Film Analysis: The Help

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File this under “not at all timely,” but I finally watched The Help. I was initially intrigued to watch the film after reading an article some months back by Touré wherein he (accurately, after watching it) talks about the film’s infinitely irredeemable qualities when it comes to the portrayal of almost every character on screen. I wondered how a film getting so much Oscar buzz could actually demean the characters and conversation it was (I assume) hoping to propel?

After watching, now I know. This was little more than Mean Girls meets the south. But even that’s an insult to Mean Girls since it at least knew the commentary it was making. By all subjective accounts, the movie sucked as hard as any other movie trying to deal with rich subject matter that eventually becomes so unbelievably cliché and feels the only real quirk it has going for itself was a "shit pie" anecdote – it’s like they saw Braidesmaids and said, “oh, so women and poop is OK now? Sweet, let’s exploit this the same way we’re exploiting our
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Viola Davis didn’t win the Oscar, but the Academy could deflect the racist vitriol because Meryl Streep, arguably the greatest actress of all-time, did win. It was a sensible outcome and nothing to be ashamed about. Alas, the justice system wont be so lucky. They don’t have a Streep in this instance. George Zimmerman, the man who killed Taryvon Martin, is a deplorable human being and deserves to be tried and convicted; unfortunately, this puts our public discourse in a no-win situation: if he’s convicted, we can pat ourselves on the back for knowing we are good people, and if he’s somehow considered innocent, then people will shy away from the race angle and focus on the courts and government