When Black was once called "Colored"

I was watching t.v. the other night, when I saw that a movie channel was going to show a movie starring Emma Stone and thought "why the heck not?".

The movie is entitled "The Help", and it's the story inspired by the book "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett about an aspiring journalist (Emma Stone) who wrote her big break by writing about the stories of the black maids who experienced hardships while working as maids for white families. Yes, I'm using racist terms for this review, because the entire movie was about racism anyway.

The setting is based on the 1960's, when racism ranged from black people not given any decent human rights by the US government, to black people getting murdered just because they're black. This was also around the same time Martin Luther King Jr. fought for black people's rights, which makes writing about the hardships of black maids very timely. The hardships that the black community had to go through just because of their color was just impossible to make sense of. Colored people having different contagious diseases from the color of their skin, maids having to raise other people's children while their own are raised by others, black children of certain age are forced to become maids just to make ends meet, and even maids being placed in the will of their previous masters for them to be handed down to the children of their previous masters as if they were their property and not human beings. These are just some of the many stories that you will hear in this movie, and it will open your eyes, especially if you yourself know what it means to have a maid in the house.

The conflict does not revolve around Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone's character). It revolves around the two black maids played by Viola Davis (CIA Director, Knight and Day) and Octavia Spencer (famous for minor roles that make certain scenes more interesting). Skeeter was just the one who put their stories and all the other stories of other maids together. At the end of it all, it's a happy ending with justice served.

I don't really need to say much about the story since it's already a novel, but I can say that Octavia Spencer deserved the awards she received for this movie. If you're familiar with how good of an actress Octavia is in other movies or tv shows, you'd know that she has the biggest potential among those who are usually cast as extras. And this movie was able to maximize her acting skills to the fullest. Her performance for this movie gave her Critic's Choice Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA, and an Oscar ALL ON THE SAME YEAR. Everybody else was great, especially since they all had to speak in a southern 60's accent, but Octavia gave the best performance I have ever seen from her. As for Emma Stone, I noticed her characters are usually those who are strong willed, and determined in their ideals. Well, that's what I've seen from the three movies I've seen her in. But I still think Emma Stone was a supporting cast in this movie. And I will take that opinion to the grave.