Pariah Discussion Questions

I have seen the trailer and am going to the showing at 9pm. I hope my questions make sense in this context.

In her essay “Black American Cinema: The New Realism,” Manthia Diawara notes that the Black aesthetic in independent black cinema is primarily focused upon “empowering Black people” through the mise-en-scene and the rewriting of American history. It is easier to focus this aesthetic to films that are primarily set in the past, but how does this apply in film set in the present day such as Pariah? How is the aesthetic primarily dictated in terms of space, or more specifically the concept of the African American diaspora in a film such as Pariah rather than films like Killer of Sheep and Daughters of the Dust that have a clear political intention through the use of their aesthetic diaspora?

In her essay “The Oppositional Gaze,” bell hooks argues: “Black female spectators have had to develop looking relations within a cinematic context that constructs our presence as absence, that must deny the “body” of the Black female so as to perpetuate White supremacy, and with it a phallocentric spectatorship where the woman to be looked at and desired is ‘white’” (291). Though hooks does ntoe that it was mainly films of the past that have propogated this viewpoint. How, specifically is this concept of the female body and it’s absence directly counteracted through the narrative of Pariah?

Bordwell and Thompson Source for Seminar Paper

In the Bordwell and Thompson essay "Narrative as a Formal System," Bordwell and Thompson note: "spectators approach a narrative film with definite expectations...perhaps we have read the book on which the film is based" (68). THis applies to Taylor's The Help, as it has been based offof Katherine Stockett's New York Times Bestselling novel and yet, not only do spectators walk into the movie expecting the film to be at least somewhat faithful to the novel but, as a historical piece, it must be historically accurate to the same extent. Viewers walk into this film with, if not all, at least some of these expectations. I will use this chapter from Bordwell and Thompson's Film Art to put into conversation with Williams' piece on melodrama.

Later in their chapter Bordwell and Thompson note that there are two elements that constitute the "narrative" 1) the plot, which consists of explicitly presented events and nondiegetic material and 2) the story, which consists of the same explicitly presented events (that are in the plot) as well as presumed and inferred events. If we examine the conflicts between these two aspects of narrative in Taylor's film The Help then we can easily decipher as critical spectators the historical misrepresentations concerning "the preseumed and inferred events" and the melodramatic elements of the film, namely the changes made between novel and screenplay that affect not only the narrative, but more inporatatntly the viewers' expectations and emotions. I am particularly refferring to one scene in which the daughter of the Phelan family's faithful maid comes to visit her other from the North. Now in the book, this daughter is described by her mother as "high-yellow" with blonde hair and is able to pass as a white woman. In the novel, when she visits the Phelan's house, the daughter causes all sorts of trouble spewing Civil Rights rhetoric in the middle of Jackson, Mississippi. However, what I primarily want to focus on is how, for the film, this character is reconstituted as "very dark" from "high yellow." As such is recasts the villainy of the scene onto Mrs. Phelan, who in the book, granted in no angel, but the movie changes the racial attitude of the character, changing the narrative and our expectations for the film.

Linda Williams as a source for the seminar paper

Building from an earlier blog post, I will use Linda Williams’ Playing the Race Card to analyze Taylor’s film The Help. This film is incredibly popular and has become recently critically acclaimed, yet Williams would argue that this acclamation is due to the films’ emotionality—as it embodies the traits of the popular melodrama that Williams asserts in her book. For example, she continually argues throughout the first chapter that melodrama modernizes and renews itself through new objects of sympathy embedded in new social problems. Though the issue of race and consequent social and political marginalization is hardly a new problem in the United States, The Help, as Williams’ asserts has provided us with a fresh medium through which to discuss this moral dilemma; however, it does so ineffectively and ultimately to the detriment of the African American population. Due to it’s sentimentality the institutionalization of racism in the southern states during the civil rights era is simplified to a matter of feeling and emotionality. This film, not only follows the narrative structure of the book, but adds to the sentimentality of the original novel through two extra scenes in which the marginalized African American heroine breaks down in despair. Furthermore, it makes this suffering relatable to white people by paralleling the maids’ suffering to the trails and suffering of a young white female protagonist. For example, near the conclusion of the film, the film’s villain Hilly Holbrook threatens to have the maid Aibileen arrested. In response, Aibileen tearfully asks: “Ain’t you tired yet Miss Hilly?” To which Hilly bursts into tears and flees the room. This emotionality is suggestive of the trope of the film which poses the simple assertion that if we could all simply look past skin color then, as exemplified through the friendship between Aibileen and Skeeter, then racism in America could be overcome.

Diawara as a Seminar Paper Source

Near the beginning of her essay Diawara begins: “To illustrate my argument I have chosen to begin with a sequence from The Birth of a Nation to demonstrate how aspects of a dominant film can be read differently once the alternative readings of Afro-American spectators are taken into account, as the Black spectator’s reluctance to identify with the dominant reading [a film]” (Diawara 212). This can be particularly exemplified through Taylor’s The Help, which partially subverts the authentic historical narrative of the Civil Rights movement and the heroism of African American activists during the 1960s. Diawara argues that the dominant reading of a Hollywood film signals to the viewers who they should view as the hero, and who should be viewed as the villain, regardless of the viewer’s race.

