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As a young Black woman, I heard two messages this summer regarding The Help: Go see it! or Boycott that shit! What to do…what did I do? Well, I do what I always do. No matter what other people tell me to do. I didn’t go at all. I never go to the theatre. They’re too expensive. You see, I grew up in an era where movie tickets were than less than $6.00 a pop for night showings. Concessions were more expensive than the tickets themselves (apparently that’s still the case) so we’d hit up the Harris Teeter and stock up on candy bars. I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Sherlock Homes on New Year’s Day and almost stroked out when I saw the ticket price. id="mce_marker"1.50 for an afternoon show. Thank God I had a gift card.
I wanted to see The Help. I still do, even more so now that Viola Davis was nominated for a Golden Globe and Academy Award in what I’m certain was a remarkable performance. And I’m going to purposefully go out of my way and trek over to the public library to find reserve a copy on DVD to effectively take a stand with those in support of the movie (unless of course I hate it.)
On the side of those crying out, “Boycott that shit!” I somewhat understand. When Blacks made their debut on Hollywood screens, they were typecast into stereotypical roles. You know, they were maids and mammies — or prostitutes. Here we are in 2012, Viola Davis, an incredible actress that hasn’t quite been made into a household name plays yet another “demeaning” role and is nominated for two of the most prestigious acting awards in the land. Hopefully, older generations of Black people everywhere will forgive me for rolling my eyes at them. Because times and things have changed, evident by the fact that Davis’ character in The Help isn’t at all like those initial roles in old Hollywood. (Nor do I believe that domestic work is demeaning. The conditions in Jim Crow south were horrible. But the actual work itself? Cleaning, caretaking, cooking, and using the income to support a family isn’t something to be looked down upon. We could all learn a thing or two from the staff at Downton Abbey.)
If I’m asked to boycott a film, it means I can’t come up with my own opinions and judgments of it. Simply put, that’s ignorant. If there are masses of Black (or white or Brown) people who saw the movie and decided they would never read another novel byKathryn Stockett because her work sheds unnecessarily bad light on the relations between domestic workers and their employers in Jim Crow South, fine. If anyone saw the film and was disgusted that Chris Columbus took on such a project (and I just love him by the way), then by all means, boycott him. Tate Taylor, the director of the film, is pretty new to the scene (ha ha!), but you could certainly start a movement to blacklist him in Hollywood (if you know the right people). But then that would also mean you’d have to boycott Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer for accepting roles in a Blockbuster film, boycott them for trying to live out their dreams, which means there are just two fewer respectable Black actresses in Hollywood who have made the transition to mainstream media and managed to stay there. No one said this was the end of the road for either of these actresses. Let’s see how many lives we can ruin with an effective boycott.
Now, here’s where I get ignorant. You don’t have to engage in homosexual activities to frown upon sodomy, right? So before anyone says you have a right to boycott a film or book before you’ve actually seen the movie or read the book, know that I completely agree with you. But maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe if you want to know what you’re talking about, you should actually know what you’re talking about. Maybe you should have lots of lascivious and lewd sex with a same sex partner while watching The Help and then condemn both the gays and white women who write books about Black women to Hell all in one fatal sweep.
If you’re not laughing by now, you should be. Some people don’t realize how crazy they sound until someone puts their words in black and white and they read it for themselves. As I’ve already
