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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.

Language:
English Language

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

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.

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