Hip-Hop on ‘The Help' | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

Hip-Hop on ‘The Help'

The film 'The Help' has 99 problems but garnering critical acclaim ain't one. Armfuls of awards and nominations haven't immunized the film based on Kathryn Stockett's best-selling novel about African American maids in Jackson from criticism that the film perpetuates the Mammy meme of early cinema.

Last week, hip-hop critics, journalists, and artist Talib Kweli addressed 'The Help,' race, gender and other topics at a Jackson State University panel titled Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama/Tea-Party Era. Kweli, who has a reputation for delivering music that is conscious and alternative -- as opposed to vapid commercial rap -- applauded actresses Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer for the artistry of their performances.

"We are not finished telling any stories," Kweli said, responding to a question about whether the roles the women played hearkened back to Hattie McDaniel's Mammy" character from Gone with the Wind. McDaniels became the first African American to win an Academy Award for her performance, in 1939.

Joan Morgan, an author and journalist, said her beef wasn't with the fact that the women where maids -- she noted that her Jamaican mother was a domestic worker -- but rather with the fact that the story is Stockett's and not that of the black servants.

Elizabeth Méndez Berry, who is also a journalist, put it another way. She said 'The Help' "reduces Jim Crow to a cat fight."

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