The Help

In that silence after dinner where everyone had eaten their fill and no one had anything more to say, my mother suggested that we watch a movie. I don't usually watch movies with my family, because the endeavor normally results in my being subjected to late-90s action movies, or sappy romance flics no one's ever heard of, or... Point being, unless I know what we're watching, I don't try. Tonight I had a suggestion, though - it had been recommended to me - so all four of us watched it together. The movie was called The Help.

I have been absent from this blog for nearly five months now. I needed a little break; the energy I used to devote to blogging got channeled into some necessary reflection on relationships and more personal topics. There have been several big, objective issues on my mind, and which I've been thinking hard about, but I've been unable to blog about them. Although I intend to publish some thoughts on those topics, they are controversial enough that I'd like to wait for some. Tonight's movie inspired me to tackle the first one, though. Let's see where it takes me.

For those that have not seen The Help, Wikipedia says that it is "an ensemble piece about a young white woman, Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan, and her relationship with two black maids during Civil Rights era America in the early 1960s." Obviously, it's primarily about racism, but I came out of it feeling that there's also a very prominent feminist message that gets overshadowed by the rest. I even noticed a bit of stealthy anti-homophobic criticism. Though I'm going to focus on race in this blog, The Help isn't just about racism. It's about discrimination as a whole.

Most of the reason my thoughts lately have been more controversial is that I have picked up on the concepts of privilege and discrimination and run with them. (Shocking, I know. As I understand it, it's rather untypical for young people to become infatuated with these issues around the time they go off to college.) The rest is probably just that my social conscience told me to be more careful when talking about stuff people get worked up about. I write with the understanding that race is complicated, and with the strong belief that every worldview has an argument to be made for it. With that, I'll tell my own story, and give some opinions that spring from it.

To be honest, I expected a different reaction from my family than the one they gave. It had its flaws, but the movie touched me. It made racism a little realer and helped me understand the Civil Rights movement more personally. But as the credits started rolling, the opinions raised were more along the lines of "I couldn't find a coherent story line" and "it was okay" and "it was really long" and "well, it was kind of cool when that lady did that." As I sat there rather touched, and all deep and reflective, my brother announced he was going to bed and my parents and I began discussing the way the filmography created unfair pathos. Which might be true to an extent, but I felt that it was kind of missing the point.

It's unspoken, but properly understood that my parents - and my whole family, really - are (or were) in the position of those portrayed as baddies in the movie. I grew up in that culture: even if blacks weren't looked upon as inherently lesser beings, races didn't mix. Now that environments at work and school are mixed race, it's not uncommon for whites in South Africa to know and be friends with blacks and Indians and Chinese and colored people, but I have hardly even met an educated non-white person. The only blacks I ever had exposure to until very recently were beggars, cashiers, and "the Help."

Before my grandmother moved to a retirement home in 2001, she and my grandfather still lived in the house my dad and his two sisters grew up in. I was only seven in 2001, and it's been many years since I've seen pictures, but I have very fond, happy memories from that house. There were a big green gate and beautiful hydrangea bushes; my grandpa's golf hats all hung on pegs in the foyer; the TV in the living room was always streaming cricket and rugby games. And, as was common to just about every house I was accustomed to seeing in South Africa, it had two tables, one in the dining room, where we ate, and a smaller one in the kitchen. I never really knew what it was there for, just like I never really knew why everyone had little houses in their back yards. I have one very distant memory from my early childhood where I came in for some juice and cookies after playing outside for hours on a hot summer day. I sat down at the little table in the kitchen to rest - I mean, when you're tired, a chair's a chair, no matter how old it is. Because it was very long time ago, I don't remember in whose house it was or who gave me the reaction that followed. All I remember is that someone very vaguely suggested that I go sit on the steps outside instead, because ... well, you know... because little girls don't really eat at the maids' table.

My grandmother's ousie was named Sienna. She made absolutely delicious food. I will never, ever forget how amazing her potatoes were, and how the lamb she made melted in your mouth. It wasn't like in The Help where she waited on the table or dished up our food - she wasn't in the room when we were eating - but she did all the dishes, and I never saw her out of her apron and the little bandana she wore on her head. Although many maids make enormous commutes to work everyday, Sienna pretty much came with the house when my grandparents bought it in the late '60s. She got free water, electricity, and plumbing there, but lived with the family in a similar way depicted in the movie. She did the dishes and told my father and his siblings to tidy up their toys and watched TV with them - although she refused to sit on the same couch with them, and only agreed to sit on a chair instead of the floor after months of persuasion. I rarely came into very close proximity to her, because she (and all the blacks) smelled weird to me, but she was such a dear lady. Though slightly removed, she was such part of the family. Not that it's possible to know anyone particularly well when you only see them for four weeks a year until the age of six, but I probably knew her about as well as my grandfather. Sienna retired the same year my grandfather passed away. She is about ten years older than my grandmother, which puts her well into her 90s. But every year on my dad's birthday, she still calls my Ouma Nancy to tell her she shook her little rain bottle for the "little boss" to make it rain for him.

