The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I'm struggling with my "No Pencil Policy" with this one. I'm not sure what I want to say, or how to say it ... so here goes, before I put it off yet again...

Anything that says "bestseller" is usually something I steer clear of. If that many people liked it, it's usually the case that I won't. Which is not to say I don't try. I've read, or attempted to read, my fair share of nearly all genres of the written word (non fiction, popular fiction, science fiction, teen, romance, crime, horror, classics, literature...) and I am inevitably bored, or frustrated, or both, by popular fiction. And The Help definitely frustrated me.

The Plot
I read the book about 6 weeks or so ago, so I may be a bit sketchy on some of the details. Set in some backwater in Mississippi, it tells intersecting stories of a handful of white women, and their black servants. Basically, Skeeter is an odd-looking white woman (she can empathise - she too has unruly hair!), who is university educated and therefore uncomfortable with the relationships she witnesses between her circle of white middle class friends, and their help .... which is a very Southern and delicate way of saying "the black second class citizens who clean their homes and raise their children". She enlists the help of Aibileen - the quintisensial "help" - to write a secret book: a collection of the stories of the black women. If Scarlets' Mammy was larger than life, feisty, loyal, loving and capable - Abi is the other stereotype: even tempered, subservient, loyal, loving and capable. Not content with one stereotype, Kathryn Stockett went for the quinella - but her Mammy is called Minny. Good imagimanationing KS.

So, the good things first:
It was a page turner. Extremely consumable, and with enough investment in the characters and story to be engaged and interested in the outcome. But, I rushed through the last third of the book, eager to find out what was going to happen. And like binge eating or watching a film in fast forward, there is nothing very satisfying for me about whizzing through a book - just to get to the end. A book should show me something about the human condition, or make me think about the human condition - it's not just about the end, it's about the journey.

And now for the bad things:
My main problem is there's something a bit icky about a book written by a white women in the voice of a black woman. Vaguely cringey. I'm glad that Stockett seems to understand this in her epilogue (why oh why didn't she just write her own story - of being raised by her own Abi in Mississippi??). I think about if I were to write about being a Koori in Melbourne.... it's just not quite right. I see her trying the language, but it feels...well, wrong... "Baby girl hug on my legs all afternoon to where I bout fall over a few times." Seriously.

My copy of the book says something about "being the other side of Gone with the Wind" - but I'm not sure I saw the difference. The servants are still making colored greens, and some ol fried chicken, and whooping your ass, and any other cultural stereotype you can think of. Initially, I thought my problem was that Stockett was a white woman writing these words, but upon reflection, I think it is just the sloppy hokey-ness of this dialogue. As my book group pointed out quite rightly, fiction is about writing made-up stories, so I can't validly criticise The Help because Stockett is not an African American. It's just that she writes crap.

So on reflection I think my problem with the book was the unimaginative use of language, particularly dialogue. Which was only made bearable by the even more cliched "made for TV" story. The pace was so frenetic, with too many dead-end storylines that just muddied the already fairly murky waters of a superficial story - a miraculous cancer recovery, a boyfriend that fades away at the turn of a page. It's written in such stereotypes, with little examination of the why, it just is. Hilly is a crazy racist bitch - and that's all there is to say about that. But why? Well, just coz. It's so cliched and simplistic - and moralistic. I can't really learn anything from reading this book. It paints a consumable simplistic portrait of the shame of white middle class America, without exploring the nuances or saying something new.

To make matters worse. This is an example of the questions posted for reading groups on Stockett's website: Do you think that one can be a good mother but, at the same time, a deeply flawed person?
Erm. Can I go and play pick-up-sticks now, because my inner 6 year old child is sick of answering your dumbass questions. I mean, who is her demographic? I didn't even know people still existed who thought there was such as a thing as THE PERFECT PERSON. Newsflash: people are flawed.... even, shock horror, mothers! Except me, of course. I'm perfect, and the perfect mother. All the time. To paraphrase Brian Fantana (from Anchorman), 60% of the time, I'm perfect every time.

I don't want to go overboard because it wasn't a bad book. She just needed to excise some of the extraneous crap - one story, told well, would have made this a much more successful novel. Well, successful in that I would have enjoyed more. I'm pretty sure, being a Number 1 New York Times bestseller, and soon to be a Dreamworks movie - she could argue pretty convincingly about her "success"!

