The Sweet Smell of “The Help”

September 14, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

A stirring black-empowerment tale aimed squarely at white auds . . .

So begins Variety’s take on “The Help.”

Really?  White auds, yes.  But is this movie really about black empowerment? 

Years ago, I speculated here that all American films were about success.  O.K. not all of them, of course, but many of them – even movies that seem to be about something else. Love and romance, for example. Or race relations. 

Variety continues

 “The Help” personalizes the civil rights movement through the testimony of domestic servants working in Jackson, Miss., circa 1963. . .

Civil rights?  As I’m sure others have pointed out, “The Help” is civil rights lite if at all.  It does personalize things. That’s what movies are good at. They’re not so good at showing us larger structures and forces. “The Help” not only reduces political and social issues to the individual level, but even the individuals seem less like real people than like caricatures.  It’s all very simple – good guys and bad guys. Or in this case good women and bad women (men in this film are an afterthought).  Bad woman really – just one, the mean girl (Hilly). The other white women may be a tad ignorant, but they’re well-intentioned. And the black women are nearly perfect. 

As is typical in American films, all conflict is external. Nobody has to face any truly difficult problems or dilemmas that have only imperfect solutions.  Right and wrong are simple and clear.* That’s the way we like our movies.

But what “The Help” is really about is success.  The central character is the White girl Skeeter, and the story that arches over everything else is her career.  The problems and triumphs are the ones she faces in her pursuit of success – landing a job, getting an idea for a book, securing the cooperation of the help, keeping the work a secret, writing the book, meeting her deadline.  She plugs away, finishes the book, and sees it become a best-seller.  Ultimately she moves on and up to the New York literary world. 

It’s The Little Engine The Could chugging through Mississippi, and it requires about the same depth of thought.**  If you do see this movie, when you’re done, go watch “Nothing But a Man” (your local library should have a copy) for a grown-up version of the South in the early sixties. It also has a much better soundtrack. 

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* A minor sub-plot that takes a few minutes of screen time involves a real moral dilemma faced by Skeeter’s mother. She too turns out just fine. 

** The movie does have its virtues.  It looks good, and some of the actors are excellent (Viola Davis will probably get an Oscar nomination; maybe Allison Janney too).  It was made without big names and without special effects, so it cost a pittance by Hollywood standards.  It has brought in $130 million gross and counting, five times its cost, so maybe it will nudge Hollywoods’s blockbuster mentality, and we’ll get more small films.

Cheering for Death - Again

September 13, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

(In case you thought the cheering for death I referred to in the previous two posts was a fluke.)

“Are you saying society should just let him die?” The man in question is hypothetical, the subject of a question Wolf Blitzer put to Rand Paul in the Republican candidates’ Tea Party debate last night – a healthy 30-year old who looks at the probabilities and decides not to pay $200-300 a month for health insurance.  But something happens and he winds up in intensive care. 

The question is not whether he should have bought insurance – of course he should have.  The question is: given that he doesn’t have insurance, should society just let him die.

“No . . .” Paul starts to say.  But you know those Republican debate audiences, especially the Tea Party folks.  When it comes to righteous death, they’re just so darned irrepressible.  Sure enough, a few of them shouted, “Yes.”  Go to the video  and listen, if you can, to the enthusiasm for letting someone die.

UPDATE:  A commenter did not think that the people were “cheering.”  (Either that or he didn't think that “let him die” involved death.)  So here's the excerpt:

Cheering for Death

September 11, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston
About my previous post – the one about Republicans applauding the high number of executions in Texas under Gov. Rick Perry:  Despite a New Year’s resolution to reduce the amount of snark I dump into this blog, that crowd reaction did set me off.  I wasn’t the only one.  Many non-Republicans (and I hope some Republicans too) were surprised if not appalled. 

It’s one thing to be in favor of capital punishment.  It’s quite another to cheer for it.  Imagine a liberal forum where a question begins, “Mayor Bloomberg, in New York last year there were more than 80,000 abortions . . .” and the audience breaks into applause.  It wouldn’t happen, of course.  Most pro-choice people see abortion, the termination of an unwanted pregnancy, as an unfortunate, regrettable event* – that’s why they also support contraception and sex education since these too can reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus reduce the number of abortions.  If an audience did applaud high numbers of abortions, we would be right to wonder about the moral compass of those who cheered.

