Pajiba

I take issue that you presume all racism resides in the South. Yes, there are those older folks down here from another time who are set in their way of thinking and don't see a problem making grossly inappropriate jokes. But that generation is dying out - and since you left, you wouldn't know.

A huge benefit of the ugliness of the civil rights movement in the South was that desegregation forced us to live together and go to school together and interact with each other, and therefore, learn about each other - which is one of the main ways to overcome prejudices.

That being said, yes, it still exists. But you are grossly mistaken if you think for one second that there isn't prejudice and racism all over this country. Maligning the South because they are the easiest to point their finger at is just as ignorant as the people you are claiming to be better than.

Kristobel,

Since Dustin grew up in the south and it's also where the movie is set, I think it's perfectly relevant. He never said it doesn't exist elsewhere he's just relating the location relevant to the film and his own experiences.

I really want Viola Davis to be in more things. She's such a talented actress and she deserves way more attention than she gets. All the fracas about this movie aside, I hope it propels her up into other things. Octavia Spencer has always been the Hey It's That Woman! sort of character actress. I'm glad to hear she did so well.

I think Bryce Dallas Howard might be discovering just how well she can play an awful person. She was a pretty selfish person in 50/50 and I'm intrigued that she played someone so terrible in this. And I'm not sure why Jessica Chastain was cast in the same movie as Howard. It is waaay too easy to mix them up. Maybe I'm just being an old person.

Overall, this sounds like it was better than I thought it'd be and that there's some good stuff to be found in it.

This is a good review dustin, I know I razzed you before about this, but I think that you were very thoughtful.

As some of you may know I'm from MS, so when you said, " Racism is no longer codified, but in many parts of the country, it’s still an institutional problem. Separate but equal no longer exists officially, but in small and large towns all over the South, black people live on one side of the railroad tracks and the white people live in another. I grew up in one of those towns. Depending on the company I was in, the other side of the tracks was either called The Hill or Ni**ger Hill. So far as I know, things haven’t changed much in the decade since I left." that really hit home. I used to teach in one of those schools, I still live in one of those towns.

By the Mississippi Delta, a whole school left behind:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/27/AR2007102701040.html

This article was written while I was working there, teaching 5th and 6th grade science, social studies, and health. Out of 2 grades, I had one white kid and the whole town consisted of big plantation homes but over the tracks the saddest trailer/slums you could find. Guess where the white people lived?

Funny, I was coming back to here to comment on yesterday's post about this movie and Dustin pretty well made most of my arguments already. My biggest gripe with the earlier post was the knee-jerk comparison to Eat, Pray, Love simply because they were both written by women and liked by women (women! they are so dumb!) Eat, Pray, Love was a terribly contrived self absorbed book about how difficult it is to be a rich white lady with all these problems like a nice husband who wanted kids. Everything about that book was selfish.

If suburban soccer moms took time off deciding whether to be Team Jacob or Team Edward to read something that forced them outside of themselves-and perhaps made them reexamine the women nannying their kids or cleaning their houses then good freakin' hell I'm sorry a white woman wrote this novel and thus, is incapable of infusing it with any reality. If a man wrote a book that shed some light on areas where women have few right is it negated because he doesn't have a vagina? There are 45 trashy novels on the best seller list in the summer that are far more nefarious than jumping on some uptight bandwagon about a book that has actually sparked some terrific awareness in an often complacement demographic.

Unfortunately for Viola Davis, Alfre Woodard isn't retired yet.

Do not mock the Mhmmhmm. I don't want to be forced to whip it out and lacerate anyone with it. My Mhmmhmm can drop a mofo at twenty paces.

"They're called Sundown Towns. Meaning, you'd better not be a person of color after sundown."
- superasente

... And Indiana has (at least) a dozen of them.

this is history as fashioned by hollywood. who knows how
accurate it is and it has always been convenient to point the
finger at the south. maybe we'll get a book/film someday that will
examine how the northern carpetbaggers treated the emancipated
slaves when they escaped the south.
dustin's review is fine but it is more concerned with the theme
than the movie itself. more should have been said about the
wonderful turn by viola davis who should be recognized come awards season. the rest of the cast was also terrific.
at a time of year when the cinema is dominated by aliens,
super-heroes and retread romcoms , this film, although
blatantly manipulative, should be a must see.... you will discuss
it and remember it.

I am not a wealthy suburban soccer mom.
I am from the South, and proud to be so.
I enjoyed this book, and I don't care what you think about that.

It's a book, y'all. Fiction.

To act like someone cannot write a fictionalized account of something because of their race, age, or gender is ridiculous. To further imply that someone cannot write about something that they themselves didn't go through pretty much means an end to literature.

There are other things to get all worked up about. I'm tired of hearing the same tirade about what is essentially a beach read, everywhere I go.

