ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
21st-Century Literature Videos 16 videos
Who wants to read another story about a kid going off to boarding school? Apparently, pretty much everybody.
Sorry, guys: this novel doesn't follow the dramatic life events of pumpkin pie, nor does it explore what it truly means to be the mathematical cons...
We volunteer you as tribute to watch this video analysis of Katniss in the second book of the Hunger Games series. After the berry suicide attempt...
The Help 5552 Views
Share It!
Description:
If you're still eating pie on a regular basis, you probably haven't read this book or seen the movie. If you have and it hasn't swayed you...well, kudos. You have a stomach of steel, and we are very impressed.
Transcript
- 00:04
The Help, a la Shmoop. We laughed, we cried… we’ll never eat pie again.
- 00:10
The Help has been selling like hotcakes for a while now.
- 00:13
But it actually has the critical cred to back up its popularity. That's right: Even stuffy
- 00:18
types love The Help.
- 00:20
Some folks are even comparing it to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which always
Full Transcript
- 00:24
ranks high in the “best books ever” debate.
- 00:27
So will The Help follow in To Kill a Mockingbird’s footsteps? Will it ever make the move from
- 00:33
bestsellerdom to classic lit? Sure, The Help isn’t a classic yet, but
- 00:37
how many stories are called “classics” right away?
- 00:41
Plenty of jerks thought Charles Dickens was a worthless hack, and we all know how that
- 00:45
turned out.
- 00:47
The important thing was that Dickens’ books were popular, just like The Help is today.
- 00:51
Of course, popularity isn’t everything. You’ve got to have respect, too. Sorry,
- 00:56
Twilight.
- 00:57
But The Help is no slouch in that department, either. “Popularity plus Respect plus Time
- 01:02
equals Classic” is an equation that’s worked in the past, so maybe it'll work for
- 01:07
The Help, too. If that equation isn't enough for you, throw
- 01:10
some racism into the mix. We're serious. Books about tough subjects like racism have a history
- 01:17
of making their way into the world of classic literature.
- 01:20
We’re thinking way beyond just To Kill a Mockingbird – there’s The Color Purple,
- 01:25
Invisible Man, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry…
- 01:29
The list of tales about ignorant scumbags goes on and on…
- 01:33
…and guess what The Help is about?
- 01:35
Okay, so The Help has all the makings of a classic, but it's definitely not a shoe-in.
- 01:40
Why? Well, lots of people think The Help is just reality TV in novel form.
- 01:48
The black maids serve as the cameras, giving us a semi-scripted view of the badly-behaving
- 01:52
wives of a particular town.
- 01:54
Sound familiar? Deep down, could The Help just be the print
- 01:58
version of “The Real Housewives of Jackson"?
- 02:03
When we get sick of rich ladies being terrible harpies on TV, we may get sick of stories
- 02:08
like The Help, too. So what do you think?
- 02:11
Is The Help headed toward the literary hall of fame…
- 02:13
…or is it just another one-off bestseller destined for oblivion?
- 02:20
Shmoop amongst yourselves.
Related Videos
This video defines utopias and dystopias, and investigates how a utopia might become a dystopia. Can a seemingly perfect world actually be a dystop...
We may all be fools when it comes to love, but thankfully none of us will accidentally switch places with our twin brother and fall in love with ou...
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.