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.