Jackson, Mississippi, looks gorgeous in The Help: stately Southern mansions sit amid Delta farmland, pecan trees shade mid-century ranch houses, and the white ladies (because they are definitely “ladies”) go about the business of playing cards and ruthlessly enforcing the status quo while wearing the most sensational New Look styles – all cinched waists and bouffant helmet hair. The black maids wear their prim uniforms with dignity.
So it would be easy to think of this movie as just another Hollywood version of white hero (or in this case heroine) “saving” the black people from oppression, writes Jennifer Howze.