Member-only story
Did the Movie ‘The Help’ Betray Black People?
Viola Davis regrets being in it. Is she undervaluing her breakthrough?
Filmmakers who create historical dramas featuring Black characters do so at their own risk. Fudge details or whitewash the past— as White directors of race-themed films often do — and the criticism pours in. That’s entertainment.
Few Black period dramas seem to please critics en masse — 1972’s Sounder and 2013’s 12 Years a Slave are among a small handful that immediately come to mind — which might be part of the reason why most best-movies-of-all-time lists tend to be dominated by historical movies about White people. It’s easier for them to get away with rewriting the past or misrepresenting it, unless, like the latest season of Netflix’s The Crown or the streamer’s critically reviled Hillbilly Elegy, they make White people look bad.
As a Black man, though, I must come clean: I quite enjoyed The Help, although Viola Davis, who has publicly criticized the 2011 film that made her a star and a Best Actress Oscar nominee, would understand if I didn’t. Although she defended it at the time of its release, she apparently now agrees with the consensus that considers it to be the Green Book of 2011 — although while the Academy named Green Book Best Picture in 2019, The Help lost the Best Picture Oscar to The…
