The Help: Triumph or tragedy?

The Help, the film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett from 2009, came out on August 10. Both the book and the movie have attracted controversy. The story is set in Mississippi in the early 1960s and follows the daughter of a prominent white family, Skeeter, and two black domestic servants, Aibileen and Minny, with each of the three main characters narrating from their own perspective. I haven’t seen the film or read the novel, but I’ve read up on the controversy. Here are the arguments.

Critics see the story as whitewashed appropriation of black history and ignorant of the larger historical context in which the story is set. Kathryn Stockett is in a fine position to write about Mississippi in the 60's, because she's writing what she knows. The problem is that the story prizes the white protagonist's ambitions over the black characters' struggle. According to a 2009 New York Times review of the novel, it "purports to value the maids’ lives while subordinating them to Skeeter and her writing ambitions."

The story steers clear of the nitty-gritty of the Civil Rights movement, despite the obvious connection to the time period and characters. The Association of Black Women Historians issued a statement saying, "Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers." Even the white protagonist's motives don't mesh with the larger social context: "Skeeter never questions the system itself. She is no civil rights pioneer; she just wants to write a good book," according to Valerie Boyd's review.

Advocates of the story argue that an author has license to write what she wants and some reviews find that the story intends, and to some extent succeeds, in breaking down the web of privilege and oppression. A black author blogs that Stockett is in a better position to write this story than she is, and notes, "Caring whether or not the author is black or white seems of no substance now" that she's invested in and enjoying the story. The right of an author to write from any perspective has been debated and defended, and one commenter on the Bitch blog writes, "I find it problematic that people seem to be arguing against the right of this book to exist at all and for the author to tell a story of these experiences from her own point of view." 

Some people came away from the story with positive impressions of its work as a civil rights text. One review of the film claims that the movie "gently but firmly peels away the dry rot of racism that festered beneath the gracious, etiquette obsessed façade of southern gentility before the civil rights movement." Another writer observers, of the novel, "I hope that I might be of help in the way I see Stockett’s novel helping the actively anti-racist cause." The New York Times article, while pointing out flaws, concludes with positive feelings about "this problematic but ultimately winning novel."

Have you read or seen The Help? What do you make of these arguments? Is the story a triumph or a tragedy?