Why THE HELP?

2020 has been quite a ride the pandemic those murder hornets some guy was found guilty i don't know who he is record high temperatures in antarctica oh um parasite one best picture that was nice uh let's see the pandemic impeachment olivia de havilland died the pandemic and oh yeah a wholesale and overdue reckoning of the history of racism in the united states the extraordinary outpouring of activism after the police murdered george floyd prompted a massive movement to re-examine nearly every facet of american life our laws statues teams even our television shows books about race shot to the top of the new york times bestseller list while streaming services both cleaned up their libraries and curated collections of films to contextualize the protests in some cases even making them free for non-subscribers the popularity of this programming made it clear that white individuals were actively searching for content to meet the moment or to educate themselves and personally i found some of those resources really useful and was happy to know that other people were taking advantage of them too and then i saw this the help trending in netflix's top 10 for several days in a row no now this video isn't exactly a takedown of the help although this wig truly deserves it but this quote from darnell hunt director of ucla's center for african american studies sums up why its surge in popularity should cause concern quote not to say the film isn't entertaining or may have other benefits but if i were to pick one film that helps us understand where black people are today and what problems we face that wouldn't be the one i'd pick several articles popped up with similar sentiments bryce dallas howard who was in the help even tweeted about it but instead i want to think about this film's genre why people reflexively look to films like it and why hollywood continues to pump out narratives meant to address race in america that don't actually do a great job of addressing race in america the question is how does an industry package racism as entertainment for a wide audience and how have these portrayals fallen short depictions of race have always been part of american cinema we can trace stereotypes blackface and white supremacy to its earliest days but serious examinations of america's problem with racism took decades to become its own subgenre on screen throughout the 1920s 30s and 40s major studios largely chose to factor black artists out of filmmaking as a way of avoiding controversy strict regulations limited what actors of color could do on screen and because each film had to have universal box office appeal studios had to consider what would do well in the south to them there would be too many hoops to jump through and too much revenue on the line for inclusivity to be worth it it'd be better to offend no one cater to the censors and sideline black actors to roles like maids and butlers to make white people more comfortable it's not until after world war ii that we regularly see anti-racist messaging in mainstream cinema as thomas cripps wrote in his book making movies black the war became an occasion for a freshened liberal culture that restored racial issues to national prominence a liberal hollywood black alliance that arose from these wartime circumstances not only denned a new black presence in the nation's propaganda but extended its ideology into post-war america in ways that anticipated the modern civil rights movement thanks to some successful lobbying from the naacp studios had the momentum to infuse scripts with progressive values and use film as a vehicle to engage in current events the films that followed share tropes or framing devices which we'll get into but tend to take their particular shadings from the specific era in which they were made in the 40s for example films like pinky used white passing to ask for tolerance obviously using white actors in the 60s the films of stanley kramer and sydney poitiers like guess who's coming to dinner advocated for integration the 80s saw a resurgence in conservatism which led to a series of backwards-looking films like driving miss daisy and mississippi burning it's those films that have provided the blueprint for movies about racism through the 90s and beyond so what do these films actually say about hollywood and to us as consumers to understand that we need to look at who the films were made by and who they are made for it's white people white people have had the vast majority of institutional power within the film industry since its inception as anna sq liberato and john foster wrote in their article on representation and remembrance it's through that institutional power that white people are in the position to monopolize the social representation of race and infuse race talk with their own experience and perspectives so historically when major studios have made films to address racism a white person greenlit the project a white person wrote it and a white person directed it obviously many of the artists involved in making these films have been well-meaning progressive people and some took real risks to tell these groundbreaking stories but we can acknowledge that while simultaneously pointing out the limitations of their perspectives instead of utilizing themes like life under jim crow black activism black community leadership or culture you see a lot of films illustrating that racism is wrong through a white character's conversion from racial prejudice to tolerance so for example and guess who's coming to dinner an interracial relationship tests spencer tracy and katherine hepburn's liberal values in the long walk home [ __ ] spacek rejects her husband's bigotry to join whoopi goldberg in a bus boycott jessica tandy grows from resenting to embracing morgan freeman in driving miss daisy in the case of white savior narratives like the help a white person with good intentions appears in the right place at the right time to demonstrate the strength and nobility they already innately have as steve neal points out in genre and hollywood these stories typically construct a conflict around two opposing polls definitively representing good and evil with a readily identifiable hero and villain there's usually a happy ending in which evil is destroyed and good rewarded these limitations on perspective also affected how black characters were written which was usually to serve whatever agenda needed for the white character's arc this criticism is often lobbied at sydney poitiers films from the 1950s and 60s on the one hand as steve reifel wrote in his article about in the heat of the night poitiers shattered old stereotypes and demanded by virtue of the roles that he played to be accepted and respected as a serious straightforward actor whose status equaled that of his white counterparts and the first major african-american film hero since paul robeson in the 1930s indeed he was the first black man to win the best actor oscar for lilies of the field on the other hand poitiers characters develop their own predictably recurrent tropes and