Is it racist if I just saw The Help to write femslash?

[seriousfic]

Okay, so I'm not black, I pretty much can't have an opinion on whether The Help is racist or appropriative or what. My opinion pretty much, and this is hedged between a failure at a filmmaking level and a failure at a social justice level, is that it's sort of Racism 101. They're just sort of showing a racist situation and the reaction of African-Americans to it (they don't care for it) without making much of a point or showing much insight. Like, one thing that struck me is that there are a bunch of nice white people who aren't racist at all, and then there are the complete bitches who hate black people. Well, not hate, the biggest real insight here is that the villain says "You'll be in trouble if a real racist finds out about this" and not "Oh, I hate black people." Racists don't think they're racist, is the idea. Skeeter's mother is the closest thing to the banality of evil that I was looking for, where she seems nice but acts racist, but then kinda makes up for it later and it doesn't seem like she learned anything, just that she wiggled out of getting any comeuppance for her actions.

It just seems to me that racism would be much more endemic. You'd have cute Emma Stone being really nice and considerate, as long as you were white, and then being a bitch to black people, instead of just being a bitch all around. Since treating people different based on their skin color seems like the essence, one might say the definition, of racism.

On a filmmaking level, the filmmakers were really going for Sandra Bullock kinda fluff (for instance, racism seems to have primarily been fought with wacky shenanigans and all the scenes of the maids telling Skeeter their stories end with warm belly laughs, so you can tell they're doing A Good Thing, even though they're recounting the poor circumstances of their lives, which you'd think would be pretty depressing), so they include a lot of stuff about Emma Stone's character--she has this romance subplot that literally has nothing to do with the plot, so at the end her boyfriend walks out on her over her being a Nice White Lady, and it's like "RACISM!"--and for as many scenes as they give Emma Stone of her protesting that it's not about her (seriously, there are one or two scenes where they could've flashed a caption that said "NOT APPROPRIATION" and it would be more subtle), she's clearly the heroine. And she doesn't need to be. Imagine if Interview With A Vampire had included Christian Slater's mother and girlfriend... no one cares!

And all this really important character stuff happens entirely off-screen. There's a white woman whose husband wants children and she's secretly been pregnant multiple times and had miscarriages, and one scene we just cut to the husband and he's like "Oh, she told me all about it, we worked it out, OFF-SCREEN!" And the woman has a maid who is being beaten by her husband, who is completely off-screen, and she leaves him, OFF-SCREEN. Really, Emma Stone's publishing career is more important than that?

That's another thing, the movie is really Oscar baity. They have miscarriages and cancer and abusive husbands... it's like a soap opera, because a lot of it doesn't register. It just drops in. At the end of the day, I think this movie isn't so much about the black maids as it is about letting audiences say "Oh, I would've been one of the nice white people." And there's money in that, but it seems pretty disingenuous as the message in a message movie.

Oh, and I don't know if this movie counts as having a Mystical Negro, but being able to bake your shit into a chocolate pie and have someone eat it without at all being able to detect it, that's pretty mystical.

Right, now can I write Skeeter/Hilly hatesex in good conscience? Because you can't tell me there wasn't something there.

Comments

[pyroskittle.livejournal.com]

You can ALWAYS write hatesex in good conscience! How do you think I preffer everything in the Buffy fandom? Or the Smallville fandom? Or, for that matter, ANY fandom? And in any case whatsoever, the general consensus of those who like to read hatesex will always be 'hatesex yay!' - ESPECIALLY if it's written well!

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

I don't see that at all. There are some pretty obvious good women and bad women, and the good women (ie, all the black women, and a couple of the white women) are very good. And frankly, there are no male characters in this movie at all (there are a few that function as background props).

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

I thought it was an okay movie. Mainly for the acting; a seriously great cast, including my new fantasy girlfriend, Jessica Chastain. I've seen three of her movies this year, and she's completely different (but great) in each of them.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I'd be willing to watch a Jessica Chastain Batgirl movie, even if Cass Cain is more Nolan-y.

[iteari.livejournal.com]

And from what I understand from the book, the black male characters are not exactly the "nice" kind of background props.

[beerbad.livejournal.com]

Right, now can I write Skeeter/Hilly hatesex in good conscience? Because you can't tell me there wasn't something there.

OH GOD YES PLEEEEAAAASSE. That is seriously all I've been waiting for since seeing this movie. (I, too, am probably a racist for really only caring about this movie for Emma Stone and her cute outfits and how she was also kind of a baby dyke.)

But seriously. Please write that. *chinhands*

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book. The movie has basically two black male speaking parts (an heroic reverend who inspires the women to be part of the writing project, and a random nice guy who shows up in a couple of scenes) and one offscreen abusive husband for one of the two black women leads.