Oh dear, another white person incensed by any inference that they might not have a right to do something. Ironic.

John G.,
I'm curious, how do you know the person who posted that is white? All I infer from her comment is that she isn't Egyptian.

Perception of credibility may be a reason the author's race is brought up when the book is discussed. The first thing that may pop in your head is "What does she know about being black in the 60's." That may turn people off or cause controversy. It's a superficial discriminating choice and it's made millions of times a day, but when race is involved the situation is amplified. Would you eat a Chinese restaurant that was owned and run by a staff comprised of Hispanics? Or would you say, "What do they know about dim sum," and walk out of the door. They may have the best damn spring rolls ever, but the perceived lack of credibility may make you uneasy.

So, we're offended that the guy who wrote Ishmael wasn't a psychic ape?

To clarify, the story isn't reframed from the novel as it begins with Aibileen narrating the book and ends with her as does the film. I took my mom to see this today, we both read the book, but she was absolutely wrecked by the end of it. Crying like crazy, that last scene is the best in the film and is so perfectly acted by Davis. I kept looking for those mannerisms you expect from roles like this seen in other movies, but she doesn't show any of them. Brilliant performance.

By the way, the movie is essentially a brisker version of the novel, not much better or worse. Nothing was left out and would serve well if you were looking for cliff notes on the book.

I find it interesting that the only people I know who have read it and are raving about it are black women. It doesn't seem to bother them at all...

Not all black women are Oprah.
Melissa Harris-Perry really, really did not like the movie.
http://twitter.com/#!/MHarrisPerry

Eh, I read the book and liked it. Haven't seen the movie yet but will (mostly for vanity's sake since I was an extra in the movie).

I have been living the last seven years here in Mississippi (kills me to type that) and let me tell you racism is alive and kicking here.

A black aquaintance of mine just got run off the road while biking the Trace by three white teenagers in a pick up truck sporting the Confederate flat. Cracked ribs, black eye, abrasions on her whole body.

A few white teenagers are headed to trial because in June they beat up a random black guy and then ran over and killed him.

Had a woman in her thirties ask me where "the colored gal (employee)" went to in a store.

On the flip side lots of racism here against white folks too. So much so that a gay, white reference librarian I know, who was from Alabama, was so happy after living here for two years to be transfering back to Alabama because he was afraid he would turn racist in turn if he lived here much longer. That's right, a guy couldn't wait to get back to ALABAMA because of the racism here.

Oh, what a relief. I was afraid this was going to be Crash 2: Racism Boogaloo.

I get tired of people saying that racism is mostly a Southern thing. I hear it all the time in California. I then tell those people my story. I live in Orange County, California. My neighbor has these little punks drive by his house, screaming the N-word and "white power" in the middle of the night before they drive off. It's really scary to be woken up to people shouting like that. All of us neighbors have tried calling the police, but these punks are hard to get since they flee like cowards. The poor man got so fed up that he left his apartment. It makes me a little mad when I hear people here say things like, "Oh, that's in the South. Or, that's 50 years ago. We live in California not Alabama, etc." Wrong. It happens everywhere. Even in liberal, pot-smoking, multi-cultural California.

Perception of credibility may be a reason the author's race is brought up when the book is discussed. The first thing that may pop in your head is "What does she know about being black in the 60's." That may turn people off or cause controversy. It's a superficial discriminating choice and it's made millions of times a day, but when race is involved the situation is amplified. Would you eat a Chinese restaurant that was owned and run by a staff comprised of Hispanics? Or would you say, "What do they know about dim sum," and walk out of the door. They may have the best damn spring rolls ever, but the perceived lack of credibility may make you uneasy. - Diallo

I, for one, don't care what ethnic group makes my food so long as the food is good. Isn't it supremely racist to think that any Chinese person can magically make great Chinese food, while a Latino (who studied for years in China) can't, solely due to race? How stupid!

The problem with "inauthentic" representations of non-white cultures by whites is that the white creator has a tendency to taint the whole representation with his/her white perspective. Everything is interpreted through a white frame-of-reference. Or sometimes, the non-white culture is essentialized into ridiculous stereotypes. Even if the white creator does a great job, there's also a troubling issue of why non-white cultures can only be introduced into mainstream consciousness by a white conduit.

Are non-whites THAT scary and incongruous with majority-white audiences?

@Kamikaze Feminist

Yeah, I totally agree that Columbus does that where the film includes every detail no matter how unecessary. That bothered me the most about it because I don't see any point in adapting things for the screen if there isn't artistic merit. If you want to adapt a movie to screen, there should be some reasoning other than money behind it. But the whole point of this film as far I've seen has been just to cash in on the massive success of the book. I'm not saying the film is great, but it does what it sets out to do, which is translate the book to screen and please general audiences. It's the performances that actually make it worth a look though.

Ni**ger Hill.
---
Y'all spell it with THREE G's?

