Is Viola Davis Character In The Help Just The Stereotypical Black Mammy?
I cannot contain my anger and disappointment that Viola Davis decided to star in the new film The Help. Hollywood produces very myopic representations of black women. Black women are either whores like Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball or maids like Viola Davis in The Help. The social construction of black female sexuality is very limited. Black women are placed into the binary and not depicted in Hollywood movies as three dimensional people. The film roles available for black women tend to be two dimensional and not nuanced. Black women in North America are still presented as inferior to white women. The white woman is still placed on the pedestal as the true image of womanhood.
The Help was developed through a white lens about the civil rights movement. I am not suggesting that white people did not have a role in ending America’s apartheid regime. However, I do believe The Help was really made for white audiences and not black people. First, the star of The Help is the young white actress Emma Stone. Stone’s character is at the center while Viola Davis character is in a secondary role.
I noticed a couple of things while watching the trailer for The Help. First, the white women are presented as the stereotypical pristine, upper class, and feminine. However, the black women in The Help speak in a Southern dialect, and constructed as inferior to the white women. The black domestics in The Help are overweight, unattractive, speak in Southern dialect, and presented as asexual.
Of course, the white woman saves the day since the purpose of The Help is to promote the narrative that black people we cannot save ourselves.
The genesis of The Help is, in order for white people to be interested in movies about black people a white person must always be the protagonist.
The Help is just another form of the classic white saviour movies. Usually in a white saviour movie the white protagonist has an epiphany and decides to help the
black people that are constructed as victims.
I am so tired of the racist white saviour narrative that black people need to be saved by whites.
Another problem, I have with The Help is the film promotes the racist narrative that black women have no agency. The only purpose black people have is to serve white folks. Black womanhood is constructed as just to be loving and nurturing. The Help does not present Viola Davis or Octavia Spencer’s characters as three dimensional women. Hollywood consistently promotes the discourse that a black woman’s purpose in life is to exist in an anterior time. I cringed when I heard the line in the trailer “we love them and they love us.”
Yes, black women love working in the domestic sphere and serve rich white women. Of course, The Help ignores the fact in America, black women were blocked from higher educational opportunities for decades. Black women worked in the domestic sphere because this was the only work to make a living in America prior to the civil rights movement. Of course, there were black women such as Zora Neale Hurston that became a writer. However, the majority of black women had to work in domestic work because that’s the only form of work they were offered!
Two years ago, Sandra Bullock racist film The Blind Side also promoted this abhorrent narrative disavowing black agency.
The Blind Side also made over $200 million dollars at the North American box office. Hollywood will continue to make racist movies such as The Help because
the public supports this bigotry. Would the general public really want to see an honest movie about black female domestics that were raped by white men?
Would white people like to see movies where they are presented in a negative light during the civil rights era?
I understand Viola is a black actress, and she needs to work. However, time really has not changed for black women in Hollywood.
I wish Viola Davis had more pride and decided NOT to take the role in The Help!
In the year 1940, Hattie McDaniel won an Academy Award for her role as mammy in the film Gone With The Wind. The black mammy stereotype of black womanhood is so pervasive in racist Hollywood!
McDaniel did not have a choice because in the year 1940 there were a paucity of good roles for black women in Hollywood.
I remember McDaniel made a famous quote that she would rather be paid “$700 dollars a week to be a maid in a film than $7 dollars a week” in real life.
McDaniel was actually a civil rights activist during her era and she definitely fought for black women rights.
I understand Viola Davis needs a pay cheque but taking on the role of a maid is demeaning in The Help because of the history in the Jim Crow south.
It seems being a maid is the best role Hollywood has to offer the very talented Viola Davis.
The trailer for The Help is so racist and sexist against black women. I just feel so sick watching this racist garbage!
It is so sad that the best role Viola Davis can get since her Academy Award nomination for Doubt is just being the black mammy! It is so so deleterious and abhorrent that Viola would take this disgusting role as a maid to a white woman!
The Help engenders the discourse that a black woman purpose is to be subservient to white folks. I also find the racist narrative of the white saviour in The Help problematic. In the 1960s, civil rights movement my black elders helped themselves they did not sit and wait for white folks to gain freedom!
Why Can’t An Editor Just Be Honest About Rejecting My Poetry Manuscript?
