by Mark Hadley

The Help is an eerily familiar film. Not because civil rights and America’s southern states are recognisable territory for moviegoers, but because racism is a far more human condition than we’d like to admit. But watching three women overcome it one day at a time in their own small town context reminds us that evil only has as much power as we give it.

The Help frames a picture of the privileged lives of white women living in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, and the Negro maids who make their relaxed existence possible. Emma Stone plays Eugenia ‘Skeeter’ Phelan, a southern belle returning from Mississippi University, who desperately wants to become a journalist. While investigating cleaning tips for a weekly column, she comes into close contact with Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), a ‘coloured’ domestic who’s been raising white children for most of her life. Skeeter’s town is dominated by racial prejudice and presided over by her mean-spirited school friend Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard).

In The Help Hilly is determined to promote a ‘Home Sanitation Bill’ with the Mississippi governor that will require private homes to install separate toilets for coloured people. She tells Skeeter, ‘It’s just plain dangerous. They carry different diseases to us. You ought not to joke about the colour situation — I will do anything to protect my children.’

You can read the full story in the September 2011 edition, available from LCA Subscriptions. Full columns become available online three years after publication date.