“The Help” From the Postcolonial Perspective

The Help is a film released in 2011 and was written by Tate Taylor and is an adaptation from Kathryn Stockett’s novel of the same name. the film stars Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Emma Stone. It tells of an aspiring writer and journalist Eugenia Phelan and her relationship with two African American maids who aid her in writing her debut book about the racism faced by the African American maids serving the white families. 

How can The Help be considered as a postcolonial work?

The film focuses on the African American maids during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 in the United States during when the African American community of the United States were fighting for equal right as the white citizens of the country. The location was set in Jackson, Mississippi where many of the black members of the community live of the outskirts of town and many of the women work as maids for white families. 

Throughout the film, many instances can be seen where the maids were mistreated and ridiculed at every chance possible. Many of the wives of the white families treated the maids as if they were of low class and of lower brain capacity. For instance, Minny, played by Octavia Spencer was terminated by her employer for no apparent reason and Yule May was beaten very severely for taking a discarder item. If these were done to whites, would the reaction be the same? 

Towards the end of the film, Hilly, the main antagonist of the film and the bully of Jackson, pressures Aibileen’s employer to fire Aibileen due to her own shame brought on by Eugenia Skeeter’s book which had an embarrassing chapter about Hilly. Aibileen, however, had had enough of Hilly’s manipulations and bullying that she decided to leave her place of employment of her own accord. 

The only character sin the movie who had looked upon the maids as equals were Celia and her husband Johnny who were outcasts of Jackson. Celia was never accepted into the society as Hilly had a grudge on her and had manipulated the whole town against Celia. Minny befriended Celia and had become a confidant to her when Celia hired Minny as a part-time maid to help teach her to cook for her husband as she was in desperate need of cooking lessons These two characters were the only ones who broke free from the White or Other stigma that many of that time had and had mentalities further than their time. 

The film as a whole as almost perfectly pictured the actual situation during the Civil Rights Movement of 1963 and had perfectly portrayed the turmoil experienced by the maids of Jackson, Mississippi. The unjust that ruled the supposedly pious people of Jackson and the pressure to conform the peer pressure and social norms had caused a lot of pain for those who were merely trying to earn a living for themselves and their families.

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS : A POSTMODERN LITERATURE

J. J. Abraham created Star Trek into Darkness based on the older version of Star Trek series which appeared in 1966. The newer version of the series takes us to a new level where the director uses different actors to act the present characters. Other new edition to the series is the character of Captain James T. Kirk. He was played by Chris Pine as a happy-go-lucky character with lack of responsibility and a womanizer.

Can the movie be considered as a postmodern literature?

            Some characters in this movie are non-human i.e. aliens such as Spock and Khan. These beings live with the humans normally and the setting of a city in this movie is ahead of the present city. The structure of the buildings and the facilities as well as the accommodations seen in this movie tells us that this movie was taken from the future time. Humans and non-humans work together as explorers in space seems like a typical occupation in the movie.

            There are several postmodern elements which the viewers can see in the movie. Firstly, there are the element of irony that the viewers can identify from the main character, Captain James T. Kirk. J. J. Abraham re-created Captain Kirk as a womanizer and a person with lack of responsibility since the first Star Trek movie in 2009. Another character named Christopher Pike (acted by Bruce Greenwood) mentioned that the rules are made for other people than Kirk. The Enterprise was taken from him due to his ‘lack of responsibility’ in the earlier part of the movie. As the movie continues, the viewers can see the development of Captain Kirk especially in saving his crews.

            Second, the movie was re-created from the older series of the Star Trek franchise. A term in postmodernism which we call “pastiche” refers to any literature which was copied from the older version of it. The director took the movie and re-created it with a bit of his new ideas to give the movie a new look.

            Lastly, as I mentioned above, the movie was seen to be taken from the future time. Most of the settings and the facilities in the city are high in technology. You can see it from the hospital scene in the earlier part of the movie where a hospital bed appeared without any wheels under it.

            In short, Star Trek into Darkness is a good example of postmodern literature in the present time. Aside from that, the viewers can see the development of the characters especially Spock – emotional development - and Captain Kirk.

Unpolished Gem Through Poststructuralism Perspective

The novel Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung highlights the life surrounding Asian-Australian family where Alice, the main character, parents moved to Australia to seek refuge from war ongoing in their country. Australia was a place of wonder for them as the place seems to welcome them with open hand and full of things that they have not known before. Alice was therefore named after the main character in Alice in wonderland as a commemoration of them living in the ‘wonderland’.

