Movie Review: The Help, By Kathryn Stockett

The Help was a film adaptation of the popular book of the same name, written by Kathryn Stockett. It debuted in 2011, starring the likes of Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer. The film follows Skeeter Phelan, a young white women, as she attempts to build a writing career off the tales of the maids working in her middle class neighborhood. The movie unfolds and we watch as the social stratifications and socioeconomic hierarchy become exposed and are somewhat dismantled. Through differences in race, age, gender, power and class we get to witness great divides when it comes in opportunities and resources.

According to Douglas Massey, we as people are inherently lazy so we create “shortcuts” in an effort to store important information.

An example of an achieved trait in the film was Skeeter getting the job in New York at the very end of the film. She wasn’t born a published write but that was a level of acclaim she was able to reach do to her work and discipline. Skeeter displays a ton of opportunity hoarding all throughout the film. We see one major example of this when we examine how she is able to write about Aibileen and Minny’s experiences on their behave. While they on the other hand, would have major difficulty doing the same. Their opportunities at this point in time were only limited to being the maids. There were a ton of other instances where opportunity hoarding arose; the scene where Aibileen and a gentlemen were forced to exit the bus in the middle of a riot while the white passengers were. Things such as these would most likely be viewed in relation to typical microaggressions African Americans are exposed to in the world

One major example of this was Minny. She was able to defy a lot of the rules set by the social stratification and societal norms. For instance, she went against the norm Hilly set in place which required the maids to use the bathrooms outside, and then lost her job for it. Which she retaliated with the shit pie she baked for Hilly. All throughout the film she was able to undermine the social patterns and get her true justice in the end. Furthermore, Minny joined Aibileen in initiating the book that secretly turned their small town upside