Though Diawara does a compelling analysis in the concept of rewritten southern history for Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, this can also be subverted to encompass Taylor’s The Help. For instance, the dominant reading of the film indicates to the viewers that Hilly Holbrook is the unparalleled villain of the film, terrorizing her maids, and promoting dehumanizing segregation practices in Mississippi. Furthermore, the unparalleled hero of the film is Skeeter Phelan, a recent college graduate southern white girl, who is deemed to possess the courage and have the agency to “tell things as they really are in Mississippi.” The dominant reading of the film indicates that without Skeeter, “the help” wouldn’t have gained the courage or the agency to speak out against Hilly Holbrook and similar white socialite bored housewives such as herself. Why is this problematic? Such a dominant view of the film ignores the greater institutionalization of Jim Crowe law in the segregated south, and encompasses simplified “racial hatred” into one single-dimensional easily hated character. Furthermore, the entire issue of segregation is simplified into the issue of separate bathrooms for the southern colored maids.

Diawara is arguing for a more critical and resistant reading of the film by spectators who recognize that such films underscore the importance of African American history and civil Rights heroism. Therefore, when held to what Diawara refers to as the “historical accounts of African American experience” The Help becomes superficial and rather unconvincing. The “resisting spectator” must push against Skeeter’s categorization as the hero while recognizing that the victimization of blacks in the south was far more complicated than a housewife like Hilly Holbrook hurting her maids’ feelings.

Jo-Ann Morgan Source for Seminar Paper

Morgan, Jo-Ann. "Mammy the Huckster: Selling the Old South for the New Century." American Art 9.1, 1995: 86-109.

Jo-Ann Morgan's article primarily articulate the historical tradition and conception of the popularized Mammy figure following the end of the Civil War. I have invoked this source for my seminar paper because the two African American protagonists, Aibileen and Minny, embody the traits traditionally ascribed the the Mammy figure, yet this doesn't seem to be an issue in the film at all. Rather, the young white female protagonists notes: "They love us and we love them," noting that love between the two races is not the issue and simultaneously supporting what Morgan notes: “[Mammy figure was a form of] sentimental recollection. [When describing a popular photograph, Morgan notes that the Mammy's] serious expression, intent on the face of her little white charge, exemplififes the southerner’s ‘mythic mammy’” (Morgan 95).

This role as the ideal surrogate parent is further exemplified thorughout the film through Aibileen's character, who takes care of little Mae Mobley who is neglected by her white socialite mother. Aibileen continually tells the little girl: "You is kind, you is smart, you is important," which demonstrates the necessity of Aibileen's presence in the young girl's development and life. Furthermore, The physical traits between [the mistress and the mammy] are used to define their separate roles. The general heftiness of the Mammy figure emphasizes that she is equipped for hard work, while her small tiny-waisted mistress appears to belong in the parlor” (Morgan 99).

This physicality as the defining role is particularly exemplified by Minny and her newly-acquired employer Celia Foote, who continually seems to force Minny into “equality,” exemplified through her forcing Minny to dine with her at the same table, something with which Minny is uncomforatable and seems to echo Scarlet O’Hara’s mammy’s line “It just ain’t fittin’.” Furthermore, Minny as the beloved Mammy figure is further enforced through Celia Foote’s character who is unable to fit into southern society due to her child-like nature. Therefore, Minny also acts as a type of surrogate loving mother to Celia further enforces her Mammy role.

Benjamin DeMott Source for Seminar Paper

DeMott, Benjamin. “Put on a Happy Face: Masking Differences between Blacks and Whites,” in Harper’s Magazine ed. (September) 1995.

In his article “Put on a Happy Face,” Benjamin DeMott explains the irrational logic by which America has ignored the modern racial inequalities:

Yesterday white people didn’t like black people, and accordingly suffered guilt, knowing that the dislike was racist and knowing also that as moral persons they would have to atone for their guilt. They would have to ante up for welfare and Head Start and halfway houses and free vaccine and summer jobs for school kids and graduate fellowships for promising scholars and craft apprenticeships and so on, endlessly. A considerable wasteful expense. But at length came the realization that by ending dislike or hatred it would be impossible to end guilt, which in turn meant an end to redress: no more wasteful ransom money.(DeMott 33)

The majority of the American public seems to be under the false impression that a simple change in the racial attitude toward black Americans will make up for centuries of civil repression and bondage, as well as a lack of modern economic, political and social opportunity and reform. In his article DeMott accusesHolywood of encouraging America’s assumptions and complacency about the status of blacks in America, through what he calls “black friend” movies such as White Men Can’t Jump and Die Hard in which the black and white protagonists are able to set aside any differences in racial equality for the greater good (or the plot of the movie) (DeMott 32). DeMott says, “I cannot tell the reader how much I would like to believe in this sunshine world”; yet this “sunshine world” cannot exist due to the historical and racial silences imposed on the American mind.

