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Film as Transformative Storytelling
We love film, television and other forms of media storytelling in part because our experience with them is very personal. When we watch a film, we are transported into the world of the story, and we feel like we're experiencing events as if we were the characters. This is one reason why film can be transformative.
One example of a transformative story is found in the SAG-award-winning and Oscar-nominated movie The Help. The Help tells the story of the relationship between the White upper-middle-class and the Black servant class in 1960s era Jackson, Mississippi. The plot focuses on several women, each of whom is strong in her own way and each of whom faces a powerful social situation she must navigate.
To view the trailer for The Help, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_ajv_6pUnI
Recasting Motherhood, Daughterhood and Female Relationships
In The Help, Abiline and Minny are maids who are forced to endure the indignities of an extremely misguided group of White women--the bridge and dinner party set--who openly voice the opinion that they cannot use a bathroom that a Black woman has used for fear of contracting an infectious disease. Meanwhile, Skeeter, an aspiring young White author raised by a beloved Black nanny, recognizes the injustice of the way the Whites treat "The Help." This is, in part because she endures the less-than-enlightened reactions--even of her mother and other family members--to her choice to actively pursue a career.
Human beings are naturally drawn to story. A lecture on discrimination and prejudice can't draw us in or change us the way a story can, nor is it anywhere near as palatable. And there are a number of reasons film, theater and television (among other media) move us. For instance, when we see someone showing emotion on the screen, we unconsciously mimic that emotion and thus feel it ourselves. Other elements of the film such as the music and aspects of the cinematography such as the lighting, camera angles and cuts also influence how we feel about the unfolding story and thus play a part in influencing our attitudes and beliefs.
The very nature of dramatizing a story means making it powerful and influential...moreso than the way everyday life unfolds. By definition, dramatized stories should be more powerful and memorable than most of our real life experiences. When we watch a great film, we're drawn into the story's world. We inhabit the skin of the compelling characters. I think that, in a way, we're pretending we actually are the characters we see...we're pretending we're visiting the time and place depicted in the film. Take, for example, a memorable scene from The Help in which Skeeter is grappling with social rejection and her nanny Constantine (Cicely Tyson) tells her:
"Everyday...everyday you're not dead in the ground and you wake up in the mornin', you gonna have to make some decisions. Gotta ask yourself this question; am I gonna believe all them bad things them fools said about me today? You hear me? Am I gonna believe all them bad things them fools say about me today? Alright?" 1
Such a profound statement, put so dramatically is likely to evoke strong feelings and thus to stay in memory and to come to mind when we experience a similar situation. In that way, a film like The Help functions as art should...helping us to understand the human condition on a deep and emotional level and to make meaning from the experience. After having this vicarious experience a film can give us, we basically think of the film whenever we're trying to make sense of the issues it raises. We think of the film almost as if it were our own life experience with the issue. And in a way it is. Our brains do not draw a neat line between art and life, fantasy and reality, fact and fiction.
The Help explores the strength manifested by the characters that experience discrimination. It redefines strength, not as social power, but as restraint, judgment and patience in the face of adversity. It recasts motherhood, daughterhood and female friendships along the lines of authenticity versus superficiality. It teaches us or reminds us that not so long ago in our culture, blatant racism was not only inescapable in the social order...it was the law. Some film entertains, some teaches. The Help will endure in part because it does both.
And even so, for me, one of the most memorable lessons of the film is the way Aibileen teaches the little White girl she is helping to raise to love herself. She teaches the girl to say out loud, "You is smart. You is kind. You is important." (Click here to watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H50llsHm3k). The power and authenticity of that lesson will likely endure in the minds of audience members alongside or even above the lessons about discrimination and racism.
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1 http://www.moviequotesandmore.com/the-help-movie-quotes.html#.TyyOJOOXR…
Thank you to Larry Drake for a very helpful (no pun intended) conversation about The Help and to Don Grant, Gordon Goodman, Garry Hare, Judith Manassen-Ramon and other members of the Fielding Media Psych community for some great Oscar discussions.
Thank you to Lee Shackleford for conversations about dramatization in film and theater.
