Help me, Mon (part 2)

Ayy yo,

Yeah I know I've been away for quite a while, but trust me when I tell ya that I was getting my Jesus on, ya know: mending fences, saving shoe soles, and pouring water onto winoes, when it dawned on me that I needed some time for myself.  So while I was away I checked out a movie called The Help.

Now far be it for me to just up and mosh up a film with two superb African-American female leads as this one has, each actress so deserving of their own individual Academy Awards, but I got to tell ya that there were some things in that film that made me want to fly straight to Hollyweird and start busting corporate movie exec heads 'up in here.'  First of all, (in my 10 year old hood voice) "Why come we gotta be subjected to only period pieces where black folks have to re-perfect the dreaded lost art of bowing and scraping before we get treated to some first-class cinematography and superior acting?"  Yeah, yeah... I agree both Monsters Ball and Training Day were artistically good films and both won major awards respectively, but I say look at the body of work both Halle and Denzel turned in prior to these two and you can truly appreciate that surprised look that both of them had when their names were announced as winners.  ("Oh **** They gave me an award for THAT gaw-bidge film I did?! Just who the heck is driving the bus here?")  Lawd knows we can sure do without another Mama done burnt up the Sushi... type of black gospel stage play-turned-knee-grow movie blockbuster.  Nor do we need another film with an up and coming black actor in a fat suit and dress, a la Tootsie or Ms. Doubtfire, shucking and jiving his way to millions, while simultaneously setting us back about 200 years in the process.

Now don't get me wrong true-believers, I absolutely loved The Help.  I really enjoyed the part when ____________ and that other part where ______________, oh yeah and that other part too (don't worry I won't ruin it for those of you who have seen it or those who still haven't bought a ticket yet, or for those of you who haven't copped it at the barbershop, your local KFC parking lot, or anywhere else crappy bootlegged copies are being sold.)  It was a tremendous piece of film.  A definite must-have when it finally comes out on DVD in stores later this summer.  I just can't figure out why we only get good films like this one that are always based on a time that was both "kinder and gentler..." for erry'body else but us.

Second, appearances by black men in this particular film were minimal.  I realize that it was primarily about the female help but hel even Florida Evans on the 70's TV series Good Times advocated for a helpmate. Ya dig? Just the preacher and "Lafayette" from the HBO TV-show True Blood graced the screen with actual speaking parts. Incidentally, I kept waiting for one of his frilly earrings to just drop down from under that cap he was wearing at any moment.  Oh I know that Nelsan Ellis only plays "Lafayette" on that show, but he does it so well until he could be portraying one of those trapped (now freed) Chilean miners and I'd be expecting him to say something over-exaggerated and stereotypically g-a-y like, "Listen here, Hook-uh. Come rescue us, boyfriend. Oh-kaaay?!"  The only other time another brotha was even heard in the entire movie was through the phone and he must've been one disgustingly mean, angry, highly vocal, wife-beater because you could hear his azz even over the pots and pans being thrown around in the background.  Then that explains it then.  They were all locked up for spousal abuse and couldn't be in the movie. Oh I get it now. Duh! 

But I digress...

Third on my list is one of the things that bothered me the most - the not so surprising appearance of ****ly Tyson as a servant.  Talk about typecasted, I just knew she was done with playing a domestic after she finally spit in Sandy Duncan's character's cup of water  back in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.  When I saw her up there I was like, "What?!  You're playing a maid again?!  After all these years?!  A maid?  Again?!"  For me that was like seeing Tim Robbins going back to 'Shawshank' or OJ going back to black women.  I'll bet that Ms. Tyson didn't even have to get a new wardrobe for her role.  She simply sprung open her old vaudeville steamer trunk of movie memorabilia from movies long ago, started passing out authentic costumes to the entire cast, and yelled "Action!" her dayum self.  The very sight of someone (regardless of race, creed, or color) portraying someone in servitude to another for money made me so angry that after seeing the movie I gave both my butler and my chauffeur the evening off.  However, the next morning I was like, "Dayum.  These pants ain't gonna press themselves and I certainly don't do the bus, so I'd better get Mr. Belvedere and Kato back over here..."

Finally, I felt that even in all fairness to the movie they still failed to keep it sorta real ya know.  If you've ever been to Jackson, Mississippi, and Lawd knows I pray that you never do, a simple ride through the downtown will show you that it wasn't all sunshine and roses for the help back then as long as they just did their job and "went along about their own business all peaceful-like."   Hail No!  Rebel flags flying everywhere and Mista Cholly, along with his good ol' boys to this day are still riding around in their pickup trucks, bumping the latest tunes by some weather beaten dusty likkah'd-up dude in a scruffy cowboy hat, just-a strummin' and picking at his "gee-tah", talking mean, sounding angry, and looking for someone [else] to take it all out on.  Imagine how mad they must've been back in 1960s-era Jackson, when black men were quite plentiful and weren't on the endangered species list yet. 

They say "Time heals all wounds" but some sores are just way to deep and cavernous to even be expected to be stitched together completely with life's bubble gum and tape.  It's still a little tough to sit through a film that instantaneously zaps you back to a time when you'd be shot on sight for attempting to see a movie in the same theater that you're watching this on in.  So with that in mind I think that after The Help deservingly wins a few dozen movie awards for great acting, superb story, and excellent cinematography, yadda, yadda, yadda... I personally think that Hollyweird should put the old kaibosh on producing any more movies involving our beloved children of the sun bowing and scraping for the man; or films showing subdued African-Americans running around shufflin ("erry'day I be shufflin, shufflin..."  Sorry, y'all.  Hip Hop is still my music of choice no matter how country it has become.); and no more brothas in dresses running around on screen.  Nada. I don't care if it gets leaked that it was really Eddie Murphy playing "Aibileen" and Arsenio Hall playing "Minny."  Enough mon.  Enough.