As the novel progresses, conflicts slowly begin to unfold in their life. Alice was stuck between the frequent fights between her mother and grandmother, her parents struggle to support the family, and Alice also later on struggle with depression while playing her role as the ‘good daughter’. The novel did not show the flowery path or life of immigrants finding life in Australia, rather it shows the reality that people in the third space has to face and the conflict of maintaining their tradition and identity while assimilating to the new place that they are calling ‘home’.

Through the perspective of poststructuralism, Unpolished Gem can be seen as a novel that foreground the binary opposition of White/Other where the typically White is placed closest to the centre of the structure. Unpolished Gem is centralized around the life of Chinese-Cambodian living in Australia, a group that belongs to the Other or more specifically, in the Third space. Therefore, it deconstructs the binary opposition of White/Other, showing more sides of the Other that frequently depicted in a negative way with very minimal details.

In some part of the novel, the authors also portrayed the White as disliked figure that were given names or certain nicknamed to be referred to rather than their own name. For example, Alice’s cousin got married to an Anglo-Australian that was usually nicknamed ‘skip’ which refers to Skippy, the bush kangaroo. He was later referred as “Round Red-haired Demon” by all the relatives rather than his real name. Thus, this novel deconstructs the usual structure of White/Other while depicting White as the unfavoured figure that are negatively viewed by majority of the characters in the novel. Strangely enough, the author also mentioned that despite their disliked towards White, her relatives boasted of his son-in-law’s influence as White to other relatives.

This novel also explores how Alice struggle to balance between the tradition in her culture and the liberal ideas or lifestyle of Australia. The binary opposition of traditional/liberal for Asians would put the traditional as being closest to its centre. On the other hand, western would be more inclined to liberal/traditional binary opposition where the liberal is the closest to the centre. Alice has to learn to balance the line between these two binary opposites instead of succumbing solely to one part of it. Tradition was important to Alice as it holds her identity, but she was also unable to follow the tradition completely since she has to assimilate to Australian way of life to certain degree.

The binary opposition between truth/lies also seems to have not been as preferred in the novel. This can be seen when Alice was asked to be a spy to her mother by her grandmother and also a spy to her grandmother by her mother. Alice was caught between telling the truth of what the other party said about another or lying so that they would not fight against one another. In this case, truth no longer seems to be a better option as it only tore apart her family even more and made her the victim of the situation.

In conclusion, literary works does, according to Derrida inclined to breaks the structure that typically seen in language. The deconstruction of the structure makes the literary text stands out and gives it unique characteristics that people tend to ignore. However, Unpolished Gem is not just a literary text, it is a memoir of a true journey of Chinese-Cambodian in the land they thought as Wonderland.

Novel: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre was published on 16 October 1847 under the pen name “Currer Bell”. The character Jane Eyre is portrays in nineteenth- century setting where she graduate from an orphanage and got a job as a governess. She ends up falling in love with her master and ready to get married. But the highlighted figure for the post colonialism is Bertha, who is the master’s wife.

Story of Bertha

Bertha is Rochester’s secret wife, locked in secret by his husband at all time. It is said that Bertha is given “voice” to tell story through her perspective in the novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys.  The binary opposition based on race is portrays in the novel where the author give different view about the character Jane Eyre as a virtuous white western European woman while Bertha as crazy and monstrous “other”. Bertha served to define the colonized women in Jamaica. It is where the Western think that the West is always superior that the East when Charlotte apply the binary opposition to characterize these two characters. It show that people other than the Western are weak.

Rochester that is getting to get married with Jane Eyre face the embarrassment when Bertha’s brother told the guests that he already married. In the novel, Rochester is portray as the colonizer that colonized his wife both in financial and psychological. His wife was exploited tragically and as the result, she became mad. Rochester that we can see as the colonizer think that Bertha are not civilized by acting crazy when she started to burn the house where they’re staying. It shows the representation of the colonized in real life when they are being dehumanized by their own fellow human beings.

"'In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face."'

The description of Bertha in this novel shows how the Western use the “otherness” to portrays things which they think do not belong to them. All the negative traits are thrown to the colonized and automatically the positive traits belongs to the Western.

References

Moosmosis. (2018, April 01). Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte- Literary Analysis. Retrieved from https://moosmosis.org/2016/12/14/jane-eyre-by-charlotte-bronte-literary-analysis/

Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008, November 11). Postcolonial Theory Analysis - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Retrieved from https://www.shmoop.com/postcolonial-theory/jane-eyre-analysis.html

The figure of Bertha Mason. (2014, February 13). Retrieved from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-figure-of-bertha-mason