Congratulations, y'all win the White Medal for racism.

ok, then us white folks will just have to stay out of your black business then, is that the message I'm supposed to be getting here? Great. Glad we're all open and enlightened on both sides then. Fuck me.

Y'all are going to give me a white guilt complex, and I'm brown!

On another note, I thought the book was poorly written, nvm the race of the author.

Also, were there really women in the 50's named Skeeter? Kinda sounds like a cool modern tomboy-ish nickname. I want to meet some old granny out there named Skeeter.

"Please. Go fuck yourselves if you think a white person can really do justice to the lives of people of color who have, you know, LIVED racism not just observed it."

Please. Tell that to all of the past Presidents, Senators and Congressmen who took time out of their lives to craft and pass all of that civil rights legislation. Or those white people who marched along side their fellow black brothers and sisters in protest, got cracked in the skull by white cops or rode on busses in protest of racial discrimination.

If it weren't for (some, not all) white people laying down their lives in protest of slavery during the civil war, slavery might still exist. There's a reason why the NAACP was founded on Lincoln's Birthday (day, not year.)

The African slave trade of the last 500 years was abolished first and foremost in white European countries by white europeans who saw the ills of their ways and sought to make amends.

Were all of their intentions pure? Probably not. But I am willing to be that some of them were, which makes you a dumbass.

"Go fuck yourselves if you think a white person can really do justice to the lives of people of color who have, you know, LIVED racism not just observed it."

I think a white person who does his or her research, does it well, lives and breathes it, and is a gifted writer can do it. Stockett is none of these.

As to racism, I'd argue that African-Americans who didn't live through segregation couldn't possibly understand what it was like, much as I'd argue Jewish-Americans couldn't possibly understand what a concentration camp is like. But one can most certainly do one's best to try to emphathize.

I really hate the "you'll never understand, because you are ________" argument. At work, I once heard an older Latino man once tell a young Latina woman, "Oh, in the 1960's, it was real bad, you young folks complaining about racism, you'll never understand." Basically, you can say that about anyone who hasn't experienced discrimination at a certain place/time. My point is--when you say you'll never understand, then you create barriers. That's why we have fiction, movies and people telling their stories--so that people who haven't experienced this can understand what it might have been like to be there, learn something from it, and emphathize.

I'd really love to see us all back away from the eaither/or side of this argument. I really don't think most people on this thread are saying "No one should write about someone outside their race/gender/whatever." I also don't think most people think it's cool if anybody just appropriates everyone else's story and claims it is their own.

My undertsanding is that *if* you're going to write about an experience that someone else *actually* had, you need to be aware of the pitfalls and tropes that will lessen the impact of your work - like, say, the Magical Negro trope, or the White Lady Saves the Day trope. If you can write the story from an individual perspective that doesn't make broad proclamations on behalf of someone else's group, or oversimplifies the problem to make it feel pat or neat, then GREAT. You might be Harper Lee.

Otherwise, you might be in trouble.

Maryscott, I get what you are saying, really I do, but can entertain the possibility that it's not THAT simple? That we're not just reacting to the thought of any white person writing about any other group's struggle? That perhaps what some of us are saying is that, if you're going to write about someone else's struggle, research it better and make sure it's not saying things you didn't intend it to say [things you might have missed because of privilidge and assumptions]? I think that's a fair thing to say.

That's not, really, the argument, though. The argument is that when one writes without acknowledging one's **privilege**, one puts oneself in a tough spot and opens the work up for criticism of this nature.

I would argue that Mark Twain and Harper Lee's books work so well because each writer shows acute awareness of white privilege (and in Twain's case, male privilege) in their writing - even if they didn't necessarily call the phenomenon they were witnessing "privilege." I would argue that both Huck Finn and Mockingbird are more **about** shining a light on privilege than they are about anything else. That's why they don't feel like they are co-opting someone's story, or showing how Whitey Saves The Day in any cliche fashion - because the realizations that the main characters have involve seeing their own advantages in stark contrast to the oppression suffered by the people they care about.

There are a lot of people making the argument that "a good writer can write about anyone." True. I agree wholeheartedly. A good writer means someone who is self-aware enough about his/her experience in the world, as contrasted with the experiences of the subject, to do justice to their story without reducing it, oversimplifying it, or making it a caricature (see also: Dickens and the destitute). That doesn't mean EVERY writer should be free from criticism when he or she misses the mark - and it doesn't make the question of privilege any less important.

"Commendable"? Why would this be any more commendable than any other author writing a book of fiction? Stockett's not doing anybody any favors here. She wrote and heavily marketed a book and has reaped enormous financial benefits from it. "Mighty white of you" comes to mind.

