Pajiba

The trailer was looking a little half cocked on my computer so here's the youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0dWCXCjX9o

Lame Dustin, you haven't read the book. You don't know what you're talking about.

Look if SOME white people hadn't stood up and said that things in the South were fucked up, then America would not have gotten better. I have family that protested with MLK, there were white people in the south, in the 60's, that actually did these things. It happened, so stop ragging on it, you sound like a broken record when it comes to these kinds of movies.

but is there nudity? *ducks*

I also listened to the audio book and would highly recommend it. The accents make it. I cried at the end

I can see how some people would find it "troubling."

To me the troubling thing is they showed the whole f*cking movie in the trailer. Perfect example of why people hate trailers.

For full disclosure: I have not read this book.

I'm in a book club, of, you know, well-meaning but relatively privileged white women. They picked this book. I didn't read it; just not interested, really. I was having a hard time articulating exactly why I couldn't feel bothered to read it and was pretty sure I'd be annoyed by it.

"Stockett’s novel, looks “troubling” in the same way that, say, The Blindside was troubling: It’s focused on the great white savior " sums it pretty well for me, though. For what it's worth (not much), I grew up in a much more ethnically diversified environment than most of the other women in my book club, and am more widely read in non-white perspectives. I just didn't feel like I needed to read a fictional book written by a white woman to tell me that black women in the South in the 1960s faced some pretty awful stuff and a lot of wealthy white women were in many ways totally dependent on their maids but also felt free to shit all over them, and furthermore there were a few white women who had minor epiphanies and tried to help the civil rights movement.

I don't really have a point, other than to say that I couldn't find the words "great white savior" and I thank you for providing them. As for the book and movie, I'm sure they're not bad, and the message is not bad, but I find them personally uninteresting and unnecessary.

I read The Help and had mixed feelings about it--I thought it was done pretty well and was a good read, but there were some parts that made me feel icky (to use the literary term). I did wonder what rich ladies who currently have black nannies/baby nurses would think about when they read it...would they make any connection to themselves or would they see that employer/employee dynamic as a relic of the past? Certainly the laws around discrimination are different now but the more subtle stuff is still around. Aaaanywho I look forward to watching this on a plane someday.

Really, why make this movie, when "The Air Up There" is the perfect example of this genre? Who wouldn't want Kevin Bacon teaching them how to play basketball?

I'm with MM on this. I've heard of the book, but found the underlying story to be a bit insulting even if it is a true story. We've been writing our own truths using our own voices since forever and still are, but it seems that no one wants to accept it unless it's through the lens of a Nice White Lady (see: the Ashley Judd Situation). I've been through enough in life, I'm not going to subject myself to literature/film that's going to ultimately piss me off through its erasure.

Plus I can't stand overly sentimental films, they make me gag, and so did that trailer.

I haven't read the book and probably won't watch the movie unless Ms. Paultera makes me. The trailer does pretty much give away the whole movie but there's two ways it can unfold.

Non insulting- They show how brave and what a great risk it was for those women to come forward and tell a story that helped to make a huge change in civil rights.

Insulting- They make it about how a white woman overcame the prejudices she was raised with to inspire black folks to let her tell their story, helping her to single-handedly boost rights for all "The Help". Bonus insults if they initially victimize Emma Stone's character after the book comes out.

this reminds me of the book i just finished reading titled shantaram. it was awful.

(don't ask me why i felt compelled to keep reading after page 200 or so. the remaining 700+ pages were as awful as those first couple of hundred. (it was a gift, i like books about india, i'm one of those people has to finish a book once i start, etc.))

what bothered me was the way the white protagonist extolled the virtues of the brown natives. all were kind, loyal, beautiful, etc. the idea of the nobel savage. that kind of thing.

just sharing. oh, whatever you do, do NOT read shantaram. hey, i'm here for you.

I read this book (privileged white lady book club choice) and while I understand that the author wanted to convey some of what she experienced as a child in the south, what bothered me was not necessarily the "white savior" bit, but the lack of depth most characters had. There was only one character in the book who really became more than she initially appeared at the beginning. All the others were one-dimensional. So really I have the same critique that I have of Ayn Rand from yesterday's discussion: it just wasn't very well-written. I felt it was written to appeal to the type of reader who likes to have a "beach read" all year round, i.e., easy to go through, easy to pick up if you leave off for a week and nothing very challenging: you get to pick the characters you love and hate and no surprises. In other words, it was perhaps a half a step above chick lit, and the subject matter deserved better than that. On the other hand, if it exposed the issue to people (women really) who would never have thought about it otherwise (as in two of the ladies in my book club), maybe it's not a bad thing.

@Mac:

Well, the critiques I've read about The Blind Side is that they totally erased that kid's grandmother from the story. So apparently in real life, no it wasn't the nice white lady who did everything for him. His grandmother was supposedly always there giving support and guidance whenever she could. And I ask myself why they would erase her from the film, and it pisses me off, and that's why I didn't bother with that shit.

Mac:

I think the issue is that there are literally thousands of Black families who take in children from their neighborhoods every day and raise them either in unofficial or foster situations and help them build good lives, but no-one ever makes a movie about them.
I think we see a phenomenon in the US where the public is drawn to the white savior story because it assuages some kind of inherited guilt in the same way that Germans really embrace movies about the good German who stood up to the Nazis. Remember when The Nasty Girl was published? It was a huge controversy in Germany because it opened the door on how many people in one town didn't want their collective history brought up again.

I don't want to see the movie, but this thread is encouraging me to find a local book club. One question: Will they make me read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants?

Started it, found it to be utter tripe. Sorry. There are so many books that do an incredible job with race, so why would I read one in which it's not well-done?

Is the anachronistic perm the film's way of showing us how different and ahead of her time the Emma Stone character is supposed to be?

In other words, it was perhaps a half a step above chick lit, and the subject matter deserved better than that. On the other hand, if it exposed the issue to people (women really) who would never have thought about it otherwise (as in two of the ladies in my book club), maybe it's not a bad thing.

Amen, PaddyDog. I think it was a good read for some of the women in my book club: accessible and engaging, with a little bit of "something to think about" that's actually worth thinking about. For the record, we do often read somewhat more challenging books.

As a privileged white lady myself, I certainly have plenty to learn about racial dynamics in the South, in the 1960s, and in general. But I'm already a few squares ahead of any perspective I think this book had to offer, and I didn't believe it would be well-written enough to be worth reading as a piece of literary art, so I took a pass.

I haven't read the novel but this looks a bit different than the blindside as it is about revealing a truth and the blindside is about a plucky rich white woman who is supposed to get a medal for taking in a poor black boy (but i'm black and black people do this for their own all the time, aunts take care of nieces like daughters and family friends take in neighborhood kids because that is how you survive and nobody ever made a movie about it and if they did, the critics called it trite) Having a reporter reveal the truth about a societal ill in the 60s makes sense because it was difficult to reach a large audience as an african american writer then. However, black writers were doing their part to comment on the state of race relations as well but unfortunately no one really wants to make THAT movie

p.s. it is also good to know that there are still people "who would never have thought about it otherwise"

Well that looks plain awful.

I read the book and I didn't mind it but this movie looks like a snotty hairball that Lifetime coughed up.

I know Emma Stone is something of a saintly figure on this site but she looks like one of the worst parts of this entire film. She's playing Emma Stone as Olive Pendergast as Wichita. I'd say the tone of Stockett's novel has been completely overhauled in this production to make it look like a z-snapping, "oh no you didn't", sisterhood, cliche.