tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post898998083877306261..comments2024-03-03T13:55:46.243-08:00Comments on Ambling Along the Aqueduct: Help On the WayTimmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-61527604624213195182011-08-24T10:35:09.803-07:002011-08-24T10:35:09.803-07:00@Eileen: EW did publish Martha Southgate's dis...@Eileen: EW did publish Martha Southgate's dissenting opinion in the print version of the magazine. Not sure if it was the same issue that the cover story was in, but it was recent.Theremhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11417117502638337533noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-8175717769645944882011-08-22T13:13:15.709-07:002011-08-22T13:13:15.709-07:00Your points are well-taken, Andrea. I was going to...Your points are well-taken, Andrea. I was going to skip "The Help," but perhaps I should see it and write about it. <br /><br />Movies like this (and novels like the one from which it is derived) both make me cringe *and* make me feel guilty. Perhaps "ashamed" is a better description than "guilty," but the line between guilt and shame is a fine one. <br /><br />I am glad to see <a href="http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20516492,00.html" rel="nofollow">Martha Southgate's response</a> is in EW Online, as that means it is at least available to the EW online audience, but I am very sorry that EW didn't think to solicit such a piece for the issue in which the cover story appeared.<br /><br />Kudos to Ms. Southgate for the memorable sentence: <br />"Within the civil rights movement, white people were the help."Eileen Gunnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08142274562155993622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-59629745361316272132011-08-11T21:54:44.906-07:002011-08-11T21:54:44.906-07:00Growing up working class poor, the whole "Lad...Growing up working class poor, the whole "Lady Bountiful" thing makes me angry in places I didn't know I could be angry.<br /><br />By its very definition, 'helping' denotes a power imbalance. Rescuers and ladies bountiful don't see the imbalance; they think they're doing 'good works,' or helping the 'less fortunate.' They don't see the cost the 'less fortunate' pay for such help. And that's why they get angry when the 'less fortunate' are less than grateful.<br /><br />The dominate culture loves stories that perpetuate and even praise this kind of imbalance as normal and good, because on one hand it validates history as they want to remember it and it allows them to feel that they really are good people after all and have nothing to feel guilty about.<br /><br />I don't believe in guilt. I don't think any good comes from it. The other side of guilt is despair and from despair comes hopelessness. I believe change comes from taking positive action, in taking responsibility for our actions and inactions. <br /><br />I believe in sharing the wealth; wealth as in time, money, food, love, pretty much everything except my wife and my toothbrush. My grandmother taught me to 'divide' whatever I have, because that's just the right thing to do. But when I share I want to do it as a friend, as an ally. And when someone helps me, I want it to be given from a friend, from an ally. Power imbalances don't make for healthy relationships. The helper and the helpee should be peers.<br /><br />I, too, would like to see a shift in the stories we tell ourselves--and our children. I would like black folks and gay folks to be cast as plain old neighbors. I'd like women to be portrayed as individuals, not as mothers or wives or girlfriends or maids or somebody in relationship to the main character. Hell, I'd like be able to watch sports and not have them labeled soccer & women's soccer, basketball & womens's basketball.<br /><br />Will I watch this movie? Part of me wants to. But then, do I really want my wife and friends to have to listen to me rant for days after? I don't know.Ocala Wingsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-45436778965924466182011-08-11T19:13:56.078-07:002011-08-11T19:13:56.078-07:00Wait, haven't there been unsuccessful "fi...Wait, haven't there been unsuccessful "films featuring black ladies" before? And this one still got made. The "brutal logic" that makes seeing it such a high-stakes matter, and the fact that many people are buying into it, is indeed depressing.<br /><br />To say nothing of Cicely Tyson — <i>Harriet Tubman</i> to my generation — playing the heroine's "mammy." Argh.Joshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15914730499199048197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-21043117272160671562011-08-11T18:39:57.001-07:002011-08-11T18:39:57.001-07:00On the Amazon reviews of the book, someone mention...On the Amazon reviews of the book, someone mentioned "That Evening Sun" by William Faulkner, which struck me as a little white girl as the most brutal inditement of white Southern indifference that I had read (first encountered in my teens). It's on line. It's brutal.<br /><br />Living in Nicaragua, I see a parade of rescuers. I've had interactions with rescuers on line who got very angry if I suggested that their rescuing was not really always wanted or necessary. A poor black guy told the Charlotte, NC, city counsel that the poor were jobs for the middle class, black as well as white. The guy committed to "doing good" thought this guy was a bigot. Sometimes the pay, however, isn't in coin but in self-regard, but the helped are the subordinates to the helper's superiority.<br /><br />Glad that the actress got work, but one LA agent said what his black clients wanted was to be cast as the neighbors, not always the black neighbors. I look at Torchwood and White Collar and the UK casting seems to be broader in its social base, in the variety of roles that black actors can take than most of the US, though White Collar isn't the worst of American shows.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com