The Movie Which Shall Not Be Named

Seriously, I didn't think it was possible for Twitter and the blogosphere to run a topic into the ground, but they've managed to do it.  I've had to filter :::whispering::: The Help out of my time line because two years after the book came out, people are just getting around to being enraged about it.  Oh sure, there were a few people that expressed their disgust with it back in 2009, but the people that don't read just got around to realizing it existed with the release of the movie.

From what I've read online there seems to be a misconception that The Help portrayed the maids as happy and carefree. Nothing could be further from the truth.  At no point did I ever get the feeling that Aibileen, Minnie or the countless others were happy to be domestics.  They weren't happy about it at the beginning, middle or end or the day.  It was simply a job they did.  Someone else suggested that the book and movie pretends that the women and their employers were friends.  Anyone that read the book or saw the movie would be hard pressed to make that argument.  

Other complaints I've seen were that the dialogue was thick and dated.  It was set in Mississippi in the 1960s, so yes, it was dated for that time period.  If my grandma Bessie Mae from Shuqualak, MS still talked liked that as an older woman in the 80s, I'd have to say it's pretty sure that she, and others like her, were talking like that in the 60s.

On Twitter someone said, "It doesn't portray the Jim Crow south accurately. At all." But then admitted that she hasn't seen it and won't until "It's on HBO or bootleg.  My fear is this movie is getting such buzz, it's going to further whitewash people's ideas about what the South used to be."  If you've seen the movie, if you've read the book, you know that, if anything, this movie will make people cringe at images of the South.  Whites are not portrayed in a positive light and neither are the Jim Crow policies.  Like I said in a previous post, the mirror that is being held up reflects poorly on them, not the women that worked in their households.

I saw the movie Wednesday evening, without Aunt Jean, who said, "it's too late to be ripping & running, catch me after church Sunday."  The theater I frequent has nice leather couches and love seats, so I ended up sitting next to an elderly black woman who told me I could call her Miss Annie.  Side note: While I hadn't had enough sense to grab dinner before the movie and didn't want to wait in the concession line, Miss Annie pulled a nicely made sandwich out of her purse, along with chips, as soon as the lights dimmed.  I kept hoping she'd offer me the other half, but I had to content myself with eating Jolly Ranchers I found at the bottom of my purse.

At any rate, I thought the movie was fairly decent overall.  I understand  that it's difficult to condense such a lengthy book into a 2 1/2 hour movie and still touch on all of the salient points, but I would have lessened the roles of some to increase the roles of others.  That being said, here are the problems I had with the translation from book to film:

• The book version was set over the course of two to three years, which provided a more believable time line for Skeeter to gain Aibileen's trust.  In the movie it happened within the first 15 minutes. 


• In the book, Minnie was one of the narrators and her story line was significant.  In the movie, she was relegated to a secondary role and, while parts of her story were told, her diminished role made her less developed than I would have liked to see.


• The relationship between Skeeter and her mother is more complex and explored in the book, as is her mother's illness.  In the movie, their relationship is more of the typical mother-daughter relationships we see in everyday TV and the mother's illness is glossed over, almost in a joking manner.


• The book version of Celia Foote is not the movie version. 

I've watched the PhD's of Twitter discuss this film and how the negative portrayal of black women in Hollywood and the inaccurate reflection of the Civil Rights Movement are what really bother them.  They've written lengthy blogs, and promoted them, about what's wrong with the movie they still won't see.  People are picking sides and saying that the side you choose surely says something about you and that they're glad to see people's true colors.  Really?  These are the same people that sit quietly as rappers, singers and others degrade black women in song and video daily, not to mention Twitter trending topics.  They have nothing to say about the images Tyler Perry feeds America about black women in film and on TV, and you can find one of his shows on TV daily and his films on cable weekly.  I don't mind anyone pointing a finger at inaccuracies and portrayals and calling for Hollywood to do better, but do it with all projects that show black women in a less than flattering light and not just because you don't care for the color of the person that wrote the story or adapted the film.

Miss Annie enjoyed the movie.  And noted author Pearl Cleage said on her Facebook page, "I read 'The Help' and enjoyed it.  I thought the writer did a good job of making all the characters fully formed human beings, the good, the bad and the ugly." I can't argue with either of them.

Way Back Wednesday: What Did You Read As A Teen?

The other day there was an article floating around the Internet about what today's readers were reading when they were 13.  Though several people gave titles that suggested they were more mature than the average 13 year old of their time (like Clan of the Cave Bear), others were more down to earth and mentioned the Harry Potter and Sweet Valley High series.  I missed out on the conversation on Twitter so I thought I'd share with you what I read as a teen.

First published in 1982, My Sweet Audrina was the only VC Andrews' standalone book and I loved it.  Unlike anything I'd read before, it was the story of Audrina Adare, a fragile child with an unreliable memory.  There were all kinds of family secrets hidden from her and I just knew there were many more to discover, but since Andrews chose not to write a sequel, readers will never know what they were.

Just as fascinating to me were the Dollanganger children of the Flowers in the Attic series by Andrews.  I started reading the first two books because they were on my mother's shelf and Icouldn't wait for her to purchase the remainder of the set so I could find out what was going on with Chris, Cathy, Cory and Carrie and their demented grandmother.


Rosa Guy was the first author I read that spoke to me as an African American young adult. Set in New York in the late 70s/early 80s, Edith Jackson is the third in a trilogy that includes Ruby and The Friends. Each book in the trilogy could stand alone, so there's no need to read the first two to understand the third.  Though I read all three books, Edith Jackson is the one that really stayed with me.

The oldest of her deceased mother's five children, Edith is determined to keep her sisters together as they shuttle from one foster home to another. Recently settled in Peekskill, she believes she's found a good home for them. But when her sister Bessie starts sitting on their foster uncle's lap a little too long and her sister Minnie begins to spend time with a new friend, that happens to be white, Edith's world is thrown into turmoil.

Long before it became popular in the streets to refer to your girlfriend as wifey, there was Judy Blume's Wifey. As were most girls in the 70s and 80s, I was a huge Judy Blume fan. While most of her books at that time were strictly for the 13 and under crowd, Blume wrote a few that catered to the adult crowd. Did that stop eager teens from reading her adult lit? Heck no! I remember Wifey and Forever being passed around the 7th and 8th grade like the latest issue of Dynamite or Tiger Beat. I picked it up again while at my mother's over the Christmas holiday to see if it still had the wow factor.

Set in the fun-loving 70s, Wifey is the story of Jewish, suburban housewife, Sandy Pressman. Doing what her mother always told her to do, Sandy married a nice Jewish boy. The problem is ten years and two kids later, Sandy is bored. Her husband, Norman, is the king of the quickie; her lovable brats are off to summer camp; and at Norm's insistence, Sandy is being forced to take golf and tennis lessons at "the club." Just when she thinks her summer can't get any worse, she finds herself with a pervert in her backyard and on her phone.

While this book was hot stuff in the 70s, it's pretty tame by today's standards. There's a lot of wife swapping and extramarital affairs going on, with little mention of practicing safe sex or the possible results of not practicing safe sex. Most of what happened in the book was over my head when I read it 20 plus years ago. Reading it now makes me want to ask the main character, why did you settle? Why did you ever marry him? What a difference a few decades make.

So there you have it, a taste of what I read in my formative years.  How about you?  What books did you read as a teen that made enough of an impact for you to still remember them?