The Help: Movie vs Book

I recently saw The Help in theaters and I have to say, this is one case where the movie version does a good job of portraying the book. I'm always disappointed when the movie changes the storyline and leaves or critical scenes, but I think this is one case where the film did a good job of representing the book version. That being said, I think the movie simply couldn’t put all 444 pages into a movie a little over 2 hours long.

I recently read a guest essay in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. In it, Essayist Karen Culley writes about the discrepancy in historical events when told by white people and African-Americans.

She uses the movie adaptation of The Help as an example saying that the film “displayed a familiar wispy nostalgic picture: The black mammy, scrubbing, cooking and washing her heart out, completely devoted to her white employees, while her own family is merely a footnote in the film.”

I was disheartened to read this as I thought The Help did a good job at portraying both sides of the story. But reading this essay brought me to realize that perhaps the movie adaptation did not do as good of a job at representing black domestics in 1960s Mississippi as the book did.

In the movie, we just don't get to spend as much time with Aibileen and Minny. The movie focuses instead on Skeeter publishing a book about black domestics in 1960s Mississippi and the risk and backlash she faces in doing so. We don't get to see as much of their side of the story, hear about their families and their own struggles like we do in the book which they each take turn in narrating.

Maybe Culley is right, in pointing out that Hollywood can create a feel-good version of history that glosses over the details. But it's important to also see the friendships that can come out of an awful period in American history and I think the movie version of The Help highlights this. To Culley, and others who have this criticism of the movie version of The Help, I encourage them to read the book.

At the end of The Help in what she calls, Too Little, Too Late. Kathryn Stockett, in her own words, Kathryn Stockett says:

“I don’t presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s. I don’t think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman’s paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity.”

She then quotes one line in the book she truly prizes:

Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.