Dear Orville: thank you for thinking of ECW. I apologize for sitting on your manuscript for so very long. It’s a fine book—lovely and engaging. And that part of the problem. I’ve been swamped. It’s easy to get rid of the bad and middling manuscripts. The good ones? They, unfortunately, sometimes sit in a pile and wait for me to get off my butt and make tough decisions. I get to do so very few books I force myself to be absolutely sure. Like I said, I really like your book—I’m afraid, however, I’m going to have to pass. I wish I was writing with better news.
Best always,
Michael Holmes
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ECW Press
Caribbean Camera Article: New Caribbean Radio Station Not On Air Due To Racism Of Mainstream White Toronto Radio Stations!!!
Caribbean radio station hits another hurdle — big media protests
By Keisha Fanfair
On Monday, news reports surfaced of a joint intervention sent to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) by Astral, Rogers and CTV to stop the Caribbean and African Radio Network (CARN) from going to air on the frequency 98.7 FM.
The Toronto Star reported earlier this week that the media companies claim they “strongly object to Industry Canada’s decision to approve the use of the 98.7 FM frequency and are very concerned with the lack of transparency and the factors used to arrive at this decision.”
CARN successfully tested on the frequency last year and was aiming for a summer 2011 launch, but this move might likely delay the station even further.
This isn’t the first time CARN has been under the fire since the station acquired its license in 2006, as back then, the CBC protested that the station would interfere with their frequency at 99.1 FM. However, CARN conducted a 3 week test in 2010 in accordance with Industry Canada and no disturbance with CBC’s frequency was noted. CARN President Fitzroy Gordon communicated this by letter to the CRTC.
The testing was not unusual, as in most cases, any new station must get permission from the adjacent frequency before starting to broadcast.
The Star reported, however, that the three mega-media corporations now objecting to CARN are arguing that allowing the station to go on air “runs counter to long standing radio spectrum policy and practices” and have called the move “shoehorning practices”.
Gordon has a lot of community support, with 800 letters sent to the commission from people in the community who feel there is a lack of diversity and culture on local airwaves in the Greater Toronto Area.
When contacted, Gordon said he was unable to comment on the latest objections against CARN as the process was still ongoing.
It is expected to wrap up next week and a decision as to whether CARN will or will not be allowed on the air will be known by then.
Chicago Sun Times Article: Gay Man Claims Jesse Jackson Sexually Harassed Him!!!
Jesse Jackson denies gay worker’s harassment, discrimination claims
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter
Article Extras
A spokesman for the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Thursday denied a claim from a man who says he was fired from the civil rights leader’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition because he is gay.
Tommy R. Bennett filed a complaint with the city of Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations last year, alleging Jackson fired him unjustly and that the civil rights leader forced him to perform “uncomfortable” tasks, including escorting various women to hotel rooms to meet Jackson for sex.
“The Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., unequivocally deny Tommy Bennett’s false claims of harassment, retaliation and discrimination,” PUSH spokeswoman Lauren Love said in a written statement. “We are fully cooperating with the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and expect to be fully exonerated.”
The statement goes on to say that Bennett’s “inflammatory allegations are an attempt to malign Rev. Jackson and the organization, and are hurtful and harmful to the progressive community.”
Bennett claims he worked for PUSH starting in July 2007, and was both an organizer and Jackson’s travel assistant. In his complaint, Bennett — who also goes by the name “Aruba Tommy” — said he experienced discrimination almost immediately, including from a woman at PUSH who refused to work for him because of his sexual orientation, according to the complaint.
Bennett also claims he was forced to escort women for Jackson into hotel rooms — and later clean up the rooms.
Bennett claims he received a letter in December 2009, in which he was told he was being laid off due to a “lack of funding.” But Bennett alleges someone else was then hired to replace him.
Bennett could not be reached for comment Thursday, but his attorney, Thomas V. Leverso, said his client, for a time, “actually enjoyed the work in terms of his actual job duties, but it became increasingly bad and homophobic.”
Under the right circumstances, Leverso said, Bennett would return to PUSH.
“He believes that gay rights are civil rights,” Leverso said. “He believes in that organization reaching the potential of its message, which is that everyone has equal civil rights.”
The Windy City Times first reported Bennett’s allegations on Wednesday. The Human Relations complaint is still being investigated by the city, Leverso said. City officials did not comment.
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