possibly noble traits seemingly honed to mollify white audiences his characters were refined classical music enthusiasts inoffensive gentlemen who integrated relatively seamlessly into white communities they were slow to anger had almost no sexual impulse and even sacrificed themselves for white co-stars black audiences found it disingenuous for example that poitier's character and guess who's coming to dinner was a world-renowned scientist why give these white parents a pat on the back for accepting a virtually perfect man kramer on the other hand believed that that was the point he said hell we deliberately made the situation perfect and only for one reason if you take away all the other motives for not getting married then you leave only the race question he thought that if he made poitiers a mailman then the parents would just object on the grounds that he was a mailman of course guess who's coming to dinner was a work of fiction so i don't know probably could have written around that but cool whatever still poitiers films hold up well bolstered by plots that don't make them overly heavy-handed in the heat of the night has its murder mystery there's a prison escape in the defiant ones and a friend's tumultuous home life in a patch of blue they also feel of their time like a filmmaker was asking questions about society as he saw it in 1960 whatever whereas a lot of films about race from the 80s and beyond don't hold up very well partially because they portray racism as something from another era think about the films we've seen just within the last decade loving selma the help harriet hidden figures green book 12 years a slave looking at these films you'd think that racism existed only in the south and that it ended sometime around 1970 and yet there are comparatively few films tackling urgent contemporary issues like police violence i'm not suggesting that these films shouldn't exist and some of them obviously do a much better job than others yet this trend certainly merits some analysis that there are so many of these films suggest to me that talking about race through the prism of the civil rights era is much more comfortable it gives distance between us the white people of the present who are obviously doing everything right and them the white people of the past who were so clearly wrong it's very easy to condemn hilly for her horrifying statements about separate bathrooms it's apparently not very easy to condemn confederate statues one recent anecdote made this division between the comfort of talking about racism in the past and the discomfort of dealing with it in the present david o'yellow recently revealed that the cast of selma received backlash after they wore i can't breathe shirts to the film's premiere in the wake of eric garner's death he said quote members of the academy called into the studio and are producers saying how dare they do that why are they stirring [ __ ] and we're not going to vote for that film because we don't think it's in their place to be doing that i mean irony is dead focusing on the growth of white characters into heroes has also led to a reimagining of civil rights history both generally and in individual cases again liberato and foster put it best institutional power is exercised through the influence over what how when and why we remember as a society through official commemorations ceremonies monuments specific forms of collective remembering are created many reflecting an ideology based on whiteness many of these films have induced criticism for warping the truth to craft more favorable portrayals of white characters in films based on real life in 1988 mississippi burning received backlash for over-emphasizing the role of the fbi in solving the murders of three civil rights workers more recently green book also drew criticism when the family of donald shirley said in an interview that nick falalonga and the creative team had completely left them out of the filmmaking process and that the film was filled with falsehoods dr maurice shirley donald's brother called it a symphony of lies the ideology elevated by these films is also typically distilled into a call for harmony through colorblindness as if solely drawing calls to actions from martin luther king jr's quote about being judged only by the content of your character by flattening the ideology of civil rights leaders including the panthers or other revolutionaries who hardly appear in cinema at all the movement appears less in its politically threatening and revolutionary form de-emphasizing martin luther king's critique of u.s foreign policy and the capitalist system de-emphasizing women's participation and community and posing narrative limits to the activism of women like rosa parks this understanding can lead to clumsy expressions of nostalgia for example in 2011 the home shopping network launched a collection of beauty home decor designer fashions and jewelry inspired by the help so consumers could buy a steel fryer lovely lady pearls and pie makers to be just like minnie as journalist mary elizabeth williams put it in salon not since a nashville trio decided to call itself lady antebellum has southern pride seems so cluelessly tone deaf studios have always worried about the financial returns on their films especially ones that discuss these topics director norman jewison for example admitted that the united artist executives were concerned that many southern theaters might not want to play in the heat of the night for fear of creating social unrest with advent of streaming services we've seen new opportunities for work that absolutely subverts these tropes and i hope we increasingly do yet the competition from these platforms also means that box office revenue for traditional studios is all the more urgent they need to put a lot of butts in seats or did i don't even know anymore so they can't make anything that's going to challenge or offend anyone because in order to reach the broadest possible audience the most you can say is racism bad in the most obvious way possible ultimately it's a similarly risk-averse strategy to structural absence but as justin said the studios aren't in the business to analyze morality although the artists that work in hollywood are interested in morality the artists are interested in political freedoms and expressing the deepest concerns of the human spirit studios weren't the studios are interested in making money another reason by the way that having white leads is favorable because guess which demographic has more disposable income these monetary concerns or some would say constraints help explain the sharp divide in what you see from independent cinema and the films that bubble to the top during awards season out from under the eye and pressure of major corporations documentarians and independent filmmakers have almost always addressed these subjects first and usually in edgier and more substantive ways to kill a mockingbird came out the same year as roger corman's the intruder which takes a much more frank gruesome view of white racism william