movie will know that it does deal with prejudice and racism in folds. The white women that hire the maids are more so than not racist towards them, going so far as to have them use a toilet that is outside of the house.

I think this movie deals with a lot of important issues that we faced in the 1960's and are still facing today, The idea that taking stereotypes so far as to produce racism is wrong and is something our society needs to take a second look at.