{"id":10051,"date":"2012-03-05T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T09:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=10051"},"modified":"2012-03-05T09:00:53","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T09:00:53","slug":"the-help-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/03\/05\/the-help-then-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The Help, Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Southern civil rights fairytale The Help<\/strong><\/a> didn’t prove to be the Oscar bait it was predicted to be, apart from Best Supporting Actress for Octavia Spencer, even though it has many of the necessary elements gloriously summarised in this Trailer For Every Oscar-Winning Movie Ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the time it was released the debates online reminded me I wanted to write something about the modern day ‘help’: the estimated 16,000 domestic workers who enter the UK every year, most of whom are women, and most migrating for economic reasons. Then on Thursday last week, Home Secretary Theresa May announced some changes to immigration law which will put the thousands of migrant women working in domestic service in the UK today at far greater risk of exploitation.<\/p>\n

In case it passed you by when it came out, the plot of The Help<\/strong> is this: a young white woman (‘Skeeter’) returns from college with idealistic plans to be a serious writer. Rather than documenting the petty dramas of her affluent circle, she shocks them all by interviewing ‘the help’ and telling the stories of the black maids and nurses she and her friends were raised by who are subject to humiliation and exploitation by their employers.<\/p>\n