When we visited South Africa in 2010, we stayed at my aunt's house for a few days. Their maid is named Leah. Leah used to work for my parents when we lived in South Africa and has a very special, very tender spot in my mother's heart. I obviously don't remember, but my mother sometimes mentions that she was so good to her - so good to her. It was a chilly winter morning, and I, the 16-year-old girl I was, had just finished doing my hair and makeup. My mother called me out to meet her, positively beaming as she urged Leah into the house from work on the clothes line. So there I stood, in front of this big, wrinkled black woman in work clothes, smiling more hugely than I've ever seen someone smile in my life, her arms opening for a hug. I was a bit perplexed, since I'd never met her before, but it would have been cruel to refuse such a happy creature a hug, so I went with it. She stood there staring at me for quite a while, shaking her head, looking at my mother every now and then, and making comments about how pretty I'd become, about how I still had those beautiful eyes. It's impossible for me to replicate or imitate the way that they speak: "Wooooooou, Missis!" with that expression you can only know having seen it, and that accent you can only know having heard it, "daadi blo oo," "those blue eyes! Just like a little doll, you was. Just like a little doll." Over and over. My mother made a remark about how many of my first three months of diapers that woman changed. Leah laughed uproariously, with such pure joy. I couldn't help but be weirded out by how much she seemed to adore me.

My mother remembers that she often used to tell Leah to sit down and eat dinner or drink coffee with them, but that she refused adamantly. Unlike Sienna, she never compromised, either. "You're just a human being, like I am, Leah!" my mother said. "Why won't you sit down?" No, missis. I can't.

There's a man named Hendrik that works for my other grandmother, Ouma Marie. He comes a couple times a week to water the plants and cut the grass, and such. As is common to most white people with black workers, she is very charitous towards him, and often gives him stuff she finds in the house. It's almost annoying how adamant she is that she always be home when he comes so that she can make tea and food for him. (It may just be that she's afraid he'll steal stuff if she's out, but let's give her the benefit of the doubt.) This past year, though, I noticed that instead of using the glass or ceramic mugs we drink out of, she makes him tea in a rather worn-looking tin cup. Don't ask why, because I don't know. She has never seemed racist enough to me that I'd be willing to explain it away with some kind of belief that he'd contaminate the mug... but at the same time, there is no way in hell she would let any grandchild of hers drink out of the mug she offers him.

There was this scandal with Hendrik right after we left in August: he was fired from the work he had at a neighboring house even though he'd worked there for something like 20 years and been given his education by the couple he worked for, because, supposedly, he had stolen something and tried to rape the woman. I don't remember the real story, but I do remember that upon further investigation, these claims weren't exactly completely true. So he still works for my grandmother, but she was a split second away from firing him, too. If there were any possibility that those things WERE true, it would've been too dangerous to keep him there, working for an old woman he could easily abuse. People are more than willing to trust, but one sign that a guy is unreliable, and he's quite out of luck.

And this distrust comes with reason. My Ouma Nancy's "tuinjong," or "garden boy," told her he was trying to get another job driving trucks, and that he needed to borrow some money from her to take the driving test. He failed it three times and she kept granting him another try, until he somehow got ahold of her account and stole several thousand Rand (maybe $3000?) before simply disappearing.

My parents seemed to react to the movie with this air of vague defensiveness. We all tend to play devil's advocate a bit in conversations about race, because we believe the other side's never spoken and that it has some merit. "I mean, my heart bleeds for all those black people, but intellectually, I just don't really feel like it was very moving," my father says, with this air of nonchalance. "Sure, there's a problem, but what do they want us to do about it? Should those white people not have hired the blacks?" It was a reference to an argument that I've heard frequently in a South African context: that even if it's not the greatest of work conditions, failing hire blacks means they're much worse off. Many whites saw - still see - it as an act of charity. Because I was raised in a different era, it was initially surprising to me that this was the first connection he made. But it's natural that the social dynamic in the movie would have linked back to the way race relations worked in the Apartheid world he grew up in, so I'm not reprimanding him for it at all. It makes sense in that context. Put it back into the context of "Civil Rights era America in the early 1960s," though, and you realize that we've missed the point about equality and justice and...well, Civil Rights. Go one step further and look at it from the perspective of the average liberal Seattlite that can't believe race is even an issue anymore, and the reaction that seemed totally valid a second ago now seems disturbing.

My mother's reaction was more sympathetic towards the movie, but still very reflective of the way she deals with race in South Africa. She didn't seem to get it as a whole and agreed with a lot of what my dad said, but pointed out a few scenes where white people were used as instruments of redemption, or came to realize that they weren't doing the right thing. She recalled the story of a middle-aged white woman who is forced through peer pressure to fire her maid Constantine, whom she'd known for decades and loved very dearly, but comes to regret having done so later. It was strange to hear my mother seem to identify with the woman in some distant, subconscious way, and to see her love for Leah act as a faint parallel to Charlotte's love for Constantine.

I grew up in suburban Seattle as a child from an Apartheid-era Afrikaner family, so my reaction to the movie is bookended by two very contrasting worldviews. On one level, I understand and sympathize with the pattern of thought that'd make it seem strange and unfitting for the tuinjonge and ousies to use the white, indoor bathrooms, but on another, I've been taught and that this is one of the most repulsive patterns of thought ever to have existed. I should make it clear that I lean rather heavily towards the latter view: I believe equality and inter-racial acceptance are things that should be taken for granted, and it nauseates me that they can't be with such frequency. But The Help was a valuable movie to me not just because I believe it is a powerful voice against prejudice and irrational hatred, but because it is educational. It is almost just as interesting to try to consider things from the baddie whites' perspective as from the intended perspective of the blacks. I believe very firmly that if we're going to fight for equality and acceptance and all kinds of noble higher values like that, then it's essential that we also understand what we're fighting against on its on terms. No matter how disgusting it is that people had to risk friendship, relationships, the court, and even physical safety just to fight hatred, it's impossible to defeat hatred by simply hating it in return.