Very brave, yet watered down Watched The Help the other night again after first seeing it a half dozen years ago and before so much of the press as of late. The Help tries to hint at the real cultural divide between the black and white communities yet in a very watered down manner, but the focus was spot on regarding where the control really was; the white women.
My grandmother grew up in this crowd and played the game well. Had her own man, a grounds keeper and knew how to manage the near enslavement relationship they had at the time. We only knew the man as John; no last name or where he lived or that he even had a family. Then one day, in my home town, during my grandmother's life, a white woman got mad at a black man and over the next few days, every black-owned building and home, about a thousand, was burned to the ground with nearly the same number dead.
As our main character was delivering her pie in appeasement to her master, she knew what the downside might be like and she was no fool. While the movie makes her out to be clever and brave, most of the black community of the day was deferential out of necessity for survival.
Try not to think of this movie as a real reflection of the time; had it tried to be so, it would never have been released, however, it was a good attempt at starting a conversation of the over-privileged nature, and outright cruelty of the white-woman of the day, which, actually, still persists.