The Real Help

              Recently I re-read the book, "The Help." Made into a major motion picture a year or so ago, "The Help" has become a favored book club read and important book for showing civil rights issues in the mainstream media on the surface, and at first I agreed with that. However, when I re-read the book and looked at some articles on the book, I noticed something different about the book, that it may not be the civil rights darling that I thought it.
               The problem, I and many others, found with the book was that although it was proclaimed to be about black maids in the conservative south essentially liberating themselves and show their strength and bravery, the book only showed that this could happen if a white person stepped in to help. Aibeleen doesn't give any serious thought to changing her life or standing up for herself until Skeeter (a white lady) comes in with the idea for a book exposing the treatment of maids in Jackson, Mississippi. The book shows the struggle for civil rights as being brought about by a white lady, and implies exactly the opposite of the civil rights movement: that african americans cannot help themselves to justice.
              This disconcerted me as the media had marketed as something totally different, and everyone from the Oscar's to the "New York Times" had heralded it as an important book. It made me think about the media today, it doesn't seem to look very deeply into what it is telling us. Based on a lot of what I've read, the media doesn't make you think, it makes you think about what it wants you to think. And this, I believe, is wrong.