'THE HELP': or how Power will leave you for someone better.

 

 

 

 

The issue of power is shown from different points of view in this movie. Power here is shown very clearly as something that not everybody can have at the same time, like a force that passes from one person to another when people don't do the right things:

-From the point of view of racist white people in Southern towns of the USA (Hilly, e.g.), they have a lot of power on black people, treating them nearly as slaves, telling lies about them (such as that the black people carry a lot of deseases and so they can't use the same toilets as white people) or deciding if their black servants can continue working or not, with no social security.

-The power of non-racist white people in the same environment, such as Skeeter, the young journalist who writes the book telling all the truth about racism in her town but changing the names of real people, and this is the beginning of the end of the problem,
a bit like the Horse of Troy.

-The power of the Media and Literature, and the people related to them, such as the journalist's editor, who is a very powerful and sophisticated woman who knows that polemic books make a lot of noise. When the book is published, people around the nation get to know the reality in Southern cities in the USA, which is not very different to the nineteenth century, when having slaves in the Southern states was legal.

- The power of surprise, in cases such as when Minny, the black maid, gives a cake cooked with her faeces to Hilly, the evil young housewive, or when Skeeter lets a mistake in Hilly's advertisement and so her garden is ruined with toilet pots.

- The power of gossip in small towns. Like a monster that destroys everything it has protected before, gossip makes the servants don't want to work for Celia, or makes Skeeter's mother dismiss her daughter's black nanny, Constantine, but gossip is also what makes racist white people keep their mouths shut and a low profile when the book becomes famous.

-The power of black people and, generally, of opressed people: let's not forget that the current President of the USA, is black, and the movie is a homage not only for him but for all the black people who suffered terribly in United States due to racism.

- The power of the spectator, and the power of cinema itself. This does not appear in the film, it is implied, but this movie is one of those films that make people talk about it and support it against racism.