shatner plays the direct opposite of atticus finch a rabble-rouser who invades a small town to stir up racist sentiments and to prevent school integration from taking place uptight came out the same year as guess who's coming to dinner but represented a very different world view the film centers black revolutionaries as they dispel a traitor to the cause from their group using the funeral of martin luther king jr to symbolize a shift in civil rights ideology genie the non-violent program is dead killed by white violence april 4th 1968 in memphis seriously this one is so underrated and it's on youtube in full so i'll link it below in case you want to check it out but each year brings a new batch of counter examples driving miss daisy came out the same year as do the right thing 12 years a slave came out the same year as fruitvale station greenbook came out the same year as sorry to bother you the other major problem with this is that these films make racism look like an individual or interpersonal problem that can be solved simply by getting to know someone and i think you're beautiful beautiful most people would say the opposite well that's because they don't know you they denounce racism or rather bigotry in this way which is good but they don't engage audiences to think about the roots or sources of it they ask what does being a maid feel like not what has gone wrong in our community that black women have no upward mobility in these films racism is not a complex web of rules biases and regulation that systematically shuts out people of color it's a personality flaw meant to be overcome they teach us to seek accountability not from institutions that need reform or dismantling but in ourselves and that will be enough in terms of narrative storytelling i kind of get it we like tales of extraordinary individuals who do the right thing but as much as i like seeing mean white ladies eat [ __ ] that doesn't even come close to telling the whole story we can even use the film industry as an example to show how systemic bureaucratic policies can be the most debilitating remember at the beginning of the video when i said that in the 30s and 40s the studios didn't challenge the censors on race and cater to the south well it's not like that was some unspoken understanding lena horne was often intentionally written into one scene per movie and given songs or dialogue that would have no bearing on the plot whatsoever so if theater owners didn't want her on their screens they could literally just take a pair of scissors cut her scenes out of the reel and the film would be fine what individual in that case would fix the problem or how about in 1969 when the equal employment opportunity commission held a hearing to examine equal hiring practices in the film industry according to professor enya quinn the testimony given to the eeoc committee uncovered gross underutilization of minority workers and recruiting systems that have as their foreseeable effect the employment of only whites overall figures showed that black people made up just 2.9 percent of the industry's craft union memberships without a union membership it'd be nearly impossible to get a job working on a film but to get in you have to answer questions like what type of vocation did your father and or guardian pursue for a livelihood during the application process this gatekeeping privileged the sons of the white men who founded and originally belonged to the unions imagine if executive boards or unions got the same press coverage as oscar's so white maybe this wouldn't be an issue or this or maybe in 2019 more than just 5.6 percent of writing jobs might have gone to black writers representation of actors and directors is often used as a barometer for success regarding progress and while important it can't be the only discussion as sidney poitier once said in an interview you can't say to two people why don't we have more of this and why don't we have more of that as if it's up to those two people to produce all that we need to fulfill our dreams so yeah why the help it's clear that the film industry's power structure has not encouraged honest depictions of racism in this country and that films like these reduce the problems we face to simple causes and even simpler solutions as john nicholl writes in disabling african-american men liberalism and race message films simply put these films make white liberals feel good these movies and their white heroes not only indulge white liberal viewers sense of importance in standing in society but also assuage their guilt about racial inequalities reinvigorating the myth of the american hero the white protagonists in these movies buck conformity uphold democratic ideals and aid victims while we can and should do better it's necessary to point out that entertainment cannot replace education but i have a feeling that when it comes to race in america it mostly has and that's the only place people know to turn while writing this video john oliver did a piece about this which even opens with white people learning about the tulsa race massacre from watchmen and as usual these issues are broader than one person or even one industry they're part of the dna of this country personally as a well-intentioned white american talking about race from my perspective i know i'm part of the problem too i cannot and should not be a definitive voice on this issue and even now i'm so wary of spending so much time focusing on films like this the people love the fried chicken the greats and the colored greens instead of highlighting great artists who deserve more attention oscar micho or julie dash or cheryl dunye or harry belafonte there's so much more to discuss as raquel gates wrote in the new york times the very idea that black film's greatest purpose is to be an educational primer on race in america is the notion that we need to lay to rest now more than ever we should return to black narratives that de-center whiteness or ignore it altogether films that connect audiences with the pathos joy and even treachery of the black characters and lives they depict the films that recognize their complex humanity my friend dom over at the armchair tour made a great video about this that's well worth your time which i'll also link below i still hope that this video can add to our understanding of how long-standing storytelling tropes have failed to communicate what racism is how it works and even when and where it exists by bringing this context to the table hopefully we can be better consumers or if you're a filmmaker yourself and watching this better creators had best screenplay nominations lost out to deadpool society is there something about greenbrook that offends you that's what i'm trying to get offen are you british yeah are you british i am let me give you a british answer it was my cup of tea [Laughter] not my cup of tea

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

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Id: Q11MGI6L8mo

Length: 21min 37sec (1297 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020