'The Help': 1,000,000 copy seller on Kindle

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You have a nook, why would buying in a non-supported format be the best?

Just to irk you?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

Just to irk you?

That was uncalled for.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That was uncalled for.

Somebody was gonna say it.

[anamardoll]

I saw the movie this week and I enjoyed it. I'm usually pretty sensitive to racial issues (though I am by NO MEANS perfect or free of bias or anything like that so take all this as TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE and also probably steeped in privilege ) and the movie didn't hit any alarm bells for me.

Yes, there is a white protagonist, but considering that the movie is about a book being published about black womens' experiences during the Civil Rights movement, I think it would have been unrealistic for there not to have been a white go-between acting to funnel the stories from the actual women who experienced them to the publisher who otherwise wouldn't have given them the time of day. The movie (imho) makes it very clear that the white protagonist is there simply as that go-between and really nothing else -- she's not a savior, and she actually fades into the background in many (most?) scenes in the second half.

I do understand the point that the movie didn't go far enough to portray, say, the sexual harassment and rape that many housekeepers faced on a daily basis. But I do think that the movie strongly implies that many of the "background" stories (dozens of women are interviewed and we don't see ALL those stories) are darker than the foreground stories. I think the movie was trying to walk the line between "get people in the audience who might otherwise not come to a 'dark' film" and "don't whitewash everything in happy fun times". I felt like the movie succeeded, but that's my subjective opinion.

One of the things I REALLY liked about the movie was that racism wasn't portrayed as something everyone just "got over" by the end of the film. Pretty much everyone who starts out the movie as a racist ends the movie as a racist, and it's clear that no matter how "soft" or "private" their racism is, it's NOT okay or healthy or going to go away on its own. In some ways, for me, that made the film a lot more darker than if they had put in "heavier" material and made all the 'racists' obvious cookie-cut strawmen that most people can congratulate themselves on not being.

As for the film acting like black women love to raise white babies... I didn't see it. There's at least one interview and I think two where it's stated right out that house work was the ONLY job open to the black women at the time, and so it's clearly a job of necessity and not because they like being nannies. Only two of the women in the movie are shown liking their charges, and even then they seem less to like the children and more to identify with them as a disenfranchised member of society (i.e., the little girls are fat/ugly and the mothers are mean as a result). I didn't see it as a "black women love babies" thing but rather more of a "these particular women have experienced a crap life and are sad to see that someone else will also have a crap life". But that was my take on it, anyway.

Well, that's my two cents, anyway. 4 stars from Ana.

Please return to the ZOMBIE DEAD HORSE mobi/epub thing. I'm an epub user myself, but I'll switch to mobi if everyone will shut up forever on this topic. *sigh*

[shibamistress]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

The comment on the movie from one of the sites on the cheezburger network:
Cons: Anybody else find it a little bit insulting when movies turn the civil rights movement into a story about compassionate white people?

My answer to this question: yes, I find it insulting, maddening, and purposely apolitical.

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I am commenting on the book and not the movie. I can see where the movie would lose all the nuiance of the book.

The Book did a nice job of showing how the White Author was learning a great deal about the real lives of the Black women who had been hired to help her as a child. She benefits from the stories of the women she interviews but the women who provide their stories grow as people though the process. Along the way, the audience learns about their lives and the problems that they face and the jeopardy they were in for participating in the project.

It is not ideal, the White author gains a reputation and career off of the stories of the Black women. At least one of the contributors loses her job and the others could face recriminations and might be in physical danger for participating. But the picture it paints, I thought, was honest.

I am sure the movie misses all of this.

Hmm....I'm still not sure I'm willing to read it, because what you say in your second to last paragraph is something I find really galling, and I have low tolerance for. That said, you've at least intrigued me enough that I might consider checking the book out from the library some day.

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I saw the movie this week and I enjoyed it. I'm usually pretty sensitive to racial issues (though I am by NO MEANS perfect or free of bias or anything like that so take all this as TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE and also probably steeped in privilege ) and the movie didn't hit any alarm bells for me.

Yes, there is a white protagonist, but considering that the movie is about a book being published about black womens' experiences during the Civil Rights movement, I think it would have been unrealistic for there not to have been a white go-between acting to funnel the stories from the actual women who experienced them to the publisher who otherwise wouldn't have given them the time of day. The movie (imho) makes it very clear that the white protagonist is there simply as that go-between and really nothing else -- she's not a savior, and she actually fades into the background in many (most?) scenes in the second half.

