Courage sometimes skips a generation.

After years of working the same, sometimes degrading, often tedious job, I've always thought I should write a book about what I've gone through. I'll tell stories of being regularly humiliated and insulted. Write of being spoken to as if I'm an emotionless thing, not an actual person. Complicating everything? Never being able to say how I really feel, for fear of swift retribution by those in charge. But, there is one saving grace. Over the years, I've been able to summon strength and press on by turning to a few like-minded individuals who think, talk and for the most part, look like me.

Turns out, this story has already been told.

The Help isn't about teaching middle-school English in the inner city, but in a bizarro way, it could be. In fact, it could basically be about any group of hard-working individuals subjugated by not only their oppressive employers, but also by circumstance. But what makes this story (arguably?) matter more, is its one key variable: Race.

Definitely white, but only possibly middle class, I can't (and would never) speak to the struggles African Americans have gone through in this country. But, I'm not completely clueless. Day after day, year after year,  I attempt to educate kids, mostly African American (and Latino) about doing right in the face of overwhelming adversity. Sure, many of them are at a hopeless age where learning (and for the love of God, reading) is the last thing on their mind, but far too often, as I've repeatedly seen firsthand, they don't grow out of it. As the years pass, I've been able to get them to read less and less. More often than not, I use video clips and short films to successfully deliver concepts, disheartening as that may be.

The Help may be the perfect movie in that regard. A seriously important subject, (needlessly?) glossed up and simplified, it's Remember the Titans for the ladies. Meaning, this is the type of flick that takes something as utterly horrible as racism and makes it approachable and entertaining. This story has been told countless times, whether it has been about a basketball team in Texas, swimmers from Philly, or the aforementioned high-school football team in Virginia. While all those films have been testosterone-laced crowd pleasers, they, like The Help, are also overly simple and all too, for lack of a better term, black and white. Bad people are bad, good people are good. Apparently, subtlety and gray areas have no place in this sub genre of family-friendly important films.

For me, ultimately, this movie's light-hearted approach undermined its message and impact. Sure, it was entertaining and not as laborious (read: serious) as I thought it was going to be, but by the end I wasn't all that impressed (though I will award points for a startling lack of athletic equipment). My wife, though? Not only did she enjoy it, but she stayed awake the whole time, and we started it at eleven (parent time? that's one-hundred o'clock). I felt like Ed Harris on liquid oxygen...Call Guiness. All that said, I guess I'm calling this a win, even if it's a minor one.

Also considered a moderate victory, at best, is an appearance by the Yays and Boos. At least now everyone knows that this post is almost over.

Yaaaaaaaay!

• Silly movie or not, anytime you can crank up Jackson by Johnny Cash, that's a Yay. Let's also cheer for Bob Dylan's Don't Think Twice It's All Right. Great song.
• Whoa. I had no idea that was Jessica Chastain. Ah, the wonders of the elevated breast.
• So, Minny, as played by Octavia Spencer is kind of a badass. Not only can Minny talk some shit, but it turns out she can cook some shit, too. Some, tasty shit no less.
• Oh, and girlfriend can bust a door down like the motherf--king Terminator. Locks ain't got shit on Minny.
• Crisco, bitches. Cris. Co.
• Johnny! That guy was a good dude. Not only does he help Minny pick up all her shit after she (wrongfully) panics, but he's so dreamy! Ah, those Southern Gentlemen.
• Okay, even though most of the movie had zero impact on my shriveled, black heart, I actually got a bit choked up with the goodbye scene between Aibileen and Honey Boo Boo. Damn, that was some emotional stuff, right there.
• And finally, as ridiculous and one-note as her character was, I actually enjoyed Sissy Spacek for a change. Usually I hate her scary face and wait for the pig's blood to drench her (no matter the role), but here it was different. I actually liked her revenge quite a bit. 

 Boooooooo!

• Man, I have passionately advocated that Emma Stone is indisputably hot on more than one occasion. About that...
• Oh, and her name is Skeeter? Every time they said it I thought of Shirley MacLaine in Steel Magnolias. Though, to be fair, I'm always thinking about Shirley MacLaine in Steel Magnolias. I do declare!
• There was a flashback sequence where the only thing worse than the atrocious dialogue the characters were spewing was the cringe-worthy makeup the characters were wearing. Goodness.
• I love a good bitch. I do. But Bryce Dallas Howard's character was over the top. I mean, I'm pretty sure having to hold in your lady toots till you almost crap your pants would make you believe in racial equality, right? I'd forgive anybody for anything if I meant I could shit in peace. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's in the Constitution.
• What the Hell was with Skeeter's boss at the newspaper? What a sassy douche.
• And speaking of douchery, did anyone notice that Stuart's scenes were all too easy to predict? Seriously. You could set your watch by it. Stuart's first scene? Douche. Second scene? Not a douche. Third scene? Doooooooouche!
• So, this really needed to be 146 minutes long? That's seven minutes longer than Fight Club.
• Speaking of destroying something beautiful, while I liked what the movie represented, the unity in adversity and such, the whole thing came off like a made-for-TV movie. Like, I honestly expected commercial breaks.

One day, I hope to find myself at the grocery store, going about my business. I'll look up, and there will be some student of mine, reading this blog on their phone or tablet. And I'll smile to myself, because I'll have realized that my words, my story, has opened someone's eyes and changed their life forever.

And then I'll put back all the fresh meat and organic produce, 'cause you know...


I'm totally getting fired.