PJ Reviews The Help

PJ just saw The Help.

He really enjoyed it.

He’s thinking it is kind of ironic that he just wrote about a week or so ago in a different context. Emma, he stated, has always portrayed kooky-type characters in supporting roles. And, she’s stolen every scene she’s ever been in.

Here, though, she plays Skeeter, the pivotal character who provides the inspiration for the entire story. And, here she isn’t even a smidge kooky.

She is, instead, for the first time that PJ can recall, quietly thoughtful. A listener. She plays her part with reserve. She holds Skeeter in check and lets her writing do the talking. She lets “the help” do the talking. And she is terrific. So is her story.

So, what is Skeeter writing about anyway? Well, she is writing about the Deep-South-Jim-Crow life experiences of black female domestics who were known as “the help“. The story takes place in Mississippi in the early 1960’s where “the help” work in the houses of the wealthy, white, and privileged. They perform all their household chores including the raising of their children. And in so doing, they are afforded little or no respect.

It is the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. Medgar Evers is about to be assassinated in his driveway. Dogs and billy clubs are about to rip into bone and flesh on the Edmund Pettus Brige in Montgomery.

The movie tells of a young white woman, Skeeter, who does not like what she sees. She objects to the culture of hypocricy where white children are loved and raised by black domestics only to grow up to perpetuate and continue the cycle of racism that is 1960’s America. Yes, “the chirren grow up just like they mommas.“

The movie does not get preachy, but, instead tells it’s tale through the eyes and words of “the help“. It tells of a day-by-day demeaning existence which, considering the times, required great courage to write about, and greater fortitude to endure.

The Help is moving. It is fun. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll love it.

But then PJ started thinking about his own childhood. In Levittown. All 17,000 houses of Levittown.

When Levittown was built, you see, each house came with a covenant that no Blacks were permitted to rent or own. It also had a restriction against fences. Well, it wasn’t too long before almost every house had a fence. But the other restriction held fast.

PJ can recall only one (very light skinned) black family in the entirety of his Levittown tenure. It seemed to him that the Civil Rights Movement was taking place in some other country. He had no personal contact with Blacks at all.

Born in 1947 he had heard about Jackie Robinson and certainly knew of his significance. He can’t recall seeing him play though. Let’s blame that one on that creep Walter Aslton who took PJ’s father’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers to L. A. The name Alston was a dirty word in PJ’s household.

Anyway, not really realizing why at the time, PJ loved baseball‘s National League. It was so much more exciting. The Senior Circuit, it seemed, had a Black or Latin super star on every team. The two Willies, Hank, Ernie, Bob, Juan, Roberto, et. al. These were his favorite players. And it’s funny. He never thought of them as non-white. They were ball players. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing less.

PJ has since learned that the curse of the Boston Red Sox was partially the result of their refusal to hire Black ballplayers. It took years for the Yankees to come around as well. But, at the time he never really understood the dynamics behind all this.

And what about football? PJ’s favorite player by far was Jimmy Brown. And how great was Wilt? And let’s not forget the Cassius Clay of the early sixties.

PJ is now of the opinion that it was the inclusion of non-white athletes into professional sports that exposed and inspired an entire generation of white kids towards the acceptance of African Americans and Latinos. PJ never had to consciously think that he was accepting these individuals. He didn’t know better. He just regarded them as his heroes, great players. Maybe if Mississippi had had a professional baseball team things might have changed a bit quicker. The old ways, it seemed, died hard. Real hard.

And then, of course, there was the public school system. PJ believes public education played the largest part in the coming together of people of diverse backgrounds. Separate was not equal. So said the Supreme Court. The one image that comes to PJ’s mind is the Norman Rockwell depiction of the little black girl being escorted by the white state troopers into a school upon whose brick wall is a splattered tomato. She so small. So vulnerable. They so enormous. Maybe even the same guys who were waiting on the other side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

And it was, he’s thinking, the likes of courageous individuals, such as portrayed by Skeeter and the maids, who began to stir the pot and initiate the process of raising the consciousness of an America that needed to change.

Change would come slowly though. It would take generations.

The Help goes a long way in reminding us where we‘ve started.

And how far we still need to go.