It is this problem that is at the forefront of the many issues with Taylor's "The Help" the recently acclaimed film concerning the social and emotional burdens faced by the maids of Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. Based on the Katherine Stockett's novel, the film promotes a sense of the "sunshine world" that DeMott condemns. For instance, the majority of the plot is motivated by a young white woman's desire to "change things" or "set things right" as is stated in the script. Yet this storyline promotes the concept that only through the beneficiary actions of the young white woman can positive social change occur for the African American women in the film.

Williams on Melodrama

“Narrative cinema as a whole has been theorized as a realist, inherently masculine medium whose “classical” features were supposedly anathema to its melodramatic infancy and childhood. Thus, while narrative silent cinema has always been recognized as melodrama at some level, the “essential” art and language of cinema has not. Melodrama has been viewed either as that which the “classical” cinema has grown up out of, or that to which it sometimes regresses. However, as Gledhill notes, well into the sound era, industrial exhibition categories continued to assert the melodramatic base of most genres. The names of these categories are themselves revealing: western melodrama, crime melodrama, sex melodrama, backwoods melodrama, romantic melodrama, and so on (Gledhill 1987, 35). What is striking in the above examples is the way the noun “melodrama” functions to denote a certain form of exciting, sensational, and, above all, moving story that could then be further differentiated by more specifications of setting or milieu and/or genre. It is this basic sense of melodrama as a modality of narrative with a high quotient of pathos and action to which we need to attend if we are to confront its most fundamental appeal” (Williams 17).


In this passage, Williams is describing the transition and binary of classical cinema and melodramatic cinema. She evokes examples from earlier in the chapter when she cites Henry James’ reaction to a production of Uncle Tom, noting that it evoked his childhood sentimentality of what is right and what is wrong. It is this reaction to which Williams refers through the phrase “melodramatic infancy and childhood.” She notes the progression of film history as the “rising up” from the melodrama, because silent movies in a sense, had to be melodramatic in order to evoke the meaning and purpose of the film through over-exaggerated acting. She notes that “classical” cinema is considered to be the more mature offspring of the melodramatic “movie”- the film that emotionally “moves” the reader. However, throughout the chapter, she argues that this is not necessarily the case. Rather, the melodramatic film in a sense has been reborn, so that we as a nation might “talk to [ourselves]” about the dilemma and moral binary of negrophilia versus negrophobia in American culture (11). The “high quotient of pathos” to which Williams refers is a manipulation of the heartstrings that allows for the viewer to contemplate a sufferer within a social setting of which they are already previously aware. Williams argues that this emotionality leads the viewer to a “state of vision, of feeling and of consciousness” for African Americans in race films (13). It is this ability to “establish a moral good” through melodramas that “fundamentally appeals” to the viewer (13, 17).

In evaluating the claim and overall project of Williams’ Chapter 1, I thinking about the movies we have seen in class and obviously was able to notice the melodramatic elements concerning the establishment of a “moral good” to which Williams refers. For example, the jail scene in “Lying Lips” when the damsel in distress is wrongfully imprisoned, and we the viewers are able to feel and sympathise with the injustice of her imprisonment. However, I could not help but think about Williams’ assertion that there has been a type of “regression” in popular media towards that of the melodramatic. I felt that her example concerning the 1996 Olympics was particularly inventive, as it did not have to do necessarily with race, but still untangled the emotionality of the reader. Interesting that in her article, when she is referring to the melodramatic nature of the 1996 Olympic Summer Games, she refers to the melodramatic nature as a type of “feminization”—implying a certain emotionality associated with women—that such melodrama has a “moralizing function” (16). This led me to consider (what is now potentially turning into my seminar paper) the recent Oscar-nominated film “The Help.” Generally, I am wary of such racialized narrative bestsellers for reasons of historical innacurracy (aka Bill O’Reily’s new book “Killing Lincoln”), yet I had heard so many positive reviews about the novel and movie that over my Christmas break I read and watched both. While the history of racism in America is hardly a new problem, it is an old problem that seems to be popularly resurfacing since the election of President Obama.

My first question, as inquiry for a burgeoning seminar paper, what are we to make of this melodramatic nature in films today that, because of its sentimentality, it is nominated for the most prestigious film award? Do we fall into this trap of melodrama ourselves? Or do we agree with Williams’ project, that aside from noticing films’ melodramatic tendencies, such sentimentality can potentially result in social good? How do we make sense of this if melodrama is often said to try to reassemble a lost past? (36)

Second Question: In her essay, Williams evokes the argument of film critic Peter Brooks, who argues that the melodrama must begin with a moment of virtue, a safe and “idyllic space” that will be unjustly invaded. He notes that even if it is not “literally represented” that it will be remembered or implied some way through the nostalgia of the characters and potentially their memories. In the films that we have watched for class so far, how is this “idyllic space” embodied in the different films even if it is not literally represented?

Third Question: In her second chapter, Williams notes how the former nineteenth-century stereotype of villain and hero/heroine in the melodrama is reversed through the concept of the Uncle Tom, as someone who is victimized by the white master. Does this reversal occur in the films we have watched so far? And if so, does it do so to the detriment of the filmmakers’ social intentions?