But for those cheering Republicans Wednesday, when it comes to killing the convicted, apparently the more the better.  In a way, this conservative enthusiasm for execution is puzzling.  The Republicans, let’s remember, are the folks who think that government can’t do anything right.  But when it comes to executing people, the government, in Republican eyes, somehow becomes infallible.  (In contrast to this belief, the government in death penalty cases is indeed fallible.  At least one of those 234 executed, Cameron Todd Willingham, was almost certainly innocent.  And the government would have executed several other innocent people had it not been for the efforts of independent groups like the Innocence Project.)

Conservatives rail against government and want to reduce its power – the power to provide education or to protect workers, consumers, and the environment.  Yet when it comes to the power to take life – they lead the cheers.  That power – the power of legitimate killing – is the greatest government power of all.  In fact, execution is a good indicator of repressive government power.  Page through history or look around the globe today at the countries that execute the most people; these are not the governments that let freedom ring.

My guess is that underlying the avid support for death is a tendency towards cognitive simplicity.**  This simplicity (often euphemized as “moral clarity”), divides the world in two  – Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, and most basically Us and Them.  That Us/Them distinction explains how support for death penalty squares with “Thou shalt not kill,” for the commandment carries an unstated specification: Thou shalt not kill one of ours.  That’s what it meant to the Hebrews of the Bible, and that’s what it means to the Christians of Texas.  They too wrap their rationale in a tribal Us-vs.-Them imagery.  We are killing Them.  For example, to hear Gov. Perry on Wednesday, you would think that only non-Texans commit crimes that warrant execution.   “If you come into our state and you kill one of our children . . . you will be executed.” The problem is not Us; it’s all these homicidal outsiders coming into our state.

This is of a piece with a more general view that seems more characteristic of the right than of the left.  To be a conservative is to live in a world in which We are under constant threat from Them.  Them is the government, especially a distant government like the government of the nation, taking our money and giving it to “those people.”  Them is immigrants coming into our country, our neighborhood.  Them is non-Christians, and some of Them are trying to impose their Sharia law on Us.  Them is the Obama voters who took Our country from Us.  And of course Them is the criminals – the ones we have to protect ourselves against by walking around fully armed, the ones we have to show who’s boss by levying the most Draconian punishments.  So when we do kill one or two or 234 of Them, that’s something to be cheered.

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* Gloria Steinem used to say that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

** An earlier post on this is here.

Executions and Audiences

September 10, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

When you are executing people, as with any performance, you have to know your audience.

When the Sirjan [Iran] town authorities tried to hang two men convicted of robbery on the morning of Dec. 22, protestors threw stones at the police and members of the court carrying out the execution. . .  the protestors also shot at officers with handguns.
Amidst the chaos, the protestors managed to cut down the convicts, who were still alive a minute after the attempted hanging  (Story here, but do not go there if you are troubled by pictures and videos of this sort of thing.)

The hangmen misjudged their audience.  They could have played to a much more receptive crowd – the Republicans who showed up for the candidates’ debate Wednesday. 

Brian Williams began a question to Gov. Rick Perry, “Your state has executed 234 death row inmates more than any other governor in modern times . . .”  But before Williams could finish, the Republican faithful, on hearing that number, broke into applause.  Listen to the enthusiasm.

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We don’t know how long the applause would have continued if Brian Williams hadn’t interrupted to continue his question.

Oh my, those Republicans.  They sure do love them some executions.*  The applause wasn’t thunderous – the deaths under Perry work out to a measly two a month, barely one-tenth of what Iran generates.  But Texas currently has more than 300 people on death row.  Imagine the Republican audience reaction if Gov. Perry can manage to get most of those 300 executed before the next debate.  An O for sure.  With 500 executions under his belt next time, not 234, there’s gonna be a lot of love in that room.  

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* They also have a curious fondness for torture.  See my earlier post here.