Posted on 08/22/2011 6:05:46 PM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Since then I was informed that in the film, "The Help" the figure was drawn of a haughty, snooty upper class white female. It seems that if she did not like her servants, she fired them. Further to that, she spread rumours that they had stolen from her- a sort of "blacklist" no doubt.
If this is wrong, I stand to be corrected. In Orwell's 1984, a hate figure was created. Anyone who was wrongly accused of theft, knows the inner agony of that. The snooty woman is the usual "hate figure". Just the same as in the film "Edge of the City" (1957) with Poitier, Cassavetes and Warden. A white man played by Warden, was the most loathsome piece of human debris.
This is what the left does best. They portrayed William Jennings Bryan in the film about the Scopes trial, as a bible punching bigot. Which was likely a bunch of biased nonsense.
I knew you meant Billy Jack.
To the rest of your post it is spot on. We could probably post an endless list of movies where the left has held up a specific type (white, racist, snob etc), a specific situation (wealthy)as something to loathe; to hate; to ridicule. So many of these movies are exremely well and accomplish the goal of emotional manipulation and also to ‘stigmitize’ whatever the target is.
Look at the Civil Rights type movies. It’s always unbridled hatred and visciousness by ALL whites. It’s always implied that ALL whites were racist when nothing could be further from the truth.
Anyway, I used Billy Jack as an example because I can remember vividly the anger, not only in me but the entire threater audience (consisting of other teens and young 20 somethings). It was intentional manipulation on a mass scale.
Since seeing Billy Jack again (about 10 yrs ago), I saw just how poor the acting was and how cheaply it was made. But at the time of its release, it accomplished its goal of angering an already alienated generation.
My point is that her reputation wouldn’t necessarily be harmed, because no one, other than her closest friends, would have known about her.
Yes, it was a snooty upper class white woman who caused the problems for the maid that she fired. I don’t see a problem; there are snooty white women in the world who might do that even today. But in the book, there were other white women who weren’t like her, so it’s not a broad brush against all white people.
Same here.
In the north Atlanta suburb where we lived there was an outcry over the “maid bus” a special run that brought the maids to work and home every day. The black leadership of Atl said that it was racist because it benefited rich white people. However the maids came forward to defend the bus because they needed it to get to their JOBS. Jabbing at rich whitey was more important to the black leadership than employment for “their people”.
But in the book, there were other white women who weren't like her, so it's not a broad brush against all white people.
Yes, absolutely agree with you.
Point was that I was trying to make, is that in these films there is always the one absolute nasty person who is white. At one time (to inject some humour here), I read a complaint by a black actor that he could not get a part to play an evil heavy. The black person got parts as almost a saintly persecuted or misunderstood individual. No doubt true to life at one time. Perhaps that is changing though.
We just got back from seeing the movie. It's as good as I thought it would be. LOVED Minnie; she reminded me of my cousin, Debbie. Hubby recognized some parts of his hometown, and we hope to check out some of the locales when we go for his 40th high school reunion later this year!
The abortion issue is I guess where I stray from most of y’all around here. Who is killing their babies? It ain’t the conservatives, it is the mindless drones. If they want to slaughter their offspring, why should I try and stop them? It plays into my hands, politically.
I’m not Christian, so all those poor defenseless infants don’t have the same meaning to me. I hate to be cold, but if the idiots want to kill their next generation, it is not a good thing but it doesn’t break my heart. They will pay for those decisions when they meet their rewards in the afterlife. I don’t agree with them that it is a right, but it ain’t no skin off my neck.
None of my lib friends kill their fetuses, they bear them all into this life. There is a difference between somebody who is liberal and somebody who is a murderer of innocents. To me at least. The murderers will pay for what they have done. These are not my lib friends. These are convenience killers, the lives of what they have produced are no more to them than a half an hour under sedation.
My lib friends don’t do stoopid stuff like that. They may agree with taxing the rich and the idiotic environazi agenda, but they don’t kill their own seed.
For what it’s worth.
I agree with you more than you know. And as always, my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it.
I have just received a first hand account from my spouse about the book. She was quite informative about Minnie and her departing quickly before the lady of the house's husband came home . She will see the movie this Sunday with my daughter. It is nice to get your views on this. Any way things have improved vastly in these kind of situations. My spouse says it is a story about the abuse of power by one person.
Oprah has lots of white folks working for her. You will have to be patient with some of us. I will still stick to my original views however.
Free Republic great to have divergent opinions without getting upset at another opinion.
I loved the movie. It’s about my hometown. I have known plenty of racist white people in my life. Family members. Teachers. Neighbors. (lived in a neighborhood with a neighborhood covenant—no selling of house to blacks. when someone broke the covenant in the early 1990s, the neighbors couldn’t sell their houses fast enough.) I’ve also known plenty of people who treated everyone with dignity and respect no matter their skin color or physical condition. I am so thankful to have known those people.
Hubby and I went to see the movie and loved it. It’s so funny to me to read the posts on Facebook of “society ladies” of today who look down on the “society ladies” of the 60s. But that has nothing to do with my point for this post. My family has been living outside of the deep South for some time. Daughter is attending school now at one of the major universities of the very same South. It was soooooo wonderful to take her “home” and to experience the good manners and hospitality of everyone we encountered. White, black, whoever were wonderful.
Well, the maids continued to be maids. And the children they raised grew up to attend private schools, Ole Miss, and to have children of their own who may or may not have been raised by maids. Those children also attended private schools and Ole Miss.
The black children attended schools via busing. The lucky ones were bused out of their neighborhoods to fancy white neighborhoods. The schools they attended quickly became a majority black because the white children were pulled out of public schools and put into private schools. You know, the black children had diseases and would leave those diseases on the toilets. /sarcasm Now Jackson is predominantly black because all of the monied persons have left the city to populate the surrounding towns/counties. There are similar stories in other areas of the country.
For the purposes of the story, she's right. Hilly is the "Queen Bee", and the ladies of the Junior League who want to be accepted by her, know they cross her at their peril. There's a definite societal stratification going on, not just a race thing, though that is most prevalent here, simply because all of the 'help' is black in early 60s Mississippi.
Conjecture on my part but since Stockett was the sister to the man Ablene worked for, she felt a fair enough group of people knew who the character in the book was about and it embarrassed her. I'm certainly not going to decide how many people have to know before one is sufficiently embarrassed to sue in court.
Wonderful, honest post.
Here is a black blogger who has no use for the book, its author, or the movie. he sees the movie as manipulative and exploitative:
http://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/thankyou-ablene-cooper/
The movie WAS political. It was about the laws that were active in the State of Mississippi at the time. Awful laws. Segragation laws, apparently based on hatred of the black-skinned person. The government was the lead dog on this, and the sheeply Democrats (and I presume others), were the actors on the stage. A stage play of hatred, and treating others as you would NOT treat a white person.
It was a ghastly film, about a horrid time in our history. I saw it last night, and wanted to walk out. Very painful.
I am *really* late in this post, but I am reading this book now, and thoroughly enjoying it.
What struck me about the dialect in the book, besides it being very well done, was the lack of outcry from liberals, labeling it racist.
Your friend is very talented. I look forward to reading more of her work in the future. :-)
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