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Elizabeth Adkins

Professor Scott

ENC 1102

16 September 2019

Thematic Analysis of The Help

The most prevalent themes in the movie The Help (Taylor 2011) are racism and prejudice

against African Americans. Set in the Mississippi in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement had

been coming to a head for years and prejudice in America was at an all-time high. Arguably, The

Help shines a light on race relations that still affect African Americans to this day through a

display of themes such as prejudice and racism. While strides in America have been made to

eliminate prejudice against African Americans, it is still just as relevant today as is was in the

1960s. The relevance can be reflected by the police brutality and workplace discrimination that

continues today even though slavery was outlawed nearly 200 years ago and the Civil Rights Act

was passed over 50 years ago.

The themes of prejudice and racism are highlighted in The Help through the scenes of

workplace discrimination. Because the maids worked in houses of families that were racist, they

were surrounded by prejudices and racism while doing their jobs. Generations of African

American families followed generations of white families as their maids. The African American

maids raised the very children that would eventually become their boss. This constant revolving

cycle resulted in white families believing they “owned” their maids (Taylor 1:31:00). In the

article “What we can Learn of History from Older African American Women Who Worked as

Maids in the Deep South” the writers studied personal narratives of maids during the peak of the
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Civil Rights Movement. A maid, Annie Victoria Johnson, recounts that “some of them people

were still slaves and didn’t know it” (van Wormer, Jackson, Sudduth p.234). While doing a job

that was paying near to nothing maids were being judged solely based on their skin. The main

antagonist of the film, Hilly, is openly racist towards every African American who she comes in

contact with and distrusts every maid, even her own. Hilly would not even allow her maid,

Minny, to use the bathroom inside of her house because of “diseases” that African Americans

carry (Taylor 00:15:41). The accurate portrayal of the poor treatment of African American maids

endured in their place of work in the 1960s showed how little we had come as a nation since the

abolishment of slavery. Whites continued to treat African Americans as less-than-human over a

hundred years after slavery was outlawed.

Police brutality is also brought to light in The Help and the themes of racism and

prejudice are shown through the depiction of those actions. In The Help, Yule Mae, another

maid, was arrested for stealing a ring from Hilly but instead of being handcuffed and taken

peacefully to the police station it takes three officers to hold her and eventually beat her despite

her cooperation (Taylor 01:28:00). She was relatively compliant with the officers’ demands but

because she was African American, they retained her with absolute brute force. The most notable

racism in police officers in America comes from the multiple arrests of Dr. Martin Luther King

Jr. as he either peacefully protested or was charged with petty crimes. The article “Martin Luther

King Jr. and Pretext Stops (and Arrests): Reflections on How Far We Have Not Come Fifty

Years Later” details how “African Americans are targeted for pretext stops at a rate greater than

white Americans” (Maclin and Savarese p.49). The preconceived notions that police officers

made based on the color of a person’s skin are the epitome of prejudice.
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Police brutality has been present in society for years and continues to be a problem for

African Americans. A study done by Fridkin, Wintersieck, Courey, and Thompson, “Race and

Police Brutality: The Importance of Media Framing”, found that most people’s perceptions of

police brutality are affected by the framing done by the media (Fridkin, Wintersieck, Courey,

and Thompson p.3410). The study states that framing can be an important “catalyst” for

“political change” (Fridkin, Wintersieck, Courey, and Thompson p.3411). Media framing is

dangerous because humans’ minds are easily pliable and something as little as the wording a new

outlet uses or the presence of audio can affect the mind and make it sway in a particular

direction. As a result of poor media coverage, the Black Lives Matter movement was formed in

2013 to bring attention to police brutality in America. Even though The Help was set in the

1960s the police brutality is just as relevant today as it was then, only today the media can frame

the brutality in a way that can affect the way people perceive it. To this day discrimination in the

workplace is still a very big problem just as it was in the 1960s when The Help was set. A

disproportionate amount of high paying jobs are given to African Americans and even once

having the job it is not uncommon for discrimination to occur. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was

passed and it included the prohibition of discrimination in the workplace based on race. While

this was, and still is, a landmark for civil rights in the United States, discrimination still occurs in

the workplace. The unjust discrimination can be traced back to the time of The Help as almost

every working African American was treated poorly in their place of work. The process of

proving discrimination has become very difficult due to loopholes and ways around the law.

According to Elizabeth Hirsh and Christopher J. Lyons in their article “Perceiving

Discrimination on the Job: Legal Consciousness, Workplace Context, and the Construction of

Race Discrimination,” the legal consciousness is “subjective” and “depends on their subjective
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interpretation of their experience and their knowledge of the law” (Hirsh and Lyons p.272). It is

easy for employers to claim that the discriminatory treatment was based on something other than

race because the law allows it.

The Help presents the themes of racism and prejudice through the eyes of the maids.

While as a nation we have come far to reduce the prejudice and racist acts that occur we still see

instances of workplace discrimination and racism every day. It is easy to overlook the problems

with our society because our minds recognize the strides we have made as a country but we are

far from being where we should be.

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Works Cited

Fridkin, Kim, et al. “Race and Police Brutality: The Importance of Media Framing.” University

of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Annenberg

Press, Aug. 2017, pp. 3394–3414.

Hirsh, Elizabeth, and Christopher J Lyons. “Perceiving Discrimination on the Job: Legal

Consciousness, Workplace Context, and the Construction of Race Discrimination.” Law

and Society Review, 2010, pp. 269–298.

Maclin, Tracey, and Maria Savarese. “Martin Luther King Jr. And Pretext Stops (and Arrests):

Reflections on How Far We Have Not Come Fifty Years Later.” SSRN Electronic Journal,

2018, doi:10.2139/ssrn.3200528.

Taylor, Tate, director. The Help. Touchstone Pictures, 2011.

Wormer, Katherine Van, et al. “What We Can Learn of Resilience from Older African-American

Women: Interviews with Women Who Worked as Maids in the Deep South.” Journal of

Human Behavior in the Social Environment, vol. 21, no. 4, 2011, pp. 410–422.,

doi:10.1080/10911359.2011.561167.