pumpkinstrokemarrow

Nice winding down encore, but I forget what it was. No-one I had heard of. The only bad note was the Wigmore peddling its prize winning CDs. Even this bastion of old school culture is infected by the need to flog souvenirs to its punters.

Started this week with a rare visit to the cinema to see 'The Help', the BH having just finished the book from which the film was made. Oddly emotional watch considering that the story line was quite straightforward and the subject matter reasonably familiar. Perhaps part of it was a well crafted film which knew how to pull on the heart strings. Perhaps part of it was what ever got to me on November 19th 2010 - the famous picture of one of the Little Rock Nine. BH tells me that a lot of the stories in the book were missed or heavily cut in order to make room for a film about the writing of the book, rather than a film about what was in the book. The very prominent nasty rich white girls were reasonably familiar from plenty of films about their bitching and shenanigans at high schools and colleges. The focus on the business of rearing other womens' babies was less familiar. And the amount of time given to matters lavatorial was a surprise - although a feature of one or two other films I have seen from the US. BH also tells me that much of what was positive in the book about Mississippi and the people who live there was missed out, the film mainly concentrating on the bad bits, although you did get some very fine suburban trees. All of which reminds me of a bit from 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' where a white plantation owner explains to a bossy white northern lady that he, the plantation owner, lives with and loves his blacks. While you northern people instinctively shrink away if you accidentally touch one. See November 8th 2007.

Coming out of the film, the first thought was that I was glad that I was not a comfortable white person from Mississippi. Glad that we never had that sort of thing in this country. But then I realised that the goings on at Downton Abbey and such like places - or even the sorts of places you get in Agatha Christie adaptations - would play rather badly if you colour coded the masters and servants. And remembered that our goings on in India, and even more recently in East Africa, might well have been up to Mississippi standards. So perhaps better to lay off the patronising.

PS: this morning moved to dig my copy of 'Mules and Men' by Zora N. Hurston out of FIL's room. Stories from the same part of the world, but from 1935. It will be interesting to see what their tone is again, in the light of Sunday's movie.