The Help' Movie Analysis: Revealing the Issue of Economic Racism

Racism has been a major problem since the early 1900’s. It all starts with one person thinking that their race is better than every other which leads to them pushing down other races. There will always be problems with racism in our country and many other parts of the world. Prejudice and bigotry fall into the same category as racism even though bigotry has a different overall meaning than prejudice. Prejudice means to pre-judge a person or group of people before you really get to know them. Bigotry is more intense and has a more severe meaning which leads to discriminatory behavior. You can see these things very clear in the 'The Help' movie as it analysis is presented in this essay.

'The Help' Movie - Analysis of Its Main Messages

This movie shows how whites and blacks were separated and how they really didn’t do the same things. It showed how whites were the upper class and how they treated the blacks like property instead of individual people. In the movie they couldn’t even use the same bathroom because they didn’t want the colored people to share the room. The colored women were maids to the white families and would do everything for them even raise their kids while someone else was taking care of their children.

'The Help' reflects many examples of prejudice and bigotry. One of the examples is when Yule Davis decides to ask for a loan of $75 dollars. The loan was for her two sons to go to college. Hilly, which was the person she worked for thought that she should be working to earn her own money rather than ask for a loan. The whites had many opinions of the blacks that made them sound like bad people. Another example is that they cannot even use the same bathroom because they “carry different diseases.”

The movie has many things you could learn. One thing that I have learned is that when you treat someone wrong they feel it and sometimes it gets really bad. Another thing I learned is that it takes being courageous to tell what really goes on. Skeeter wanted to write a book about what it was really like to be one of the maids and tell what happens every day. At first none of the maids wanted to help out because they knew that they could possibly lose their jobs. But then when Ms. Davis got arrested for no reason they all decided to help out after all. They thought that by showing their side of the story people will change the way they treat them.

Final Thoughts

I think 'The Help' has more than one message. One of them is to show how we need to take some risks to make the changes we want. Skeeter wanted to share the maid’s side of the story and she did by creating a book. Most of the maids had bad stories while other stories were good. And this showed the people who read it to change the way they treated blacks. Another message is that it showed how little power the blacks had over the whites but it didn’t stop them from sharing their side.