I do understand the point that the movie didn't go far enough to portray, say, the sexual harassment and rape that many housekeepers faced on a daily basis. But I do think that the movie strongly implies that many of the "background" stories (dozens of women are interviewed and we don't see ALL those stories) are darker than the foreground stories. I think the movie was trying to walk the line between "get people in the audience who might otherwise not come to a 'dark' film" and "don't whitewash everything in happy fun times". I felt like the movie succeeded, but that's my subjective opinion.

One of the things I REALLY liked about the movie was that racism wasn't portrayed as something everyone just "got over" by the end of the film. Pretty much everyone who starts out the movie as a racist ends the movie as a racist, and it's clear that no matter how "soft" or "private" their racism is, it's NOT okay or healthy or going to go away on its own. In some ways, for me, that made the film a lot more darker than if they had put in "heavier" material and made all the 'racists' obvious cookie-cut strawmen that most people can congratulate themselves on not being.

As for the film acting like black women love to raise white babies... I didn't see it. There's at least one interview and I think two where it's stated right out that house work was the ONLY job open to the black women at the time, and so it's clearly a job of necessity and not because they like being nannies. Only two of the women in the movie are shown liking their charges, and even then they seem less to like the children and more to identify with them as a disenfranchised member of society (i.e., the little girls are fat/ugly and the mothers are mean as a result). I didn't see it as a "black women love babies" thing but rather more of a "these particular women have experienced a crap life and are sad to see that someone else will also have a crap life". But that was my take on it, anyway.

Well, that's my two cents, anyway. 4 stars from Ana.

Please return to the ZOMBIE DEAD HORSE mobi/epub thing. I'm an epub user myself, but I'll switch to mobi if everyone will shut up forever on this topic. *sigh*

This has also intrigued me, though I'm probably even less likely to see the movie. But I'm, um, hyper sensitive to racial issues, and just so damned tired of the white savior stories that it's hard to even tolerate movies/books that use that tired old trope. It may be, though, that this movie is not actually faling into that. I won't know unless I go see it, I guess. But I have to suspect that if the book is doing that well, and the movie is doing that well, then I figure it must be doing some "white washing" (pun intended) because works that really explore the systemic problems with racism don't tend to be that popular.

But I guess I'd be better able to engage in this conversation had I seen the movie or read the book. My main point is I'm at least not dismissing the book/movie out of hand anymore, as I was before reading this.

And interesting that it sold 1,000,000 copies on Kindle. I hope the writer got a decent deal on the royalties on that.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by shibamistress

This has also intrigued me, though I'm probably even less likely to see the movie. But I'm, um, hyper sensitive to racial issues, and just so damned tired of the white savior stories that it's hard to even tolerate movies/books that use that tired old trope. It may be, though, that this movie is not actually faling into that. I won't know unless I go see it, I guess. But I have to suspect that if the book is doing that well, and the movie is doing that well, then I figure it must be doing some "white washing" (pun intended) because works that really explore the systemic problems with racism don't tend to be that popular.

But I guess I'd be better able to engage in this conversation had I seen the movie or read the book. My main point is I'm at least not dismissing the book/movie out of hand anymore, as I was before reading this.

And interesting that it sold 1,000,000 copies on Kindle. I hope the writer got a decent deal on the royalties on that.

I guess I can see how people might *see* it as a white savior story especially if you're used to seeing white savior stories, but I didn't see it that way because I never saw the white protagonist as a "main" protagonist. The opening and closing shots of the movie are of Viola Davis' character, and if Hollywood as taught me anything it's that the opening/closing shot character is THE protagonist and everyone else is ancillary.

It's also made (again -- in my opinion) extremely clear that Stone's character is very privileged and sheltered and that her motivation is at least as much a career-choice / piss-off-my-mom thing than a white-man's-burden thing, so she's not playing to the Pure Hearted Savior type for much of the movie. And at least from my perspective, Davis and the other black women were on screen, front-and-center much more and in more vivid scenes than Stone is -- as I say, Stone just feels like a (well-acted) Excuse Character to explain how these black women got their story published.

