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.