Images, Movies and Race: 'The Help' and black women's labor

(Courtesy of Touchstone Pictures)

'The Help' cleaned up at the Critic's Choice Movie Awards, winning Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Ensemble.

The Help, based on the Kathryn Stockett novel, recently landed four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress.

As part of Worldview’s occasional series “Images, Movies and Race”, WBEZ’s Richard Steele spoke with Enobong (Anna) Branch, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Branch is the author of Opportunity Denied: Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work; her research focuses on the study of blacks, contemporarily and historically.

In their conversation, Enobong talks about the legacy of labor for black women in the U.S. and shares her views on the controversial film, The Help.

In this conversation, Richard Steele reads from a mostly positive article by Chicago Sun Times columnist Mary Mitchell about the film. He also references a stinging critique of the film from Tulane University political science professor Melissa Harris-Perry.