The Help (A Movie Review)

I have finally gotten around to watching The Help.

What made me wanted to watch this movie was the story itself taking places during America's segregation in the 60s. I am glad that I am not born in that era and to have to go through the discrimination. However, being of ethnic minority, these same prejudice and discrimination are still happening in the 21st Century.

Over the last 50 years, human civilization itself has changed SO much (computers, cellphones, cars, medicine, etc) and yet, we, as people, are still trying kill one another or deny people's basic rights.

I know the movie was based on the book. Since I have not read it, I will solely based it on the movie.

I wanted to watch this movie and have an understanding of that particular era. The movie really emphasized the segregation of the 60s. And watching it now in 2012, some of these discrimination just blew my mind.

One thing that jumped out is really how discrimination is taught. We don't go out and make a decision to say "so today, I'm going to hate *insert group* because they're *insert stereotype*."

This quote shows exactly what I'm talking about:
Skeeter: These colored women raise white children, and in twenty years those children become the boss.

Somehow, somewhere, in the 20 years raised by these colour women, the white children learned to discriminate against someone who was essentially their mother, just not biologically.
Another scene that made me ponder about the discrimination was the use of toilets. I remember reading and watching some videos of how coloured and whites were not allowed to used the same water fountain or same bus. In the movie, toilets should not be shared because white people will get "the disease." When I saw the scene where they proposed a law to build a separate toilet for coloured people, I went "say what? You can't get disease from sharing a toilet." It is one of those things that we do not understand today.

Going back to the roles of these coloured women, they were to cook, clean, and take care of babies. Did you know that this actually STILL exist today? In Hong Kong, I would estimate that about 60-70% of family has a live-in maid of Filipino background. I can't be certain of the pay rate (certain would be decent enough) but to have a live-in maid to do EVERYTHING. And I have seen children being spoiled by it. And then it's things like these that you realized, we have not really evolved into better people. We still treat some people of other race a lower class because of where they're from. End of Rant.

I really liked how some of the character's were developed. Celia was awkward but funny and was more modern then her housewife counterparts. While Hilly was the type of bitch you dislike because of her backward points of views.

After all my rant and complain, I really did enjoy the movie. Although, their Southern accent sometimes meant "what did they just say?" it was still worth watching. I actually plan on watching it again eventually.

Best line of the movie: "Eat My Shit!"