Tonight I went to see the film, The Help, with my book club. It is a remarkable movie. And I had a small Diet Coke (which was actually quite BIG for a small), which is why I am awake and writing this post at midnight. Anyway...
Unlike most movies based on really great novels, this one does not disappoint. I felt like the actors nailed it. I think Kathryn Stockett's story was so good that the film makers actually didn't mess with it too much. Thank you for that, Hollywood.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the storyline, on its most basic level, the book is about black house maids and the white women they work for. Within that simple, yet complex, framework the story weaves together threads of friendship between women, courage, fear, and the power of the written word. It is set in Mississippi, in 1962.
The thing that kept throwing me off as I both read and watched The Help was the fact that it was set in 1962. As I read, and watched, I kept thinking that the story must have been set much earlier, because between the work and the wages and the way the house maids were treated, it all bordered on slavery...yet I'm pretty sure slavery was abolished about a hundred years before this story was set. There was nothing equal about the "separate but equal" world depicted in The Help. But then "separate but equal" was always a bit of a misnomer, wasn't it?
So back to 1962. That was less than 50 years ago. My parents had been on the planet for around a decade. 1962 was not that long ago. It is hard to believe that the world depicted in The Help could possibly have been less than 50 years ago. Like the part about white families building separate bathrooms for the women who practically raised their babies. Or the part where African-Americans are sitting in the back of buses, or taking separate buses, or using different entrances to movie theaters, or being treated as less, so...much...less. I grew up in "the north," and I now live in "the west," so perhaps my geography influences my shock that the segregation on screen and in print could possibly have been less than a half-century ago.
Here is what else hit me while I watched the film tonight. I was embarrassed and proud.
Embarrassed, obviously, that parts of our country were so segregated, so recently. Embarrassed at the ignorance and arrogance and injustice. Embarrassed that when my children read this book someday, or see this film, I will have to explain that this happened less than 20 years before I was born.
But I was also proud. Proud because of who is in the White House.
Proud because in 3 days, on the 48th anniversary of his "I Have a Dream" speech, America is dedicating the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in our nation's capital. The monument is 30 feet high. It is as immense as the inequality once was.
It is true that 1962 wasn't that long ago.
But it is also true that we have come a long way in 49 years. I am proud because we have made great strides as a country.
Oh yeah, and it is ALSO true that caffeinated beverages after 7pm are not a good idea for me. Sheesh.