I am simply saying that instead of the myriad of other subjects she could have easily wrote about and enjoyed success from (I believe someone brought up Eat, Pray, Love?), for her to choose THIS PARTICULAR SUBJECT, and draw some form of positive attention to these women, especially focusing on the time period it was written in (when she had no real obligation to do so) shouldn't be slapped down so hastily.

The woman could have chosen easier, and much more lucrative subjects, but she didn't, and I commend her for THAT. I'm not saying she can't be criticized, I'm just saying that her race shouldn't be first and foremost a reason to bar her from writing what she wants to write. And I simply don't see anything that indicates that she was being malicious in her depiction of these women.

Man, it's like a workshop on Hanlon's Razor in here.

"The woman could have chosen easier, and much more lucrative subjects, but she didn't, and I commend her for THAT."

I don't see how this book could've been more lucrative, but I digress. It is basically drafted as if the only audience was book clubs and it's now being made into a movie. I just don't see this as a risk-taking venture by the author.

"Middlesex"? Now THERE'S a not-so-easy subject matter that managed to be brilliant just the same.

Write on, authors of WHATEVER COLOR YOU ARE, please continue to imagine and to dream and to let characters speak through you onto the pages of a book. I will read you and not care what color or gender you are. Thank you.

Posted by: Darlene at August 12, 2011 12:58 PM

That's about the best thing I've read here in days. Thank you, Darlene.

I only remember it being called The Hill growing up...maybe I blocked out all memories of the other name. It also took me moving away to get perspective and confirm what I always believed deep down - that was just wrong. When I moved back to the south with my husband (who is not a "southerner"), I realized that although there is racism everywhere, it has a whole different feel in the south. I often find myself feeling ashamed to have been raised in this part of the country, especially when someone says something that causes my husband to give me that look again that says "See, I told you that most people here are still racist". And it's not just the older generation......

JoMama,

I give you credit, I never understand a fucking thing you write, but you write SO WELL.

lesigh

1) It's stupid to imply that a white woman can't write a book about discrimination in the south. Such an implication would require that people are incapable of imagination, empathy and scope.

2) Yes, racism happens everywhere and not just the south. But it wasnt the north that started a war over it. Time to accept that you live in a geographical location associated with bigotry. That doesn't mean you are a bigot.

3) While I understand that this is the internet, and it's what you're supposed to do here... please stop overreacting. This is a movie review framed by the necessary social commentary to make that review relevant. We all know racism is bad. Lets worry about the movie on this movie review site.

my grandma says she can still remember when the local amusment park had to have seperate lines for people who were black and people who were white. here's what i believe about racism it's nothing more then sibling rivalry started by cain and able we are all memebers of the same race the human race.i prefer to think of the entire human race as one big family muslims and jews and other races and religions are honorary brothers and sisters

wizard makes a good point. I think a lot of the irritation comes from ongoing marginalization. It began with the body and has migrated to the head and at this point is felt to be some kind of historical looting. You can see why so many people are bothered even if you don't agree with it. As far as telling one's own stories, can some that get published, or can such a sacred trust be trusted if in the hands of the trustee, please Oracle, permission me to truth! We'll watch, but presently the group that had historically writen the rules in its own favour was seemingly re-writing history in its own favour. If we couch it terms of robbery/theft which has occupied a lot of this thread it will play out like this: 'So you were robbed of your possessions and you know who did it, when, and someone stepped on your mobile, accidentally recording the act? The problem isn't theft, the problem is you have too many possessions, so I think you need to apologize to your aggressor' People want to be stewards in their own lives, so we could stand to be sensitive to the protectiveness over their own lives and memories--who else would? So the 'real' story is banished and sanitized with a very 'don't worry, we'll take it from here' attitude. I wonder how much more money was received by the individuals who Pat Boone-i-fy the stories than was by these women over the course of a life? I don't know, I guess you could say it's the difference between a real tatoo and a rub-on...and a hypodermic full of mawkish VD.

How many Magical Negroes martyr themselves?
How many Saviour White Ladies do the same?

Isn't that kind of weird? I'd go into it further, but I'm scheduled to go the way of all things during some opening credits.

How many Tyler Perry movies do we get before a black director actually makes these wonderful films you think need making? A white writer and director take on the issue and the thing you bitch about is that they're white? Maybe is we weren't subjected to Perry and the Wayans and Eddie Murphy's fartstranvaganza and there were more black filmmakers and writers who actually took on these topics I'd take your bitching more seriously.

But I suppose that's whitey's fault too.

Maybe the idea was that these women did not have a voice, because of racism, because of access, and a white woman gave them a voice or at least a way to speak with that voice. Maybe the idea was that we're in this together, not as two separate entities and we need to solve the problem together, not as white and black. Maybe the idea that white people shouldn't dabble in black issues is part of the problem. Maybe the separation cuts both ways?

The book and movie take place in the 1960s....not the 50s.

Thanks alot! This is what i was looking for