'Melissa Harris-Perry Revisits Everything She Hates About The Help In Oscar Preview' [View all]

[Number23]

Paging JustAnotherGen!

"Melissa Harris-Perry Revisits Everything She Hates About The Help In Oscar Preview
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/melissa-harris-perry-revisits-everything-she-hates-about-the-help-in-oscar-preview/

'When The Help first came out, Melissa Harris-Perry quickly became one of its most vocal critics, arguing that the film sets back black actors by reducing them to the role of maids and glossing over some of the more heinous aspects of the black domestic worker experience. Now that the film is among the buzzworthiest at the Oscars tomorrow, Harris-Perry revisited the film today on her eponymous program, reiterating that the obfuscating of serious concerns for black women in the service industry was particularly problematic.

The film, she told her audience today, “erases and then rewrites a rich and robust history in which black women never needed someone to speak for them” by making the protagonist a white woman. She explained that the real protagonist who grows as a person is white, while the black characters are there to feed her growth. In this manned, the film erased a horrid reality about the service industry at the time: “for black maids, the threat of rape was always a clear and present danger.” She clarified that she had nothing against the actresses in the film and meant it only as a criticism of Hollywood that they “would have to use their extraordinary talent” to portray maids, a role black women have had in film for decades."

Sounds alot like the Magic Negro Rush Limbaugh loves to sing about.

We've been having some really interesting conversations about The Help in this forum. As I noted, I have not seen the movie and simply cannot bring myself to do so. I felt the same way about "Precious" when that came out a few years ago. I simply have no interest in seeing films where sisters are getting beaten, raped and subjugated so brutally. Even if "redemption" does come at the end.

I know Octavia Spencer got the Oscar for this role and I'm sure that she deserves it. I have heard NOTHING but glowing reports about her and Viola Davis' acting in the film. Too bad you have to wade through such muck to see them.