Spoiler:

I also don't see it as a coming-of-age drama. Stone's character is essentially the same at the end as she was in the beginning -- she's (again, a very well-acted) static character. She *does* get a job offer off the book deal, but since she started the movie WITH said job offer (on the assumption that she get a little more experience), it's not a huge leap of development. And the boyfriend she gains leaves her because he's a racist, and he doesn't get better, which pleased my black little heart to no end. Yes, Hollywood, sometimes boys leave and don't come back. Reality!

As for the white washing... I guess I would compare it to "Fiddler on the Roof". Sure, it probably would have been more realistic for all the Jewish women in that movie to have been raped in the trash-the-wedding scene, and sure it probably was a little infantilizing of the people to make everyone so calm and accepting when they're tossed out of their ancestral village... but does that make it a bad movie? I found the movie approachable as a child because it wasn't "realistic", but still took away from it that Racism Is Bad.

I see The Help in the same category. It's made very clear (imho) that these black women have had horrible lives -- lives with few choices and very little happiness available to them. Would it have been more realistic with rapes thrown in? Yes. Would it have potentially watered down the "You Don't Have To Be A Monster To Be Racist So You Might Check That" message to a very different "If You Haven't Raped Anyone Today, You're Probably OK" message? Maybe. Would it have been accessible to as many audiences? No.

That's my two cents. If you're on the fence, you might wait until it's out on video because OMG MISSISSIPPI ACCENTS ARE HARD TO PARSE. And I went to the theater with a Texan and two Arkansans, and we ALL had trouble in places.

[ProfCrash]

The book does not come off as a white savior story. More of a coming of age and leaving home.

I think anamardoll made an excellent point. The protagonist of the book is desperate to leave home. She does not like the attitude of the people around her, she does not like her small town, and she does not want to simply get married. She wants to be a writer but is struggling to find a job because she is a woman. She is told that if she can come up with some ground breaking work, she can get a job which would allow her to leave her Southern life. Without her selfish drive to leave there is no book for the Black women to tell their story.

By the end of the book she has been made an outcast in the town because of her support for the Black women of the book and she has become much more aware of the injustices in the South. I think her eyes are opened to just how awful the racial situation is even if she is not out protesting in the street.

The lives of the Black women are not helped by writing the book but their spirits seem to be. Telling their stories to someone and knowing that they are likely to be published appears to give the women a sense of worth that they had not known before. It gives them the opportunity to participate in the Civil Rights movement in a unique way.

Most of the white people in the town seem to be more worried about their reputations then change. There is no mass transformation of attitude, which was refreshing. In the end, you get the feeling that the status quo will be maintained but that the Black Women of the book have a stronger sense of self worth then they did when they started.

[pocoreader]

'The Help' may have sold 1,000,000 Kindle copies, but it happened without Canada, where Amazon has seen fit NOT to release it for the Kindle. So many titles are unavailable in Canada that, at times, I regret ever buying it. Very frustrating.

[Ron.]

Originally Posted by pocoreader

'The Help' may have sold 1,000,000 Kindle copies, but it happened without Canada, where Amazon has seen fit NOT to release it for the Kindle. So many titles are unavailable in Canada that, at times, I regret ever buying it. Very frustrating.

blame the publisher not amazon, I'm sure amazon wishes it could sell in every country in the world.

[taming]

Kobo sells The Help in Canada, not in Amazon's format, of course. That should mean that there are Canadian rights for it in place...

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by taming

Kobo sells The Help in Canada, not in Amazon's format, of course. That should mean that there are Canadian rights for it in place...

If the Publisher is willing to sell the book through Amazon

[TimW]

Originally Posted by pocoreader

'The Help' may have sold 1,000,000 Kindle copies, but it happened without Canada, where Amazon has seen fit NOT to release it for the Kindle. So many titles are unavailable in Canada that, at times, I regret ever buying it. Very frustrating.

It seems to be Penguin that's removed the books. The picture is from this article.

[JSWolf]

It sounds like if you want to get Penguin's eBooks in Canada, buy a Kobo or a Sony and not a Kindle.

[anamardoll]

Why would Penguin sell books in Canada with Sony/Kobo but not Amazon? That seems odd to me.

[ProfCrash]

Penguin US and Penguin Canada are probably different branches of the same company. Who knows why one would chose to sell it and the other would not.