Sucker Punch

Plot
Emily Browning (Babydoll) is sent to a nut house by her evil stepfather for the accidental death of her sister after her mother died. The stepfather bribes an orderly to have her lobotamised, and in the apparent instant of the procedure we see a re imagining of Babydoll and Lennox House as a brothel. Then within that, Babydoll re imagines the quests for various apparatus required to escape the brothel as different mythic and fantastical battles. She enlists the help of other inmates/prostitutes in her endeavour. Abbie Cornish (Sweet Pea) and some other children/women (namely Donnie Darko's girlfriend and Zac Efron's ex-girlfriend) who scrub up good in knee-high socks and corsets, and more false lashes than a Liza Minnelli .... anything. Lots of lashes.

What say ye?
Well. What to say, what to say? It was pretty good. I guess it sits at the edge of the traditional Hollywood blockbuster - still commercial, but slightly more clever. Definitely better than Snyder's 300 (but perhaps still pipped by Dawn of the Dead), more fleshed out and refined. And not just the story, but his mise en scene as well.

His signature colour washed film, slo-mo action, impossibly beautiful cast, and gritty and mythical CGI are all still there. Borrowing from Peter Jackson, Zack Snyder seems to understand how to use CGI well. Hide it in a dark, moody and colour bleached palette - and voila - instant gravitas and sophistication to your movie. It is corny & hokey certainly, but the actresses are all extremely credible and strong - even if they look like schoolgirl hookers - and this prevents the film from becoming a complete caricature. He was going for something with his story and I liked that.

Umm. Did I mention the girls look pretty great? I won't go into the whole sexualisation of children here, but needless to say, I wasn't entirely comfortable with Snyder's vision of a desirable woman ... face full of make-up, pouty and demure, dressed like Shirley Temple....but there's no denying their hotness. And I guess making them masters of their own destiny helped to rectify the imbalance. However, it was definitely a man's vision/fantasy so difficult to embrace as a woman. Or maybe it's merely that it is what it is - a fringe-commercial film - so the punch will always be pulled a little.

Scream 4 - or Scre4m if you want to be pedantic

I see the poster says, "New Decade. New Rules" ... hmmm ... probably not. "New Decade. Homage to the first" might be more apt. Scream 4 pays huge dues to the original film in more ways than mere returning cast members.

1. There is lots of movie geek, I mean, movie buff flotsam floating about. This is okay if you can smirk/laugh along knowingly whilst patting yourself on the back for understanding all this self-referentialising (I'm allowed to make up words, it's in the blogger handbook). But like bloody Dawson, it gets a little trying ... less of the speaky more of the stabby please.

2. Replication of the original murders, even if they are in the movie within a movie. Scream 4 sadly peaks before the real movie starts. And from all perspectives - scares, dialogue, humour, gore.

3. Replication of plot. Even if they are nudging and winking - I've still been there, seen that. Although there was something quite comforting, and certainly less scary, to watch a "horror" film and know what is going to happen. I say "horror" in inverted commas, because it's really more of a comedy with some blood. Even Andrew's sister wanted to see it. And she is too afraid to see the Harry Potter movies. Say no more.

On this note. Surely a horror film is memorable for the manner in which the victims are slaughtered. I can't really quite remember what happened in the previous movies, nor who it was in the end. After a lengthy debate, it was finally agreed that it was Johnny Depp-lite Skeet Ulrich and the dude that plays Shaggy in Scooby Doo. But it's a horror film at the end of the day, you're not supposed to remember motivations or plot points - you really only need to remember how and in what manner the cast were killed. And I honestly couldn't tell you. Except to say, they were stabbed by Ghostface.

Any suspense was so self-referential (that word again - I can't avoid it) that it mitigated any true or visceral response. With nods to Gen Y - and everything we like to say about them - entitlement, self-absorbed, technically savvy, fame hungry, narcisitic, and even a disertation on the phenonemon of torture porn maskerading as horror. Okay we get it, but at the end of the day, you have to give me something more with your rant. The issue about 15 minutes of fame and that you don't have to do anything: 'what am I going to do - go to college and get a job' Emma Roberts sneers incredulously to Neve Campbell. I like the social media element - it doesn't happen unless someone is watching or reading ... she types into her online blog ... irony withstanding - I liked it, it was timely. But I think Scream 4 missed the mark. It just wasn't scary enough.