Amid floral bathing suits and the overpowering smell of chlorine, I learned this summer that when I took the kids I babysit to the pool, there were guaranteed to be at least four moms spellbound, reading Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel “The Help.”
While the choices of 35-year-old moms don’t normally dictate mine, I was curious and picked the book up. It’s a fast read and has moments of believability. And almost anything will make me cry — the Hallmark channel, a small child riding a small bike in the pit, you name it — so yes, I cried once. It has some literary merit.
And now, adapted last summer into a blockbuster, “The Help” is up for an Oscar for best picture.
I understand the appeal of a story like “The Help.” But I think it’s important to stop and seriously examine the book.
When viewed by itself, the phenomenon of “The Help” is a story about the civil rights movement, focused on a white woman and written by a white woman.
When placed within a larger canon of literature, however, a repeating narrative emerges: white person gives agency to a black person and, in the process, affirms whiteness. It’s a genre that spans from “To Kill a Mockingbird” to “The Secret Life of Bees” to “The Blind Side” (which, it’s worth noting, was also up for an Oscar).
This popular kind of narrative risks steamrolling over the heart of the civil rights movement, a movement propelled long before a fictional character like Skeeter in “The Help” (a Scarlett O’Hara prototype, except nice) decides she cares about civil rights, whisks into Mississippi and solves racism.
Of course, this isn’t exactly what happens in “The Help.” But the story can feel that glib at times
Its characters are as glossy as the magnolia leaves Stockett incorporates into nearly every metaphor (to remind us that yes, we’re in the South). But ultimately, they’re paper doll versions of real people.
